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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
LW, I'm possibly a few years behind you, but your situation is where my family's headed if my mother doesn't get help. The central problem - the reason why things aren't getting or going to get any better - is the refusal to seek medical care. I don't know whether this is a particular symptom of paranoiacs or whether people with other kinds of mental illnesses are as resistant to the idea that they are unwell, but the toll that this kind of thing takes on families and individuals is terrible. I second what the other posters have said so far and strongly suggest that you and your sister work on healing your relationship with each other - go to counseling together if you have to - because you can't afford to let this damage your relationship. I wouldn't be surviving my own mother's illness without my brother because while I'm lucky enough to have a lot of emotional support from my partner and friends, he's the only person in the world with the same mother and father and the same childhood, the only person who can ever really know what her being ill means. Tap into the strength that that bond can give you both and help each other get through this.
nn
Cary's advice regarding NAMI is spot on-- if you can find a local or regional chapter that would be even better. (But if there isn't one in your area, you can inquire with NAMI to see if they might have a list of people who are interested in starting one, and join.)
You write about your mother's noncompliance with her medical therapy. Unfortunately this is pretty common, as is denial of schizophrenia. But you should also be aware, if you aren't already, that the antipsychotic drugs given to Schiz. patients often have pretty disagreeable side effects, especially at the higher dosages that they get, and sometimes Schizophrenics say they don't need the meds because they either have a hard time articulating the nature of the side effects they experience, or think people just wont believe them when they complain about the side fx., in part reinforced by people not believing other things they assert.
(Persons with bipolar disorder often get prescribed antipsychotics too, but usually at substantially less potent doses. The catch-all term for most of the side effects is extrapyramidal symptoms.(EPS) Wikipedia has excellent info with links about antipsychotics. See their articles about "typical antipsychotics" and "atypical antipsychotics")
Unfortunately the 2nd generation, "atypical" antipsychotics tend to be very pricey, and if your mom is on a public assistance program they're less likely to pay for atypicals for a patient with poor med compliance. If you don't know it already, I'll bet you guessed that the newer ones also tend to have less vicious side fx.
You say you experience contact with your mother as especially draining, but clearly you don't want to abandon her either. Have you thought of scheduling a weekly phone call, say for 10 minutes once a week? You could tell her that you'll call her once a week and talk to her for 10 minutes at such and such a time on a certain day, no matter what, but you don't have time for more than 10 minutes. And stick with it, so she knows she can count on you calling like you said you would.
It will still be draining at first, but you'll both know the framework, and she'll know that even if she's not happy with the time limit, at least she can count on your calling the following week.
Incidentally I used to call my mother once a week, and she died 2 days after the last Sunday evening that I called her. Her voice sounded rough, and I commented on it. She told me to mind my own business, that she was fine. JV
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.
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