Sacks helped many cope with mental illness

By Kim Palchikoff

Thursday, Sept. 3, 2015 | 2 a.m.

America’s mental health community lost one of our best friends Sunday. Dr. Oliver Sacks, an acclaimed neurologist, professor and author of best-selling books on the brain including “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat” and “Awakenings,” which became a 1990 movie starring Robin Williams, died from cancer in New York. He was 82.

To those of us afflicted with a mental illness like myself, Dr. Sacks was incredibly special. At a time when national media has done little to bring understanding to those whose brains work differently from those of others, he was able to explain over decades, with simple clarity and often humor, the differences of the human experience and afflictions such as Tourette’s or Asperger’s. Unlike many physicians and academics, he was a storyteller, describing the peculiar lives of his patients.

I read many of his more than a dozen books several times over. He was my favorite author on all things brain-related, and I admired his ability to explain and explore the complexities and quirks of our minds in layman’s terms in an engaging and sensitive fashion.

In “Awakenings,” which was published in 1973, Dr. Sacks wrote about a group of patients with an atypical form of encephalitis at Beth Abraham hospital in the Bronx. Their catatonic state led to their condition being known as “sleeping sickness.” He gave them a drug known as L-dopa, something the medical community was starting to use for Parkinson’s at the time. Their “awakenings” and how they coped with a new world became the foundation for his book and the movie.

His books and commentary on the brain did something rare: they “normalized” our absurdities, to the point where I’d say he celebrated and even loved those with out-of-the-box lives and brains, thoughts and feelings.

My biggest regret about my time living in Washington, D.C., for three years before moving to Nevada was that I didn’t get a chance to hear Dr. Sacks, who was appearing for a one-night panel discussion. I had planned on attending that evening for months and even bought my books for him to sign. But the day he was to speak, my own brain wasn’t working very well, and I decided to skip the overcrowded public transportation and stay home. It was a hard decision to make. I was not up for escalators and crowded platforms on the subway, afraid I’d trip and fall on the tracks. I sometimes stumble when my thoughts are racing, a symptom of bipolar disorder that comes and goes. I was devastated, but that night, I decided to err on the side of caution. I kind of suspected I’d never have that chance again.

If there was any message Dr. Sacks left behind, it was that nobody on this planet is perfect. His ability to bring to light the stories of his patients’ imperfections with compassion and understanding made him not only one of the world’s greatest medical writers and storytellers, but someone who challenged mainstream America’s stereotype of the mentally ill as people who are armed and dangerous and incapable of living normal lives.

My life isn’t perfect. I definitely have my bipolar moments. But I’ve learned from Dr. Sacks to simply laugh at the odd things I sometimes do and say.

He will be missed.

Kim Palchikoff, a freelance writer, lives in Reno.