I just wanted to take some time to talk about my father, who is schizophrenic. I feel like it’s healthy to talk about mental illness because as I’ve grown I’ve noticed people don’t talk about it. This bothers me because it’s been apart of my life so its normal to me. I’ve never met another person who has a schizophrenic father so I’ve always felt alone on that. I just want other people to know they’re not alone and maybe to reach out to people. So, from what I’ve gathered from my family my father started showing signs of schizophrenia in his early twenties after his grandma died, who also had schizophrenia, he started drinking excessively, getting into fights, and basically chasing away the people who cared about him. 

My mother and father had me right after these signs started. He started getting abusive towards my mom so she left him. She moved away with me and my little brother but we always stayed in contact with my father. We would spend the summers with him. I was too young to understand what was going on with him. I always thought he was just an alcoholic until I got a little it older. It was hard because the medications my dad was on made him show no emotions at all. I made him a birthday card one year and he didn’t even read it he just threw it away in front of me. After that happened I started shutting him out and I feel guilty but I honestly hated him for about a year. I didn’t understand why my own dad couldn’t tell me he loved me or that he was proud of me or even say thank you for that birthday card. After I started researching my dads illness it all started to come together and I realized how hard it had to be to struggle with a mental illness. Ever since then I’ve always made it clear to him that I will always be here to support him even if he doesn’t want the support. We had a lot of fun when he finally found the right medicine. He started showing emotion and taking me and my brother to do fun things. I had a mostly great childhood but its been a pretty rocky few years. My dad got into a car accident and saw one of his best friends be killed and on top of that he had his medicine switched a few years ago to the pills instead of the injection. He stopped taking the pills and started drinking again. He got into trouble at the bars and was sent to jail. Now, in Jail they switched his medicine without consent to the cheaper stuff, of course and my dad went spiraling downhill. The guards would taunt him and provoke him. He tried killing himself and woke up in the hospital. He didn’t understand what was going on and he told me he thought the cops in the hospital room were trying to euthanize him so he tried to get away. He hit the cops. After that he was sentenced to prison for a year for felonious assault. I didn’t understand how they could send a person with serious mental illness to prison. He should’ve been sent to a hospital. I went to every court date and sent letter to the judge pleading to not send him but they didn’t care. That’s whats so wrong about the system. So, after my dad served a year in prison he got out and I thought everything was going to go back to normal. I was wrong. My dad had completely changed. It was like he just gave up. We tried everything we could to get him back on the injection but it had been so long since he had that medicine it took even longer to start working so before we knew it he was getting in trouble again. He got criminal trespassing and was sent back to Jail where the guards once again provoked him. This time I was not letting him go back to prison. My family and I fought so hard and so did his lawyer. After another year goes by waiting for his trail. Hearings after hearings. We got good but not the best news. My dad was going to be sent to a center instead of prison. I was so happy but I knew that this journey was only beginning. Hes been in this facility for almost a year now and hes finally getting back to where he was before all this happened. He’s still having some episodes, but for the most part he’s doing great. It’s really hard to believe that it’s taken 5-6 years to get him back to where he needs to be but I’m so thankful that he’s finally feeling ok again. I wanted to share my story because I would like to see if anyone could relate or maybe had some advice on what I can do to help my father. Thank you for letting me share my story. There’s so many more details I have, but I would have to write a whole book if I wanted to share everything.