Glenn Close Reveals 'I Had My Heart in My Throat' While Reading Family's New Book on Their Mental Illness Struggles (Exclusive)

Mar. 15, 2025

Jessie Close and Calen Pick for PEOPLE on Nov. 15, 2024 in Bozeman, Montana.Photo:Rebecca Stumpf

Rebecca Stumpf

WhenGlenn Closefirst read her sister and nephew’s new book,Silence You,she says, “I had my heart in my throat because I knew it was very close to what actually happened. It peeled back another layer of what they all went through.”

Says Calen in this week’s PEOPLE, “Writing the book was like putting it back together, my fall into psychosis and how I began to recover.”

“I hope the book will clarify what is a pretty tumultuous experience, and help other people.”

From left: Glenn Close, Calen Pick, Mattie Pick, Jessie Close in 1992.Courtesy Jessie Close

Courtesy Jessie Close

As Calen recalls, he first began feeling anxious and moody around age 15. An athlete in high school, he gradually became more and more withdrawn. “He’d sit on the couch and rock and rock and his pupils were huge,” says Jessie. “He’d look out of the windows and say things like, ‘That person is watching me,’ but no one was there.”

“It was a lot of thinking about fantastical things and questioning reality," he says. “It was grandiose. I had a God complex a little bit. I think it was grasping for something bigger than myself.”

One day in 1998, Jessie went up to the loft studio over their family’s garage where Calen was living. “He had painted ‘Silence You’ across the wall in dripping red paint,” she says. “And it was like, holy shit, what is this?”

Calen’s father, Tom Pick (Jessie’s third husband from whom she was then divorced) took him to a hospital in Helena, Montana, where he entered a psychiatric ward. It was a phone call she will never forget. “I never heard Tom cry like he did after Calen was admitted,” she remembers. “Calen was a golden boy. He was gorgeous and smart and funny. He had a ton of friends — and it just all went to hell in a handbasket.”

From left: left to right: Annie Starke, Glenn Close, Calen Pick, Jessie Close, Matheson Renick in 2009.Courtesy Jessie Close

For two years, Calen lived in a halfway house on hospital grounds until he slowly found the right medication. “A lot of sedation and trial and error,” he says. “It was two steps forward and one step back.”

Once he returned home to Bozeman, Montana, his younger sister Mattie, knew something had changed in her beloved big brother. Now 33, Mattie recalls, “He didn’t talk a lot. He wore his sunglasses 24/7. He seemed more fragile. You could tell he had been through a lot.”

Over time, he found more equilibrium with an antipsychotic medication — and therapy. Today, he is married to Meg, a therapeutic horseback riding instructor, and finds solace in painting, something he loved even as a kid. “Maybe it’s just understanding myself, that is the journey I’m on,” he says. “So to have freedom and feel good again is all I’m trying to do.”

Jessie Close and Calen Pick in Bozeman, Montana on Nov. 15, 2024.Rebecca Stumpf

Over time, he and his family have leaned on and learned from each other. In 2010, Glenn co-foundedBring Change to Mindto help fight the stigma and silence surrounding mental illness. Since then, Jessie and Calen have joined forces with her to share their firsthand — and sometimes harrowing — accounts.

“It’s not scary to me anymore,” says Jessie.“I don’t think staying hidden is good for anybody.”

source: people.com