LIVING WITH MR. FAHRENHEIT

Beecher chronicles the ways mental illness brought chaos and heartache to her family.

Beecher and her husband, Jamie, were both members of the Portland, Maine, police department. She begins her memoir at a point of high drama. She and Jamie had been married for about 15 years and had two young kids. It was Labor Day Weekend, and Jamie was in the middle of a full-blown psychotic episode. The author describes convincing him to admit himself to the Jackson Brook Institute, a mental health facility in Portland. The moment was the culmination of years of Jamie’s building depression and anger. Now, paranoid and hallucinating, he was admitted to the hospital. Within days, a unique problem arose. Jamie was given a roommate that Beecher and Jamie had each arrested in the past! Beecher transferred Jamie to the Portsmouth Regional Hospital in New Hampshire, and less than two weeks later, he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. His chemical imbalance wasn’t curable, but it was treatable, and Jamie was placed on a lithium regimen. He eventually returned to work, and Beecher remained vigilant. And thus began decades of watching, intervening, and accepting. In addition to packing the narrative with engaging work vignettes, Beecher ably depicts the difficulties of toggling between the roles of police detective and mother and spouse/caretaker. She also captures the emotional stresses first responders try to bury. “As we stoically walked away from scene after scene,” she writes, “denying a piece of what made us human, our own shapeless wounds were running up a tab.” These pages contain a wealth of information about the benefits of the drugs used to treat mental disorders—and their occasionally life-threatening side effects. Intermittent jumps back and forth in time, sans dates, can be confusing. Beecher, however, offers an articulate, vivid portrait of a harrowing journey.

A disturbing but frequently riveting and illuminating read.