I am trying to do what I can but in the USA we really are limited when what we can do if the person isn’t willing to get help. Where I live I can’t have him committed to the hospital only the police or therapist. I tried multiple times for a 5150…it was so hard and he never met the criteria. Why is it so hard for family to help their love one?
The only other option is pressing charges with the hope the judge orders court order injections. Is there anything else I can do?
Did you press charges against your daughter? I worry about my spouse forgiving me if I press charges against him.
Your story is one of perseverance and hope! @Feelingalone I know how hard it is to get help for someone who refuses. If you feel truly in danger for yourself and/or child, certainly you should press charges or leave. And it might be an OK thing anyway to press charges (interested to get others comments on their experiences). One thing you CAN do is to document all the bizarre behaviours and complete mental health history of your family member. Include 911 calls, police, medical history, doctors, medication history, observed behaviors (especially that point to harm to self or others), job losses, etc. Make it an ongoing document that you keep updating. Stick to facts and eliminate the things that are just weird but are not harmful. You want it to be concise enough to be easily readable. Then, when you DO have a legitimate moment in time to call 911 (ask for a CIT–Crisis Intervention Team), you can hand them the document so that there is a more reason for them to take him to be detained and hopefully kept for psychiatric help. I have done this and it worked…when my loved one presented as OK…but the known history was on hand AND I had evidence that he was of harm to his own physical health, it proved to be critical. You just have to be prepared for that time when the situation could “tip the edge” to qualify for involuntary commitment.
My daughter was in the injections and we talked on the phone several times a week for hours. I felt like she was my best friend. She quit taking her meds for the same reason. After she quit taking them she moved out of her apartment and into her car and moved up to Oregon from Arizona and laid in the back of her car for a year.
She could not speak to me on the phone hadn’t and had nothing to say. I called her regular and sent her texts. I called her yesterday and she sounded brighter. After we spoke she called me right back and said by the way I’m back in Arizona. When did you come back I asked. About two weeks ago.
Off her medication there was no way I could have a relationship with her. The state was paying for her medication. Since that time my mother left her a lot of money so she would not be homeless. Now she will never qualify for Medicaid again.
I would not stay in the relationship. That’s my opinion. He hit it from you and you entered into a covenant relationship on false pretenses.
I hope this helps.
This is a good idea. I will do this!
So I have great respect for this. My story is similar in that my loved one had some money from an inheritance. Not a lot, but enough to live on for awhile when you are living out of a car! I would suggest that living in the back seat of a car (depending on the person’s actual health) COULD be reason for “danger to self” and therefore, with the right documentation and timing, an opportunity to get the person committed involuntarily for psychiatric help. Like I said, it takes a lot of work, but I’ve done it. Eventually (more to the story I won’t go into detail here), I obtained legal guardianship due to my loved ones degraded mental and physical health, and THEN I was able to spend the remaining inheritance on all his medical and other bills. And THEN, he DID qualify for SSI and Medicaid!
do not give up. it is a long struggle but he needs you. stay strong. get theraphy
Praying for you.
@JARCA2016 it is hard not to give up when he is saying he wants a divorce. I wonder if that is the SZ or what he really wants?
I don’t think he wants my help but I know he needs help even if I’m not the one to do it. I feel like I’m the only one who cares about him. Everyone else has given up.
I know the feeling. I have been dealing with my Son who is diagnosed with Schizeffective in the last 5 years and he has been through many hospitalizations and homelessness and he was Conserved for almost 3 years with the County where he is at. he just get out of the hospital one month ago after several months Hospitalization and living with a friend in California. He has a case Manager over there…
Every morning and night, I call my son make sure that he takes his medicine. his OCD gets worse when the bi-monthly shot start to fade about 7 days after he takes it. The family friend is putting up with a lot dealing with his OCD behavior
I am helping them financially and my son is on disability income.
It is a struggle daily. … but I thank God that he is alive and living with someone and he is not on the street.
I pray daily about his situation…
your husband needs you now… do not give up, he can get better with medicine… May god bless you and help you through this.
Seek help . Contact NAMI in your area and they will advise on what to do.
Seek also a community mental health clinic and ask them for advise. they are usually free of charge.
get therapy for yourself. the COV-19 is not making easy for communication but hope things start to open up and you can get help soon.
Pray about your situation daily and stay positive, things can change… but your must can help for him and for yourself.
