Mark Lukach met his future wife Giulia when they were in college. It was love at first sight for Mark, but he thought she was out of his league. To his surprise, she felt the same way about him.
Two years after graduation they got married and moved to San Francisco, where Giulia landed her dream job and the couple was thinking seriously about starting a family.
Things took a sudden turn. Giulia had a high-powered and stressful job and she became increasingly paralyzed by anxiety. She was eventually diagnosed with suffering from acute psychosis. “She existed in an almost constant state of delusion, consumed by paranoia that would not fade,” Mark writes in a piece for Pacific Standard, detailing their struggles.
Guests:
Mark Lukach, a teacher and writer in the San Francisco Bay Area. He’s the author of the piece, “My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward” in the Jan/Feb issue of Pacific Standard magazine.
Giulia Lukach, Mark’s wife who’s suffered from a mental illness