LW, I see lots of solid support here for you taking care of yourself as a priority. It’s not just self interest – it puts you in a position of best being able to decide how to be helpful. Sometimes the best way to help both self and other is to set boundaries and let an other know clearly how her behavior is affecting you. This isn’t the same as distancing and withdrawing, it can be a way to help, albeit a painful and difficult one.

I hope you saw the letter from Patricia Schwarz. Psychosis can be a feature of a variety of conditions. From your letter, I wouldn’t necessarily assume schizophrenia and I would never assume anything from a limited number of encounters with the mental health professionals who are out there. In any case, however you proceed should be informed by an accurate and empathetic understanding of your mother’s experience, as opposed to a diagnostic label applied to her.

You lost something you deserved but never had in your childhood family. Your healing might best be served by the new attachments you create in your own, chosen relationships.

The website www.schizophrenia.com is an extraordinary website for family members. It has message boards for parents, children, spouses, and siblings of people who have schizophrenia. It also has links to well-chosen articles on schizophrenia.

On each message board, you will find letters to and from people who are in your shoes. The boards are monitored, and the tone is positive and helpful.

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.

Anonymous,

I'm sorry for what you've been through, and hope things are getting better for you.

Thanks for sharing your story. It articulates very well why people who are diagnosed with mental illness need and deserve the support and assistance of those closest to them, the people who know them the best.

As it stands, the mental health system is too much like the penal system. You may be innocent, but once charges are brought against you, the world begins to view you in a different light. And if a guilty verdict is reached, it becomes awfully hard to turn things around, even if (as still happens all too often) the wrong charges -- or diagnoses --have been brought against you. Except mental patients don't automatically get an advocate to represent their interests in the mental health system. Patients themselves are discounted, because they 'don't know what they're talking about,' they're 'crazy,' after all -- 'out of touch with reality.'

Mental health diagnoses and treatments are often determined -- especially in the case of the indigent and immigrants -- in a very cursory, subjective, pseudo-scientific closed circuit. (Kind of like the 'diagnoses' that so often appear among these letters: "bipolar!" "bpd!" "manic!")

It's more likely due lack of training, time and resources than malevolence on the part of anyone out there in the real world, but that hardly matters when a misdiagnosis affects you or someone close to you. This special circle of hell is really just an extension of the overburdened, inadequate medical system.

Mental illness and the stigma surrounding it often causes people to push away anyone who dares care about them. We must help care for them anyway, with the support of professional intermediaries, rather than leave them stranded to navigate a deeply flawed system all by themselves.