Against the spirit of Valentine’s Day, I’d like to draw attention to the effects mental health issues have on marriages, during divorce proceedings to be specific. Mental health issues are a common issue that exacerbates divorces. Including substance abuse, well over half our cases involve individuals with mental health problems and these problems are portrayed as flaws rather than a medical diagnosis. Though all our clients have a story of how they met, how in love they were, how their spouse was “different back then”, perhaps before the illness developed, the actors in the present are points of blame for the irrevocability of the marriage. Given the frequency which symptoms of mental illnesses develop during young adult hood and the average age of marriage in the U.S., mental health problems often surface post certificate, symptoms and behaviors of mental health disorders give the impression that the sufferer has changed inherently as a human being. Those with mental health issues, of all kinds, are targeted as antagonists to the partnership. The behaviors they express can be interpreted as lack of self-control and empathy. Mental health issues are used as means to inflate the gravity of “abnormal” behavior in divorce; an overwhelming percentage of our clients and opposing parties have mental health issues, making this tactic an effective one. Normalcy is the standard all spouses are held against thought the concept of normalcy excludes those with any range of diagnosis. Many have bi-polar disorder. This is bound to happen when the divorce rate among this patient population is 90%. It is the behavioral profile that is given fault, with the diagnosis as proof. Medical records are demanded, medication histories are scrutinized and every episode is painfully delineated in front of the court. Though expert psychiatric testimony is the norm, many mental health issues are still seen as non-medicalized, as a personality flaw or a deliberate act of abnormal behavior.
It is this dis-engagement from the medical community, despite the exhaustive medical histories and expert testimony that are involved in such court proceedings, that make mental health records something to hide and medical histories something to “clean up”. The line between personality flaw, as something in one’s control and psychiatric episodes that are biochemically grounded and fully involuntary is blurred. For some reason, the diagnosis itself is just support for the argument that the patient in question has irrational and destructive behaviors, even though empirical medical evidence could, in a less litigious society, form compelling narratives in attempts to remove harmful behaviors from the client proper.
