We Need More Compassion for Mental Illness and Cognitive Decline

A grandmother loses her footing, and a happy grandchild swoops in to save grandma and the day by catching her before she has the chance to fall. The romanticized view of old age would have our elder loved ones passing peacefully into the night after having fought no illness stronger than the bones of Father Time.

Except, for many of us, that is just not what happens. 

On February 24, 2024, Lifetime premiered the documentary series “Where’s Wendy Williams?” which featured a physically and mentally emaciated former daytime talk show queen, Wendy Williams, in an almost unrecognizable state to everyone, including herself. 

In some of the clips from the series, Williams is seen berating her staff in a manner that is indicative of the nastiness of cognitive decline, much more than someone who was paid to gossip for a living. Fifty-nine-year-old Wendy Williams has frontotemporal dementia and aphasia; both cognitive diseases which affect language, therefore affecting communication, and specifically, frontotemporal dementia causes disinhibited and socially unacceptable behaviors. She also has Graves’ disease.

A set of video clips from the documentary found its way onto Xitter, and many people had a lot to say about Williams’ dementia-spurned outbursts directed at her staff. From the outside looking in, her outbursts were hard to endure, but so is dementia, and so is being trapped in a body where you experience extreme confusion every day. Some were quick to claim that her condition was some sort of divine karma, as if Donald Trump is not still alive, or that her outbursts were just indicative of the person she was all along, and that dementia did not make her mean. It simply brought out her true self. Williams was not some irredeemable monster or warmonger who harmed children but still got a statue in their name. She was a celebrity gossiper, with a least enough backbone to face her subjects head on, unlike the Shaderoom, TMZ, or Spiritual Word, which some of those same people dutifully indulge in.

There is no attempt to deify and sanitize the memory of Wendy Williams.

She did not always say the nicest things. Even she admitted that, but the vitriol directed towards her was unwarranted. What was even worse was how some users insisted that dementia does not make you mean, which, according to science, is false because it very much does. Not liking someone does not change science. Being cold, hungry, sleepy and lost can all make someone with a fully functional mind mean, surely someone who is experiencing mental decline is prone to things which would cause them even more frustration. 

Mental illness is not fun to deal with.

It is a family’s sinking ship, and no matter how many hands are on deck, the ship will likely sink to the bottom. It is a drain on everyone’s mental health who is involved. The fully functional mind will argue about the illogical behavior of their loved one and try to pair that with their reality, but when it comes to mental illness and cognitive decline, there are two very different realities, the one that exists in the normal world, and the one which exists in theirs. Children have witnessed their parents, mothers who’ve nursed them, and fathers whose arms they fell asleep in nightly not only not recognize them but become belligerent at their site, viewing them as strangers who intend to cause them harm. Siblings are forced to become parents, feeding the brother or sister who once taught them how to ride a bike. The two realities swirl in a constant of peace, chaos, pacification and endless sadness. One family member’s truth is a lie the other had to swallow to maintain a brief calmness. Not only does the person who is experiencing mental decline forget themselves, but sometimes, so does the loved one who is witnessing it. Sometimes, that burden becomes too much to bear. Mental illness has been fodder for jokes throughout time, much based on misinformation, but there is nothing funny about someone you love not being the same person you grew to love.

Wendy Williams may have not ever been Miss Congeniality, but she was far from a terrible person who was unlikable, either way, she will never be her true self again, whatever that looked like. In a world, and specifically, a country where mental illness and decline are not supported how they should, it is important for those on the outside looking in to exercise compassion because no one wins when someone they love is literally losing their mind.