Interview with Actress Glenn Close
BURNETT: And now to our special series "Kids in Crisis", fragile minds. It's an OUTFRONT investigation into the mental health crisis in the United States. It seems like every day there is another story, a headline of a kid who didn't get help because of a failed system. Adam Lanza, 20 children murdered and six adults slaughtered at a Newtown, Connecticut Elementary School. Two months ago, Virginia State Senator Creigh Deeds was slashed, stabbed and nearly killed by his son, mentally ill. His name is Gus and then Gus took his own life. The day before that attack, Gus had actually been released from a hospital because there were no psychiatric beds available. No beds available. No care to be found. It is shockingly and unacceptably common in this country. And the problem is getting worse, not better. Fewer beds now for kids than there were years ago. But it's an issue still that people don't want to talk about. Coming up in just a moment, I'm going to be speaking with actress Glenn Close and her sister. Together, they're trying to change the stigma associated with mental illness. But, first, we begin our coverage with OUTFRONT's David Mattingly. He has the story of a family who struggled to get the right care for their son.</s>DAVID MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): At 18 months, Teddy Shuman's curly blond hair and bright smile melted the hearts of his adopted parents. It took them years to see all the damage that was hiding underneath. (on camera): That first time, what did he do?</s>THOM SHUMAN, FATHER OF MENTALLY ILL SON: First time he got, he was just completely out of the blue. He started yelling and screaming and he went after Bonnie.</s>MATTINGLY (voice-over): Thom and Betty Shuman say Teddy suffered from a variety of severe developmental problems. His birth mother drank when she was pregnant. Doctors also told them Teddy had been physically and sexually abused. Normally, a gentle and loving child in spite of it, about a year after this video was shot, Teddy began lapsing into uncontrollable violent rages. (on camera): Were you afraid of him?</s>BONNIE SHUMAN, MOTHER OF MENTALLY ILL SON: Yes, I was. And I was afraid of him for years. I loved him. He's just a neat kid.</s>MATTINGLY: Did you think he could kill you?</s>BONNIE SHUMAN: Yes.</s>THOM SHUMAN: Accidentally, yes.</s>MATTINGLY (voice-over): Teddy's episodes lasted hours and got worse as he got older. Overwhelmed, the Shuman's looked for a place in their home state of Ohio where Teddy could live full time, where he wouldn't be a danger to others or to himself. What they found instead was a mental health system with public facilities that didn't have the room and private facilities that they couldn't afford.</s>THOM SHUMAN: Insurance companies weren't prepared to pay for residential treatment. At the time our private insurance would have paid for 12 or 18 days per year. Well, you know, for someone who needed to be in care 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, that's just an impossibility.</s>MATTINGLY: Teddy was in and out of different facilities 20 times in three different states, always ending up back at home when money or space ran out. (on camera): The Shuman's greatest fear was that Teddy would one day end up in need of a lifetime of mental care either homeless, on the street, in jail or dead. Teddy was 20 years old when their worst fears came true. What was that phone call like?</s>THOM SHUMAN: I mean, it was like, the worst thing in the world had happened.</s>BONNIE SHUMAN: I just totally fell apart.</s>MATTINGLY (voice-over): In 2006, the Shumans placed Teddy in yet another residential facility. They tried to get him a private room but couldn't. Just six days later, he attacked and killed his roommate, strangling him with a belt.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. Shuman has absolutely no appreciation for what he did.</s>MATTINGLY: A judge determined Teddy was mentally unfit to stand trial and ordered him to spend the rest of his life in a state residential facility. It was exactly the kind of place Teddy's parents had tried to keep him in for 16 years. (on camera): Looking back, this didn't have to happen?</s>THOM SHUMAN: No.</s>BONNIE SHUMAN: No.</s>MATTINGLY: But was it inevitable?</s>THOM SHUMAN: The way the system operates it was probably inevitable.</s>MATTINGLY: Does someone have to die before the right amount of treatment can be available?</s>BONNIE SHUMAN: That was the only way he got into where he is now.</s>THOM SHUMAN: Yes.</s>BURNETT: It's an incredible, incredible indictment of the system. What has life been like for them now that he is forever put away?</s>MATTINGLY: Well, when you asked them that, they'll tell you they're no longer walking on egg shells because they don't live in fear of having him in the home and then suddenly going into one of his rages. They're able to see him about once a week, but this has really taken a toll on them. They are both retirement age, they have no savings, they're in debt because of the treatment they had to get for him over the years, and they're exhausted.</s>BURNETT: And so, are things getting better or worse? Because I feel like we keep hearing the story, people say there's something wrong with their child, they try to get the help, it fails, something horrible happens and, there are fewer beds now than there were years ago for these children.</s>MATTINGLY: Well, this is the whole point that the Shumans want to come forward and tell their story. They want to make sure this kind of care is more affordable and more available. But it doesn't seem like the right people are listening because in the state of Ohio actually fewer beds available for children needing psychiatric care today than there was six years ago.</s>BURNETT: Just, as I said, horrible indictment system. Thank you very much, David Mattingly. And one of the biggest advocates for changing the sigma surrounding mental illness is actress Glenn Close. She started an organization to raise awareness about the misconceptions that are out there today.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hi there. Sorry to disappoint you if you were expecting a lunatic on a rampage. I'm Kalen (ph) and I've been living with schizophrenia for 11 years.