The best worst thing I ever did (internet video wise) was watch an angry mob burn several elderly "witches" in a ditch in Kenya. It was absolutely gut-wrenching. It took me several tries to make it through the whole thing. Nothing I've ever seen on the news or on TV desensitized me to, or prepared me for, the sight of abused demoralized people sitting quietly in a ditch while they were beaten and burned to death by their neighbors.

Was it worth it? Even though I dearly wanted to bleach my brain clean of what I'd seen. Even though it made me cry while I was riding the subway, taking a bath, hanging out with friends, for weeks after. I still think it was good to bear witness to the shame and the horror of what was done to those poor people because of ignorance. I feel like I understand human depravity better now because I know how childish cruelty is, and how brave we can be in the face of great suffering. I no longer think that cultural justification of such behavior is even remotely valid, not now that it's been brought into my livingroom and I have seen it for myself. (Relativism certainly requires distance.) Even though nearly every person in that crowd was an adult, they looked to me like schoolyard bullies with no supervision. But their victims were so quiet, so still, so dignified in their resignation as they died the worst deaths. I learned more in 30 seconds about human nature than I did my entire life before I watched that clip.

I lost my innocence watching that snuff film, but I can't say that I miss it. I'm sorry you didn't have a similar experience.

My defense mechanism to handle what I was going through was intellectualization. That means while I was trying to care for and live with a schizophrenic who didn't trust his doctors, I was also doing oceans of research on the situation. So here are my two cents.

For those who are pleading sympathy and support for the wife:

The stigma of mental illness is only false when the mentally ill aren't actually a danger to themselves and others. She's playing with knives around her family, it isn't unfair stereotyping in this case. Sympathy for the violently mentally ill often just puts you at risk. It doesn't actually help them any, and they (if they are truly violently mentally ill) can't practice self-control just because you're special.

What helps the violently mentally ill is to be kept in a safe place UNTIL a diagnosis and a successful treatment have been discovered and implemented. Then you can start complaining about stigmas.

I had to testify against someone I loved very much to have him involuntarily committed in order to get him that diagnosis and that treatment after he tried to kill me, and himself, several times. He became a ward of the state for six months. My only regret is that I hadn't turned to the state for help sooner.

LW, you can't do this alone. You just can't. Nobody can. And you can't put your children through this either. If you try to, nothing will be gained except chaos. You need to maintain a home for your wife to return to when she gets better, but she needs to go away until she does. Keep her family safe, keep her children safe, and when she gets better she will thank you for it. Keep the children's lives stable in their own home. Get your wife hospitalized for diagnosis and treatment. It's the only thing to do, call her doctors and a lawyer. Do it now.

The lesson I learned, and I want you to repeat this carefully, is this: You cannot separate the person from the disease until you HAVE SEPARATED the person from the disease. She needs to be managing her illness well in order to move back in with you again.

And it's true what they say about courts taking your children away from you for having them live with a dangerous mentally ill parent. They'll take children away from battered wives because the battered woman "let her children live with violence". And nobody has to be mentally ill in that situation.

You are not capable of holding your family together through sheer force of will. You are not capable of protecting your wife from herself, and your kids from your wife, and yourself all at the same time. If you try (because it's a 24/7 vigil) you'll lose your job (or your work will just suffer), and you might not even succeed. Let the professionals do it. It will be scary to let her go, but be brave, because it's kinder than letting her terrorize her family.

You will have to let her go in order to save your family. You have to let her go in order to get her back.

In this case, because the history of the development of socialized police forces has been as fraught and political as health care.

Arguments were made in the 1800's that government control of police was a sign of increasing totalitarianism, and loss of freedom. Arguments that are not unlike the arguments against socialized medicine that are being made today.

Just because something seems like a no-brainer now does not mean it was not a subject of heated debate when it was first introduced. Someday our decendants may look back on this debate and wonder why we were all so completely insane as to let healthcare be managed for profit, the way you assume law-enforcement is naturally the provenance of government.

Anesthesia during surgery, for instance, was once decried as immoral because it unnaturally aleviated (god-intended) pain.