Oh @Patricktyler I wish there were more places available to help loved ones with severe mental illness. The cost to run a home is high. One small place in St. Pete that only housed 6 men at a time had a yearly budget of over $370,000 per year and eventually closed as it lost money yearly. So the cost divided by 6 men was over $60,000 per year. I’ve attached an article I saved some time ago. St. Pete home a haven for men with mental illness. Now it's closing. There was/is a sort of a clubhouse for daily activities in St. Pete with limited membership for those with schizophrenia. It offered activities, classes, movies, outings, and just a place to hang out. I can’t remember the name (again my daughter wouldn’t sign up for it as she “didn’t have schizophrenia like the other people here” in her own words). I have no idea if it survived because of Covid. I will try and find the name and let you know.
Thank you @Hanginginthere . I am a researcher by nature, I like to find out facts and share them. That started when I was in grade school and had an insatiable need to read at the library (long before the internet) and my book reports at school were always a hit with the other students and the teachers. I now am addicted to the internet.
As far as eventually getting a loved one to take medicine @hope4us , yes, that was a battle. In short, it probably would never have happened for my daughter without several fateful steps: 0) my finding this site to educate myself, 1) an arrest on one of her rare excursions alone into town when she was yelling at an office building and dodging in and out of traffic. They might not have arrested her, except she tried to kick the policeman. 2) Pinellas County’s “Who’s In Jail” website where I found out she was in jail, 3) my “bravery” in going to court early the next morning to speak, 4) a judge who listened to me in court when I asked for his help to get her on medication 5) The judge Baker Acted her from the jail with a court order to be medicated, 6) The psychiatric facility contacting me after my blind fax “in case my daughter was there” to all 3 facilities near me asking them to put her specifically on the Haloperidol Dec shot which I knew worked from a prior Baker Act, and 7) my own “conniving” (for lack of a better word) to talk her into getting her shot monthly. We lucked out totally that her fate was decided by all of those steps above, as I do consider it a miracle the way things came together seemingly by chance.
It helped that I am very stubborn and wouldn’t give up trying to help her even though it had a terrible cost to me in my own physical, mental and financial health.
It all started because I had found this forum and the kind people on it through @hope 's thread on the unmedicated when it came up on a Google search I fortunately made How many of you have an unmedicated family member and what's happening today?. That is why I still come here regularly to try to help others. I have goose bumps right now thinking about how much of a miracle it was for all those steps to come together.
So, please, don’t give up hope and faith. I had all but disowned God before that fateful date in Dec 2018 that saved my daughter from the terror in her mind.