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The replies that talk about the pain of coping with a loved one with mental illness are telling and painful for sure.
What's rarely talked about though is the complete failure of our health system to treat these kind of ailments.
What is schizophrenia anyways? What causes it? Is there a way of treating it in a way that doesn't involve employing catatonic induced drug therapy?
I suffered from lead poisoning for over 15 years - undiagnosed of course. After finally deciding to have confidence in my belief that the 'mental illnesses' for which I was drugged for years was not what was wrong with me, I finally got treated and am doing well. Confidence in myself and my instincts, and spending a lot of $$$ finally got me well. I had always suspected that the chemotherapy that treated my cancer as a youth had contaminated and damaged my system. (This was pre-breast cancer lobby, and no one would even consider the chemo as a possible cause for my symptoms - they were too busy patting themselves on the back for upping their survival statistics.) I was labelled a malingerer - my denial of the collection of DSM IV labels thrown at me were just a symptom of my disease, right? As it turns out, wrong.
The problem is that before I finally got the answers I needed, my family wrote me off. And why wouldn't they? A big powerful psychiatrist told them I was a nut case. Even though my mother suspected that I was suffering from contamination, she never shared her thoughts with anyone but me - she died before I was vindicated. My dad the pharmacist just plied me with the drugs the psychs ordered. My sister still refuses to believe my story, even though it's obvious that my health has steadily improved greatly over the past year since getting detoxed with a naturopath. I am still furious. The pharma-controlled assholes have ruined my life and my reputation, while walking off to the bank and enjoying privileged reputations and illustrious careers. They will never be held accountable for this. I'm now suffering from PTSD due to being physically harmed and/or abandoned by those who I was supposed to trust the most. It is unlikely that I will ever be able to support myself financially. I work part time and watch as my savings dwindle down to nothing. My sister responds by saying I should have made better choices in life.
Moral of the story? If someone isn't getting any better, maybe the problem isn't the patient. Information regarding mental health that isn't medical model based is very difficult to come by, but often proves to be more effective.
I'm very sorry for what ppl go through with their families. Rest if you must. Rest. But please lay blame for failure where it belongs - poor treatments, greedy corporations, scientific bias. I do not deserve to be villified, marginalized and hated for what I have been through. I wish I had had the option of 'divorcing' myself from my disease, but I did not. I had to stay and fight or give up and die. So I may have won the battle, but lost the war.
