Nursing approaches to psychiatric and mental health care

¶ … Bright Light: The Story of Nick Traina by Danielle Steel. Specifically, it will address the aspects of mental illness the character suffers, and answer specific questions regarding the reading.

The book "His Bright Light" is the story of Nick Traina, best-selling author Danielle Steel's son. He suffered from manic depression or bipolar disease. The character's lived experience of the disease seems like a dark and frightening hell. After the disease is finally diagnosed, he never lives the normal life of a teenager. He is in and out of schools, hospitals, and on medications for the rest of his life. He has attendants who follow him everywhere, and his life constantly seems bleak and tortured, as his diary entries often show. He even has attendants tour with him when he is on the road with his rock band. He tries to appear as normal as possible, but his life, and his illness is not normal at all. By using his diary entries, Steel gives a very graphic portrayal of what was going on inside Nick's head, and it was confusing and very dark.

At first, and for many years, the family's response is that there is nothing wrong with Nick, other than he is a difficult and remarkable child. Throughout the book, author and mother Danielle Steel talks about how magical Nick was, and how troubled. She also makes it quite clear how difficult it was to live with him, illustrating how difficult mental illness is on loved ones as well as the sufferer. Amazingly, he diagnosed himself when he was thirteen and wrote in his diary, "maybe I'm manic-depressive" (Steel, 1998, p. 73). The author and the family's experience are quite awful, and Nick is really difficult to live with. However, it must have been even more difficult to be Nick. He wrote in his diary when he was fourteen, "I just strain against their wall of psychosis and think I will burst soon if I can't escape, if I can't made it to the other side to scream and pound and follow my heart" (Steel, 1998, p. 112). Nick was not diagnosed until he was fifteen, and the author points out it is more difficult to diagnosis children with the disorder. Yes, the story corresponds with many theories of causation, the biological father was an addictive personality, and may have suffered from depression. In addition, there were many early clues to the disease before Nick was even four-years-old, but they were ignored by family and professionals, as being "normal" for a child, and would disappear as Nick matured. Steel writes, "I knew then, at four, and even more so at five, that there was something wrong with him, but I didn't know how to put words to it, and whenever I tried to, I felt no one was listening to me" (Steel, 1998, p. 40). Therefore, Nick's story was quite predictable, yet it was misunderstood, and so, the causes were never truly discovered, but Steel does speculate on them, and they seem to be correct.

No, the author is quite graphic in her depiction of the progress of the disease, and how it showed up in Nick quite young. She notes that the disease becomes more noticeable with age, and that Nicky spirals more and more out of control before he is adequately and correctly diagnosed. It was not incongruous; in fact, it was almost textbook in its progression, and of course to the final outcome, Nick's death by suicide. As Nick grows older, his symptoms grow worse, and he becomes more and more depressed, even when times are "good." This is also common with the disease. Nick's brain did not see things the way others do, and he was like a confused child in many ways. Lithium helped the disease, which is also common, but it constantly has to be controlled, and so Nick endured highs and lows as the medication altered. He simply could not contend with the lows. The book very accurately portrays the life of a manic-depressive. It is clear to see how difficult it was for Nick, in the middle of it. It is also an accurate depiction of the progression of the disease, and how it affects everyone, from friends to family, and how difficult a disease it is to successfully treat.

Steel clearly indicates how difficult it is to live with this illness, and nearly shouts out how she did not understand the severity of the illness, and how deadly it can be. She writes in the Prologue, "And alongside them [the mentally ill] are the people who know and love them" (Steel, 1998, p. xix). Her decision to write the book shows how difficult it was to see a loved one suffer from mental illness, and how difficult it was to be him, trapped in his own body. It is quite clear throughout the book that Nick was a difficult child, and I doubt I would have had the infinite patience Steel seemed to have with him. He "acted out" before the term was popular, but his behavior was often so outrageous, that it was clear something more was wrong that simply "growing up." It is hard to imagine how it felt to be inside the body and mind of this disease, and how tortured Nick must have been. He could not understand his demons when he was young, and it seems like his life was painful and full of anger from the time he was a baby, and he could never understand why. That is sad and frightening at the same time. Steel notes, "Nicky's world revolved mostly around himself, and by sixth grade, he had become singularly self-involved, and appeared to have no particular interest in other people's needs or problems" (Steel, 1998, p. 50). This indicates his own self-involvement with his condition, and his lack of understanding at what was happening. It is a sad thing for a child to bear without help.