No More Secrets

By Glenn Close, New York, New York

As appeared in

Grand Central Station.

More than half a million people come through here every day, people of all ages and backgrounds, all walks of life. You can’t necessarily tell from the outside—the clothes they wear, the things they carry, even the way they act—what’s going on with someone inside—the struggles they face, the loneliness they feel, the hope and understanding they seek.

That’s why I’m here. I’ve learned that one in four adults has a mental illness—such as depression, bipolar disorder, PTSD or schizophrenia—and the stigma can be as daunting as the disease itself.

I’m filming a public-service announcement to get people talking openly about mental illness. Lights are set up, extension cords snake across the floor, thousands of voices echo beneath the vaulted ceiling. All at once I hear a lone voice through the din.

“Ms. Close?” A woman I don’t know comes up to me. “Thank you,” she says, “for what you’ve done for the mentally ill.” Then a little more hesitantly, “We have mental illness in my family.”

I look at her, imagining the turmoil she and her family have been through. There is a lot I could say, but one thing in particular I want to know, as much for her as for me. “What kind of mental illness?” I ask.

Words are powerful. They can shroud a problem in secrecy or bring it into the bold light of day. I admire this woman’s courage for speaking out. Now I hope she can tell me, what specific diagnosis? If you can give something a name, you can stop being afraid of it and start dealing with it. I should know. There is mental illness in my own family.

I grew up in an idyllic corner of Connecticut, one of four kids. We lived right next to my grandmother’s house amidst acres of rolling fields. We would take the train to New York City and walk through Grand Central Station, dressed in our Sunday best, to go to the circus or get our eyes checked. If you look at photos of us from back then, we seem like the perfect family, healthy and happy. And in many ways, we were blessed. But there were also things that weren’t right, things that were rarely, if ever, spoken of.

Relatives who overindulged in alcohol. An uncle who took his own life. My maternal grandmother’s stays at a place called Silver Hill. She was kind and fey and went to the church up the road on Sundays, except for those weeks she was “resting” at Silver Hill. I thought it was a spa of some sort (it looked like a spa). It wasn’t until years later that I discovered it was a psychiatric hospital. No one ever called it that and the reason she went there was one of those well-kept family secrets.

My father was a doctor, a man dedicated to helping others—he spent years running a hospital in Africa. Yet we never dreamed of asking him what was wrong. We wouldn’t have known what to say. We didn’t have the vocabulary. Some things were too scary to talk about.

My younger sister, Jessie, was bright and imaginative. She told magical stories, even as a little girl, and could completely lose herself in a book. She also had a habit of rubbing the loose skin between her thumb and forefinger until it became raw and crusty. Odd behavior. Disturbing.

But the adults around us never commented on it. Even when more obvious and ominous signs of trouble came in her teens—Jess got into alcohol and drugs—no one mentioned the possibility that she might be trying to blunt some unbearable psychological pain. Instead, we chalked her behavior up to her being “wild” and “original.”