Hello to anybody reading this, I would appreciate any advice on how I should deal with my sz brother, realistic expectations regarding his future, as well as some constructive criticism on how I have dealt with him so far.
I should probably start out by saying that for the most part I believe he is to blame for his illness, now before you grab your pitchforks let me explain. He was/is a drug abuser I had family members repeatedly tell me that he did drugs and would do drugs with some of our family members. Me being the youngest of the family by 10 years I never directly saw the drug abuse, but my oldest sibling knew of the drug abuse and would repeatedly tell my parents not to give him money. I also have a couple family members with this same illness and I found out they were also abusers of drugs, I did some research and found about drug induced psychosis.
This led me to be currently resentful of my brother and somewhat unsympathetic especially when he does not want or seek help even though our father desperately tries to help him. I understand that part of the illness is not realizing that he is in fact sick, but I know our father has exhausted his patience with him. My father and I are realizing that the final option is to hospitalize him and ultimately having to call the sheriffs to pick him up. You might ask what has led us to this final option, the reasons being is that he refuses to take his medicine such as he did tonight, lighting an obscene amount of firewood outside in the fire pit for the past couple of days, and making aggressive statements.
Is this the reality where we are going to have to call the sheriffs to take in my brother to the hospital, who is not going to go willingly or live on the streets if he knows that our dad has called the police. If it is how should we go about doing this to avoid the latter of him living on the streets, because I know my dad would extremely prefer the hospitalization instead of him being homeless on the streets.
I am very sorry to hear that you and your family are going through this with your brother. You are not alone. I am new to this with my son and it has been very hard on our family as well. From what I have learned and research in the past 7 months, The causing of This mental illness is unknown, but it can be hereditary or cause by different infectious diseases, but I know doing drugs is not the causing of his MI. Doing drugs doesn’t help his illness it will make it worse, but it’s not the causing of his illness. If you and your family feel that he’s a harm to himself or others, then you can go to the court house to have him committed against his will. This will be a hard decision to make, but you would want him to seek help if he’s burning fires @SzAdmin could post links to this post about your brother illness and how family can help and they can post links on this post about the causing of this illness and the different infectious diseases that may be the causing of sczo… @SzAdmin will you please chime in on this post. I will pray for you and your family and please don’t give up on your brother because it’s not his fault. Hugs to you!
Lots of people (in fact by far the most of drug abusers) never go on to develop schizophrenia. So while you may be right that it has been a trigger for your brother - its likely just the most recent factor that tipped the balance of his risk for schizophrenia.
Most of the research now says that its a biological / genetic risk that happens first - and then other factors push the person into psychosis - it could be stress (many people do drugs to relieve depression or anxiety which are highly stressful). To put it simply - its complicated, and its impossible to know in advance whether you or anyone else has these predisposition to schizophrenia - so you can’t really blame the person for it.
Here is some related reading:
More details on the Causal Factors in Schizophrenia, and How to Prevent Schizophrenia (relevant for the rest of your family and children and future children:
This may be the case for your brother. Its a very hard choice for many families - and I know most of us here have been through this situation too.
If you do make this choice - try to do as much research as you can before you do it, so that your chances of helping your brother are maximized.
Here is what you can do:
Talk to your local NAMI and find out the details of how forced treatment works in your part of the country or world (I’m assuming you’re in the USA). Start here - and get your local NAMI: http://www.nami.org
Read up with some of the top books on schizophrenia - here is one I think is one of the best:
ALSO:
Call the Treatment Advocacy Center - and talk to them about what you’re planning and what the legal issues are in your state - they will have people who are experienced legally on these issues: http://treatmentadvocacycenter.org/