Anyone that has a child with mental health issues can imagine the pain this parent is feeling. Jim Kasper tried everything he could to give his son a chance at a ‘normal’ life. He dedicated his life to trying to find the right combination of services that would allow his son to lead a productive, responsible life. According to this article he “devoted himself to his son’s care: speech therapy, psychiatrists and psychologists, social groups, a special elementary and middle school targeted to students with learning disabilities.” When his son was an adult he convinced him to check into psychiatric hospitals including McLean and Bridgewater State and when he ran away from the hospital his father had him civilly committed for 9 months in the hope that he would get the help he needed.
The son, too, desperately tried measures to help himself. “Harry was always searching for some silver bullet that would change him into the person he wanted to be. He tried electroshock therapy and eliminated yeast from his diet. He took steam baths at home, disappearing into the bathroom to run the hot shower for hour-long stretches several times a day, tripling the gas bill. He faithfully practiced Korean yoga because it promised students “mastership over their body and mind.”
Ultimately he died of a heroin overdose. He died with no one around to care about him, to help him. He died trying to ‘fit in’ with his best friend, a drug addict. Harry did not have a history of using heroin but his friend did and Harry so wanted to have a friend and so wanted to find an answer to what was plaguing him that he went too far. He died in an alley with no one around.
This is not anyone’s fault and it is everyone’s problem. This boy grew up wanting to be one of the guys but he didn’t know how. There are so many children like Harry that want to fit in, want to be like their peers, want to have friends and do well in school and get jobs and raise families. But they don’t know how. This hurts all of us. Harry could be any one of our children but he was not. He was ‘someone else’s child’.
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