</s>GLENN CLOSE, ACTRESS: It's time to start talking about mental illness. Start the conversation, and pledge to end stigma at bringchangetomind.org.</s>BURNETT: OUTFRONT tonight, actress Glenn Close, who founded the organization Bring Change to Mind, and her sister, Jessie Close, who has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. And Jessie is joined by her service dog, Snick (ph). And I appreciate both of you taking the time and doing this together because it is a family issue, Glenn, as you've talked about so much. But let me first get your reaction to the piece you just saw. I mean, these parents, for years, tried to get help for their son. They said he would hurt someone. They didn't get help until he killed somebody.</s>GLENN CLOSE: Yes.</s>BURNETT: I mean, this strikes home to you.</s>GLENN CLOSE: Well, it -- the thing that's unfortunate about that is that the percentage of people with mental illness who actually do violent acts like that is so -- is minimal. But whenever it happens, of course, we hear all about it and so it only feeds into the stigma that everyone who has a mental illness is going to hurt somebody. And that's just not true. I mean, four out of five of us are touched in some way by mental illness. So, I think these are the kinds of stories that get our attention, that we have to realize that there's a whole, whole huge other side to the story about mental illness.</s>BURNETT: So, I want to ask Jessie about your experience, but you're with me, so let me ask you. What was it like when you were growing up with Jessie, how did you first learn or realize that she had a mental illness?</s>GLENN CLOSE: Well, I think our family is like a lot of families. We had no vocabulary for mental illness. It never came up. Now that I look back and we luckily have more research into early intervention, Jessie would do things when she was little that would have been red flags if we had been more knowledgeable. Just little -- she used to rub her finger like this until it was raw and bleeding when she was little. And I remember that. I remember seeing that.</s>BURNETT: You remember, something in your mind said that's not right. But you didn't ask questions?</s>GLENN CLOSE: I didn't know. I didn't ask the question. My parents didn't ask the question. Jess was told to just, you know, get it together and go to school and pull up her socks and get a job. And it wasn't that my parents -- we just didn't know. We just didn't know. We just thought she was wild and irresponsible. So, when she was finally diagnosed, which was not until she was 50, she had lived a life which she needn't had lived. That didn't have to happen. And thank God she's still here, because she easily could not have been.</s>BURNETT: So, Jessie, hearing your sister talk about you like this, I know that's got to be hard and painful in some ways. But what was it like for you to go through your entire life, your childhood, your adolescence, your young adulthood, your adulthood, and have this? What was it like to do that? How did it feel?</s>JESSIE CLOSE, DIAGNOSED WITH BIPOLAR DISORDER: Well, you know, I think I'll take it from the other end, when I was finally diagnosed, I went through a long period of grief, because I had so many instances where I was manic and not in my right mind. I was never able to really stick to what I wanted to do. I would get sick. It was -- it's a difficult thing to look back on a life when you're already 50 years old.</s>BURNETT: So you feel like it took away the opportunity to be whatever person you might have been if you had the help?</s>JESSIE CLOSE: Yes, exactly.</s>BURNETT: And, Glenn, that's the tragedy, because that's what's happening in so many of these cases, people get their lives stolen from them. But yet, we hear statistics like you just heard, and I heard a mother whose son threatened to kill her with a life and they have to accuse them of a crime to get them put in a bed for 10 days then he's back home. We have fewer beds today for children than we did a few years ago. How does this happen that this goes in that direction?</s>GLENN CLOSE: Well, I think stigma has a lot to do with. Mental health has always been the least funded of all the departments in our government. I think that has a lot to do with ignorance and fear. And -- but I think, I was down in Washington last month with a bipartisan group who they -- it was the -- I have to read this because I want to get it right, the Excellence in Mental Health Act. What is so exciting about that is to make sure that there is adequate care, it has to be on a community to community basis.</s>BURNETT: Right.</s>GLENN CLOSE: It has to be something that towns and cities take care of by themselves. And with this act, they're going to set up, they're going to be able to get government funding for behavioral and mental health organizations that are already on the ground doing great work in their community. There's been such a cutback on funds for organizations like that that we are suffering from it. So, I think there's hope. I think everybody needs to make sure to let their leaders know this is vital for the country.</s>BURNETT: Jessie, I want to give you the final word. I know you have Snick (ph), the infrastructure around you, the things that you need. But I know you have a child, who also suffers from a schizo affected disorder. Were you able to get the right treatment for your child?</s>JESSIE CLOSE: We were. We were. Luckily, he was living with his father up in Helena, Montana, and a locked ward (ph) was available up there in St. Peters, and luckily he got to go in there and was stabilized. When he came out, we searched for a place to put him and found McClain (ph) hospital outside Boston, and he was there for two years. But he now lives a great life. He's an artist. We speak together all over the country. He's in the PSA that you just saw. That's Kalen. And my other children are extremely supportive of both of us, and I think we're probably tighter because we've been through -- we've been through a war, a war on mental illness.</s>BURNETT: Interesting way of putting it.</s>JESSIE CLOSE: Yes.</s>BURNETT: Thank you both very much for taking the time.</s>JESSIE CLOSE: Thank you.</s>BURNETT: "ANDERSON COOPER 360" is next.