In Patty Duke's case, there were always at least three Pattys - the famous actress who starred in film and television, the Patty who could seemingly do everything, and the Patty crushed by depression.
Welcome to bipolar disorder, and its violent mood swings.
“I really felt like most of the things that seemed wrong were the result of the environment I found myself in,” said Duke, who spoke about bipolar disorder in Missoula on Friday night. “It really was a strange enough childhood to give anyone emotional problems.”
And Duke, who is now 61 and a resident of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, had them. Why had her mother abandoned her? Why did the people who handled her career treat her so badly when she was so successful? What was with the panic attacks she suffered, even as a child?
Despite her problems, Duke forged a career that looked successful from the outside. Privately, though, she was tormented, and the collateral damage was enormous.
“The fact that I've had a chance to apologize to my children is something I don't take for granted,” said Duke, who spoke to the Missoulian by phone on Friday morning. “Some of those issues weren't resolved in the first few years, and some will take the rest of our lives, but we're getting the chance, and that's part of what I want to tell people.”
It was during her late teenage years that bipolar started slowly overtaking Duke's life. When she felt good, she felt extremely good, but the depressions started lasting longer and longer.
“I cried for days and days at a time, and I was just hell on those people around me,” she said. “You don't realize it then, of course, but the way the damage spins off from this disease is incredible.”
Duke described her young adulthood in a piece she wrote for the magazine Psychology Today like this: “I married, I divorced, I drank and I smoked like a munitions factory.”
At one point, Duke became convinced that a coup had taken place in the White House. She immediately boarded a plane, flew to Washington, D.C., and extended her offer of help to incredulous White House officials.
“Isn't that amazing to think that could happen?” she said.
Despite the emotional toll of her depressed periods, Duke often felt like the queen of the world.
“I felt that I could do as I pleased and I did exactly that,” she said. “Unfortunately, that's how you marry someone you don't even know. I mean that literally.”
In 1982, while filming the sitcom “It Takes Two,” Duke found herself in a doctor's office, where she got a shot of cortisone, which is disastrous for bipolar sufferers.
After a week of anxiety and weight loss, she went to a psychiatrist who told her she was likely manic depressive. He wanted her to try lithium.
Over the next two weeks, the pall cast over Duke's life lifted. Here's her description in Psychology Today:
“Lithium saved my life. After just a few weeks on the drug, death-based thoughts were no longer the first I had when I got up and last when I went to bed. The nightmare that had spanned 30 years was over. I'm not a Stepford wife; I still feel the exultation and sadness that any person feels. I'm just not required to feel them 10 times as long or as intensively as I used to.”
Duke said that for a long time, the fact that she was in the public eye kept her from getting help. But once she got it, she was determined to use her celebrity to spread the word that bipolar didn't mean your life was ruined.
“I had access to the media and I just thought that if I could help people who were suffering, I sort of owed it to the world,” she said.
These days, Duke does three or four public-speaking engagements a month. She tells some war stories from the bad, old days, then offers a message of hope and redemption. She addresses the stigma that is still wrongly attached to mental health issues, and encourages others who've battled the disease to talk about their struggles.
“It usually ends up with everybody hugging at the end,” she said. “I'm grateful to be able to help.”
Reporter Michael Moore can be reached at 523-5252 or at mmoore@missoulian.com.
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