The Shadow on the Wall of Your Mind: A look at the other side of teenage depression

Kate Ringland and Ellie Ringland
Kate Ringland (2007)
ISBN 0615137717
Reviewed by Patty Inglish, MS for Reader Views (3/07)

Poetry therapy is making inroads as an adjunct treatment for mental illness and is gaining respect among American therapists. “The Shadow on the Wall of Your Mind” is the composite output of two afflicted cousins who found their voices through poetry. They accomplished part of their own therapy through writing verse. Kate and Ellie Ringland have published it as an outreach for other anguished youth to encourage them to end their voicelessness and know that there are others in the same condition. It is a hauntingly artistic collection of work. Adults look askance each year at the themes of death and pain in annual high school poetry collections, but they need to pay better attention. Such preoccupation is often evidence of real pain, not superficial attention seeking, rebellion, or a harmless “phase.” This book can help them understand.

Teenaged girls scream. They scream for joy and in heartbreak. They have screamed for the Beatles and each new American Idol. They scream at terrorism such as 9/11 and they scream in the throes of clinical depression. How heartrending is the terrified scream that is the only voice a young girl has. This book is full of screams, both verbalized and hidden in the subtext.

Ellie laments: “…your smile melts me to tears, then you turn your back on me.” Someone has been so cruel to her. She has felt not only alone, but that others wanted her to die. Her poetry speaks also of fire burning her throat, her eyes, and her soul.

Kate writes “I am the leader of my own club Where the only member is me No one would miss me if I were to walk away…” On another page, she adds:  “I crawl to school everyday Where we sit and do Nothing…” This describes a cold hell from which many teens escape through suicide. It reminds me of working once for a company that was going out of business and it was a most horrid feeling. It is worse for a teenager.

In the last part of “hysteria,” Kate describes a nearly supernatural experience within the mania of bipolar disorder that helps us understand:

“…I can touch the stars
Gentle and calming, the stars give to me some of their positive energy
The energy fills my body, my soul
I am bright and shiny
Swirling, twirling falling, rising”
 

Young women suffering major depression and bipolar disorder, both of which can elevate to psychosis, produced this book. The frequency of these conditions is increasing among American youth, but poetry can increase their healing. As Kate states in the forward: “…sometimes when I write it all down, it can help me figure things out.” Ellie writes:”… Something must be done to help them regain hope.” This poetry is an insistence that youth are not alone in their desperation for that hope.  Up to 20% of American teens have depression and 40% of those suffer as adults. A depressed mother more often produces a depressed child and a bipolar parent provides a 15-30% increased risk in their children. Both disorders can manifest in alcohol and substance abuse and a fifth or more of these teens commits suicide.

Poetry is a tonic - disturbing ideas, once written in verse, begin to knot together into better sense, even spiritual enlightenment. Poetry is a tradition in Asia; Korea’s leading poet is a Living National Treasure. The Japanese police practice an hour of flower arranging weekly to reduce stress and mental illness. Following their examples, America needs to reinstitute the arts in schools as a means to sanity. There is more mental illness in America than elsewhere in the world, because a fragmented society that isolates the individual. This is worsening for our youth via the move away from arts to focus on math and reading in No Child Left Behind. The arts and music prepare the brain to understand and use language and mathematics not only “well” but also “more quickly.”

America is in a numbers race, focusing on high math and reading scores to ensure school funding, but this is part of an educational cycle of diminishing returns and our youth are literally sick over it. Young Kate and Ellie Ringland, in “The Shadow on the Wall of Your Mind,” show us that artistic expression such as their poetry can help. I look forward to the imminent maturing of their verse in future works and its certain joyousness in moving forward. Adults and teens will enjoy and appreciate this first offering and together they can fight and prevent mental illness.

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