In all of California, there is one elected state office-holder who stands head and shoulders above the rest for the reputation he’s developed as a champion for expanding and funding mental health programs. State Senate President Darrell Steinberg was the driver behind an initiative to put a 1 percent income tax on millionaires, providing billions of dollars for mental health programs. But few knew Steinberg had a daughter who, since she was a little girl, suffered from a severe childhood mental health and behavioral disorder. Jordana Steinberg was very much Daddy’s girl, but by the age of 6, she was put on medication for daily furies so intense that her mother, Julie Steinberg , recalls, “It was like daggers pierced you. It was toxic. There weren’t words to explain the depth of her power.” By 13, Jordana’s daily rages got worse and she’d been diagnosed with pediatric bipolar disorder. At the insistence of her mother, who recognized her daughter needed better care than the family could hope to provide, Jordana was sent away to a series of residential facilities and forensic psychiatric lock-down institutions. Jordana would never again return home to live for more than a few months. Anger and overly intense reactions ruled her life. Doctors loaded her up with so many psychotropic drugs she had trouble staying awake. She was 16 before she read a book, she said, and it took her months to finish. By that time, Jordana was living in a residential group home for teen-aged girls with severe behavioral challenges. Through all of the violence, separation, emotional hurt and physical pain, through all the scars that remained inside and out, the Steinbergs worked hard to stay close to their daughter. They understood that she was very, very sick. Over a cup of coffee one day, Darrell Steinberg lowered his head and admitted that stigma — that stubborn nemesis of the mental health community — exists even within his own family. Jordana’s diagnosis of severe bipolar disorder was tough for even Steinberg to accept with complete objectivity. But stigma, or rather, the battle against it, played an all-important role in the eventual airing of Jordana’s story. The gripping, intense narrative of her difficult younger years and the rough, often violent patches leading up to her high-school graduation, was told in The Sacramento Bee by Jordana and her family with the goal of helping to erase stigma. It was Jordana herself who, then in college and a full year after a journalist proposed a stigma-busting tale of her experiences, who called the journalist to say, “I’m ready to tell my story.” As she wished, her life’s path was shared with the community, and an outpouring of support followed, along with a flood of responses from parents whose anguish was eased somewhat by reading the tale of a prominent family’s journey that resembled their own. In the reporting of the story, new, encouraging information emerged: The latest official diagnostic manual for mental disorders described a childhood condition that very much fit Jordana’s behavior: The experts called it “disruptive mood dysregulation disorder.” The key term here is “childhood condition.” As off-the-charts difficult as Jordana’s early years were, her adult years are bound to be less so. The childhood disorder tapers off, researchers say, and she likely will suffer symptoms of anxiety and depression — much more manageable conditions than what she grew up with.
