As a professional caregiver, I have worked with people who suffer mental illness, and with their families and friends. I have witnessed and been touched deeply by the grief of mental illness: the shock, disbelief, anger, guilt, heartache, outrage, and, for many, the disappointment that the illness they are experiencing cannot be cured, only treated. Often there is also self-doubt and self-blame: āDid we cause this? Where did we go wrong?ā There is anger at the professionals: āDoctors should have medication for thisā. There is struggle: āMy husband has an illness that makes his behavior terrible to live with, but I feel that to leave him would be to abandon the love of my lifeā. There is shame: āIāve behaved so weirdly when Iāve been really ill, Iāve shamed my children and my husband forever.ā
People with schizophrenia are five times more likely to commit suicide than those in the general population, and their suffering, due to delusions, hallucinations, impaired cognition and impaired social functioning, is well documented. However, no studies to date have looked specifically at the lived experience of loss and grief in schizophrenia. This week, Michael Bouwman talks with Maria Mauritz, who says people with schizophrenia have normal grief reactions, but their prolonged experience of loss can lead them to lose self-confidence, autonomy and ambition, and to develop a sense of meaningless. Maria says hallucinations cause people to lose trust in their own senses, for example, wondering, āAm I actually hearing thisā, and she identifies a sense of not belonging as a common ongoing, painful experience. Maria believes it is crucial to ask people with schizophrenia about their feelings and look at what is motivating their behaviour. She says like all people experiencing grief, they need comfort and consolation, so it is important to find out what it is that comforts them. She says small things like asking people how they are, and offering a cup of tea, are importantājust treating them as human beings.