If you're looking for more sources to educate yourself, I would recommend the book "When Madness Comes Home" by Victoria Secunda. It focuses on relatives of people with mental illness, and the conflicting emotions they go through. The author's sister has schizophrenia, so she has firsthand knowledge, as well.

Good luck.

The writer asks: "How do I talk to my sister? How do I deal with my mother? How do I help my family heal? And is there really no way I can help my mother get well?"

I've been there, and my answers are: You are not a shrink; you are not a saint; you are not the family savior; and, yes, there really is no way to help your mother get well. Love does not conquer psychosis.

My late mother was a paranoid schizophrenic who was finally diagnosed when I was in my late teens. Luckily my "collapse of optimism" and "surrendering the dream" happened shortly thereafter. I'd hated her so much, but when I found out she was ill, and that neither I nor anyone else in my family was causing her to become irrational and cruel, all my anger and guilt dropped away. I think this is why I've never felt the need to participate in a support group, because I've long accepted the reality of Mom's illness and the fact that, no matter how much I wished it, I could not make her well.

Self-preservation led me see Mom as little as possible. She never took her medication. Our visits were always brief and cordial, and I somehow succeeded in never saying anything that might provoke her. The price of that level of self-control was that it would take me a week to recover my equilibrium, and at some point I realized that my love for her had turned into mere coping.

And when I say I loved my mom, I mean the sweet, kind, and beautiful mother I had as a small child, before her illness overwhelmed her true nature.

It's forty years since Mom was diagnosed, twelve since she died. I have my own family now (and I'm now a grandmother), and it's the family I wish I'd grown up in. I married a man who, when we were first dating, didn't flee screaming into the night the first time he was cornered by my articulate, raging mom. He's been my rock ever since.

I wish the letter-writer happiness and some peace in her life, and above all, that she will stop expecting herself to heal those things that can never be healed.

LW, I feel for you as my late schizophrenic aunt did the same kind of damage to her family, and my best friend's brother keeps doing it to his. They may not be able to control themselves in doing the damage, but as with anyone who's a danger to themselves and others, the safety of family and community must be protected.

My uncle hung in there with his marriage vows; he never had quiet affairs or a mistress, though he did take a week away every year just to escape the sheer overwhelming 'always there-ness' of his hideous situation. And though much younger than his wife, he died first.

The caregiver always dies first.

Look around, you'll see it's true.

Your father made a life-saving decision, and so have you by choosing to distance yourself. I have recently had to make this same decision regarding a manic friend: there is nothing I can do to change anything, nothing I can do to help. Distancing yourself doesn't hurt these people because they don't have the emotional capacity for visits or contact very often: 1 year or 20 can pass unnoticed by them, and very often as in your case, family members are regarded as the enemy plotters.

The cruel selfish truth that can apply to this kind of situation (and to divorce because of it) is that 'the kids' are frightened: if one parent leaves, they'll be left with the care and responsibility. It may be this fear that's driving your sister. I don't know how she can come to terms with it, except perhaps through the same suggestions Cary has made re learning about schizophrenia, and through supportive counseling.

It can be loss upon loss in families of the mentally ill when siblings also distance each other and/or distance themselves geographically.

I don't know if this will help any of you, but it's a suggestion a counselor once made to me about my own abusive parents: Write down all the things you wanted your mother to be to you. Write that mother you've imagined a poem or a eulogy. It may help at this point also to buy an adult female doll with which you 'invest' these qualities, and for which you hold some form of funeral in which you literally bury the doll, perhaps including the papers on which you wrote your wish list about your mother and/or your poem or eulogy. Or perhaps reading the poem aloud - and crying if you want to. Then bury the doll and/or the poems and wishlist. Give up as lost the mother you want or remember; grieve her; and then you can get on with living with the mother you've actually got, in whatever way you choose to do that.

This is a snapshot of my life, only the sick one is my wife, now ex-wife, and the illness is Bi-Polar. I spent 11 years with a woman who I still consider beautiful and wonderful and full of potential, but at a certain point I could no longer take the accusations of abuse, the denial of prognosis, the skip of meds, the suicide attempts, all of which were blamed on me. When blaming me didn't work, the illness was blamed. When I spoke of marriage and family needing to consist of 2 people making contributions and supporting each other, I was accussed of selfishness. I was physically attacked and blamed for this. Beyond that I was accussed of physical abuse that never took place. My wife slowly turned me into someone I didn't recognize. I watched savings of tens of thousands of dollars disappear and saw credit card debt of tens of thousands of dollars slowly and insidiously slither its way into our lives. eBay became a midnight excursion. I couldn't keep track of where the money was going. All the while, I was accussed of being controlling, domineering, and dogmatic. I bent over backwards to accommodate her desires. Kept the credit cards open, continued to let her have open reign with the checking and savings accounts....

I slowly began to realize that my wife did not want to get well, she was afraid of what that would mean. Afraid of not being able to blame something or someone in her life for all of the disappointments and failures. Yes, I took a vow , it said in sickness and in health, for richer and for poorer. But I did not vow to stay in a marriage of abuse, both physical and emotional and I didn't take a vow to watch the one I love refuse to heal. The ill still have personal responsibility. They are responsible to take their meds, maintain their regiment of exercise and omega 3s, get proper sleep, eat well. Sometimes they can do all of this, sometimes just taking the meds is almost an impossible feat. No one said it was easy, but it is necessary for one's self and for one's love ones. My wife didn't think her health was her responsibility and she was afraid to heal. I left, but I will always love her and will always know what great things she is capable of accomplishing in this life.

There is no guilt, only sadness and in the darkest of hours a small glimmer of hope.