I want to tell you that your two daughters love you so much. Childhood growing up with such a strong mom was great. Because you taught us so much about values and being an honest citizen. After you became sick our world began to shatter around us. The schizophrenia became not only an issue for you but for us also. I want to give you this promise the three of us will conquer this issue together. We love you so much.
Love, N & N
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#schizophrenia #family #submission #supportI was diagnosed in the year 2012 with schizophrenia. The days were long and life seemed helpless. I felt that i could not tell anyone about how i was feeling. Then one day I spoke out, it was the best thing I have ever done. I started to see a therapist. There my support grew and my family accepted what was really wrong with me. There is nothing wrong with being schizophrenic you just have to have a passion. My passion was back after a year and now i am going to school, making music, and socializing. schizophrenia help me to realize do not give up your dreams because i have a disorder. The disorder does not have power over you but you have the power in you to overcome!
This is my story as a Father and the journal I’ve kept for many years. It’s the beginning of my daughters first two years and her/our battle and realization that she has been diagnosed with Schizophrenia. We are getting support but oh how it has changed our lives. She is 24 and married with a four year old little boy. I hope in some way it can help other families understand the process that may be before them. Stay strong.
Living with a family member who has schizophrenia is like sitting atop a mountain high in the clouds; you can see normal people far below, but the prospect of joining them seems impossible.
From age 10 onwards I’d witnessed my mother withdraw from the world, put on black clothing, answer to different names, and lend greater credence to the voices in her head than those of her own family. I’d hidden in the basement with my younger brother while my father spoke to cops and paramedics upstairs, my mother shouted abuse and cried and finally begged, led off to the psychiatric clinic for the latest forced committal. Entire seasons would pass with my father holding things together and then, just as we were beginning to find a kind of normality, we’d receive encouraging words from doctors about Mom’s recovery. And so we’d trek to the hospital for visits, at first supervised by medical staff and then not, making small-talk with a woman who seemed like a stranger and scrutinizing her face for signs: was she really better? Inevitably, because we loved her and wanted to believe, she’d come home. And for a time there was a fragile happiness. She laughed, displayed the childlike enthusiasm that held both kids and adults entranced, and even hosted parties for a social circle of Bengalis who my parents had known ever since emigrating to Canada in the late 70’s. Beneath the elaborately prepared Indian dishes and careful conversation lay a declaration: she is better now. Our family is whole. That dark chapter is past. But then she’d begin to complain about the side-effects of the medication. She’d stop speaking and start listening to voices we couldn’t hear. The heaviness we’d tried so hard to repel would return and you’d hate yourself for ever having believed otherwise. The cycle of committals, recovery and eventual relapse would continue and you wanted to spit in the face of anyone who seemed happy: it was an illusion, a sucker’s bet.
Thirty-two years ago my talented, smart and handsome younger brother David left for college. Six months later, he was in a veteran’s hospital (our father was a Naval officer) where he was diagnosed with schizophrenia.
He had become increasingly alienated at his college. Without the unconditional love and understanding of a nearby family, the quirkiness in his personality - which had sometimes set him apart from his contemporaries - took a sharp left turn. An obsessive interest in mushrooms (an interest which had succeeded other obsessive interests) led him to experiment with psychedelic varieties, and this - coupled with his social and emotional deficits - knocked his fragile psyche off-balance.
My brother, Mark. was diagnosed w/schizophenia @ age 28. We’ve gone through a living hell ever since. He’s now 51. You name it, we’ve been there. Hospitals, jails, prisons, group homes, assisted living homes, our own homes, witnessing, reporting neglect/abuse. Our family has been there. I wouldn’t wish it on my own worst enemy. Oh and GUILT! That’s a big one that each of us have struggled with. I hate the disease but love the victim. He’s my brother, my parent’s son. He’s a Father with a son. We’ve found that through it all that those who are least likely to understand are his friends, church and family. Looks like it’s here to stay. It’s a never ending cycle. You may ask, who is this guy? Well he was a first to be beautiful and only baby son. He was a great kid. A joy. Playful. Intelligent. Handsome. He went to school..never failed a grade. He went to college. He got a great job, married, had a family. It all started going downhill in his mid to mid 20’s. I went into mental health. I quit jobs in order to take less paying jobs just to be near him. I spent my social life and enormous part of my life just devoted to him. I’m 57 now. Who’ll see that he’s taken care of when I, his sister is gone? Who’ll do it when our parents are gone? I gave him over to God a long time ago and his abusers will, if they haven’t already, reap what they have sown. Family members have to be their voice for they will never be heard or ever taken seriously…
November 2015
Parents and Teachers as Allies presenter (part four living as a youth with mental illness)
Hi. My name is Ayesha. This is my story. I have been living with Schizophrenia for 20 years. My mental illness started at age 13. I was hospitalized two weeks after I turned 14 in February of 1995.
