What It Was Like to Report on a Family Plagued by Schizophrenia
A family in which 6 of 12 siblings were affected presented a unique opportunity for researchers
In early 2016, a friend introduced me to two sisters, Margaret Galvin Johnson and Lindsay Galvin Rauch, now both in their fifties, who were the youngest siblings and the only girls in a Colorado family of 12 children. Of their 10 older brothers, six of them had been diagnosed with schizophrenia.
The more I learned about the Galvin family, the more I couldn’t believe their story. It was horrifying. Their oldest brother, Donald, tried to kill his wife before being sent to a state mental hospital more than 20 times over two decades. The seventh son, Joseph, sent threatening letters to the president. The ninth son, Matthew, believed he was Paul McCartney. The 10th son, Peter, once shattered the windows of the house right in front of his parents. And the fourth son, Brian, a talented rock musician, shot his girlfriend and turned the gun on himself. And then, the sisters explained to me, the second son, Jim, sexually abused them both from the time they were toddlers.
All this, in one family. I couldn’t imagine it. And I wondered how such a family could even pretend to stay together under such horrible circumstances — why these sisters…
