A new memoir by a former Maine police chief and detective chronicles a crises no family — let alone a law enforcement family already dealing with its own challenges — wants to face.
Lisa Beecher released “Living with Mr. Fahrenheit: A First Responder Family’s Fight for a Future After a Mental Health Crisis” earlier this month, drawing on decades of experiences in criminal justice and how she and her husband Jamie’s lives unfolded after he had a psychotic break.
“The book follows, in often heartbreaking detail, the emotional and traumatic road … and reveals the shame and secrecy that too often prevent first responders from receiving the mental health care they need,” according to a statement about the book release.
Beecher’s memoir chronicles her family’s myriad struggles to cope with her husband’s harrowing battle with bipolar and PTSD he suffered from his work as a first responder.
In what sounds like an exhausting, never-ending dance, Beecher has to be ever-vigilant in monitoring her husband’s moods and medications, juggle her own career first as a detective with the Portland Police Department, then as chief of the University of Southern Maine’s police force. The unpredictability of bipolar, its accompanying depression and Jamie’s outbursts take its toll on the whole family, but especially on Lisa.
“Living in the house that PTSD and bipolar 1 built came with a requirement that I lessen the impacts and facilitate as many soft landings as I could,” Beecher writes. “The kids and I had learned that little could be left to chance. Sailing through was something other people did.”
“When I dared to wish for something that seemed beyond the bounds of possibility—when I prayed for what would surely be a miracle — it was that the holes in their hearts be mended. And, if not asking for too much, that the ache in their mother’s heart be soothed.”
Beecher spares no detail, from allegedly inadequate treatment Jamie received at Jackson Brook Institute to the label “sick leave abuser” pinned on him towards the end of his career.
Beecher herself is accused by a coworker of “milking her time off” during a period when her husband needed her constant supervision and support.
But “Living with Mr. Fahrenheit” has its positives as well. Some colleagues were supportive and understanding, including most of the supervisors, such as former Portland Police Chief Mike Chitwood. Jamie and Lisa also experience a reprieve, although it’s not permanent.
Jamie eventually reached the point where he couldn’t work as a police officer anymore. Moreover, the lithium he was taking damaged his kidneys, adding another side effect to the list that already included hand tremors, intestinal upsets, hypothyroidism and weight gain. His mental illness would eventually have an impact on his physical health that was almost as debilitating.
“It’s Jekyll-and-Hyde quality — harming while helping — was worrisome,” Beecher says.
Then, in a twist of fate, Beecher also faces her own unimaginable health crises, leaving the reader stunned by the unfairness of it all.
Beecher has been praised by first responders, civic leaders, and mental health professionals in Maine and beyond for “her courage in sharing a deeply personal story and helping to lift the stigma of mental health care for law enforcement that is still too prevalent.”
Her work has drawn more than 15 positive reviews, including Kirkus Reviews, which said, “Beecher ably depicts the difficulties of toggling between the roles of police detective and mother and spouse/caretaker. She also captures the emotional stresses first responders try to bury.”
“The question is no longer will our law enforcement calling affect us, but how and when?” said retired Portland Police Chief Michael Sauschuck, now the commissioner of the Maine Department of Public Safety.