I didn’t feel like I could talk to my mom and my family that’s why I became very withdrawn around the age of twelve or thirteen, but as far back as age ten I was dealing with verbal and emotional abuse from certain kids at school and in the neighborhood we lived in Brooklyn. I got picked on and verbally abused sometimes. If I had a child psychologist I believe that would have really have helped me in my middle and high school years. I believe I would have seriously benefited from that. If my teachers paid more attention to Ayesha (me) outside of class during breaks like lunch time they would have noticed me feeling like an outsider. At school I was not socializing enough and that’s not normal. If my teachers had picked up on this and called out the bullies and the bullying I dealt with sometimes I think I would have felt less anxious and much less like skipping school during all my years in high school in grades 9th through 12th.
My sister suffers from schizophrenia and it is hard for me to cope. It is like I feel trapped because I don’t understand the disease process. It is hard for me to cope when I don’t understand what she is going through. My family members don’t understand how I feel. I am feeling grief over the loss of the person that my sister use to be before schizophrenia. I need to be able to grieve without judgement from my family. They tell me to “get over it”. I get anxiety and panic attacks so it makes things harder to deal with. I have a hard time dealing with normal daily activities sometimes because of my anxiety, panic attacks, and grief. My sister is in a good place and is well taken care of. I just wanted to speak out and let people know that they shouldn’t let other members of their family tell them that they shouldn’t be grieving or to just “get over it”. No one should tell you that your feelings aren’t valid.
Sincerely yours,
Danielle McCroskey
My name is Sandy and my mom suffers from Schizophrenia. I was 16 years old, when I noticed that my mom was no longer the same person. She is a single mother raising four children and working to support us. It started out with her whispering to herself and then she spoke louder each time and at the same time became paranoid of certain people. She quit working at the restaurant she had been working at for three years, claiming that the people at work were “doing things to her”. In February 2008, I was called into the counselor’s office while I was in class. I had not mentioned to anyone of what was going on at home therefore I was nervous. My counselor had said that my mom had gone to the elementary school where my little brother had attended and was saying random things that were going on. The school nurse was worried and called the middle school where my sister was and my school, I had felt so overwhelmed of what was going on and told them about my mom not being okay. My mom had changed at that point, it worried us, my paternal uncles and my maternal aunts. My aunt’s grew so worried of what was going on that they immediately flew to our hometown from Indiana. After much discussing, at the end of March it was decided that my mom, younger siblings and myself would go to Indiana with my aunts to get my mom help.
My son Tim was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in January of 2003, after his first semester at Vanderbilt University. He was 18 years. His senior year of high school, Tim’s mood severely changed. He lost interest in studying and it was difficult getting him out of bed for school. It was clear something was seriously wrong. He argued with his teachers and his grades plunged. I worried if he would even graduate. Friends and family told me he was just ‘acting like a boy’ and it would pass.
I recently lost my brother to suicide on October 1st, 2013. I got the call from a coroner on October 2nd. Actually the suicide note was dated Sept. 26, so who knows. But that is beside the point.
David began having problems in his late 20’s and early 30’s and was quote “diagnosed with delusional paranoia” at the time. I believe it was schizophrenia, but the doctor couldn’t talk to us due to “confidentiality”. I won’t go over all the problems and long stories over the next 5 years, but it began to be clear he couldn’t stay where he had come back home: my parents.