When you first described this, my impression was his motivation was based on his delusions of actions you didn’t take. Other motivations related to SZ could be a form of preemptive self-esteem preservation— I’ll divorce her before she divorces me. There could be some underlying misguided or twisted altruism. She’ll be better off without me, so I’ll make this (false) sacrifice.
Then there are a couple motives that are peripherally related to the SZ: revenge or tit for tat or attention seeking due to your ultimatum and depriving him of you and your child’s company. SZ thinking and emotional behavior tends toward the melodramatic. Internally your thoughts and emotions aren’t well integrated so emotions can erupt and affect your thinking, or alternately seem nonexistent to others. You have to keep asking questions to understand the internal ‘logic’, there’s usually a semi-consistent structure to the thinking and emotion that makes sense to him which he may think is self-evident.
Hi my son is 38 and has battled with sz for 17 years . He’s currently in jail for the 4th time but this time it’s for 5 years . He won’t call or write me . He’s been off meds for almost 2 years and I’m so worried he’s getting worse. I want to help get him to a place where they will give him meds . He gets better when he was on the abilify injection. I haven’t seen him for almost 2 years . I don’t know where to start . I miss him so much and want him to be safe and well . If anyone has suggestions on where to start I’d appreciate your input .
This disease is so horrible, and it often wreaks havoc on the lives of many besides the actual patient. Speaking as a parent, I do not have the choice to ‘divorce’ my child. I could choose to walk away, as many do, and I refuse to judge or blame them. Reality is that he is likely in for years (a lifetime) of cycling through medications and non medicated times. Perhaps some times of normalcy and stability, but more likely just different levels of illness. No purpose would be served by your sacrificing your chance to raise your child without the chaos and compromising three lives rather than one. If I was the ill person and had a moment of lucidity to acknowledge this, I would very much want my loved one to disengage as much as possible, hard as it may be. Of course, with a child, you will continue to have contact, but it doesn’t have to be all consuming as a partner. I hope I have expressed this well enough — the impact on family members lives. I know many who experience their own health issues as a result of the stress.
Yes, that is the truth, @Spu .
I have a success story in that my daughter is doing so very well on the monthly injection that the fortunes of life enabled me to get her on and keep her on. My heart is at peace with myself, despite calling police on her, pressing charges, “tricking” her into treatment, etc. over the years.
However, the cost to me personally and to others in our circle was high. Her two brothers rarely, if ever, speak to her or to me. Her step-sister NEVER speaks to her. They moved out of the house during her psychotic years. Her friends are ALL gone, due to psychotic events they witnessed. Her own grandmother didn’t speak to her for years and now has only once this year. My own friends fled the scene during the 2.75 years I was consumed with trying to get my daughter on meds. One still calls me once per month. My husband became a serious alcoholic from a binge drinker and still is now, though fights it off sometimes. I have thyroid issues and blood pressure issues and high cholesterol now. I gained 20 pounds that I can’t get off. My quality of life is much lower as now I am supporting her AND my husband, both who don’t work enough to contribute much.
BUT, I HAD to try and help her, my own decision. So the result is as good as it could be.
A journal of those years is still in my filing cabinet. It was useful to show police when I called to try to get her Baker Acted. @hope4us is correct to urge the use of one. My daughter’s is empty now of “events” for 1.5 years now, a blessing. My husband’s however, has many drunken “events” and even arrests from my calling the police on him.
I think @Feelingalone that you must put your child’s welfare ahead of your husband’s. It is healthy for no one to be around the unpredictability of psychosis. Of course you care about your husband and always will, but he is the one that wants a divorce and won’t seek treatment. No one here will judge you no matter what choice you make, but if there is any chance of your child being hurt, or you being hurt, by your husband, that is paramount to resolve.
This is a long post, I apologize, but wanted to say these things.
@oldladyblue I’m glad you did. The impact of your sacrifice doesn’t always convey, because your positivity and brevity mask it. I’m having a feeling of seeing you for a second first time, if that makes sense.
@Feelingalone I’ve said in the past, were I in a similar position odds are 50/50 I might have bailed on myself. I do the work of a devil’s advocate here, and attempt to present what might be going inside loved ones’ heads. As I said, we get these threads from time to time with variations of couples dating, or married, develop SZ before or after they get together, but yours is the first I can think of with the diagnosis withheld. I’m the victim of a similar deceit, and I can say the relationship is never quite the same afterwards and you struggle to trust the person ever again. It’s tough to think in terms of whether there would even be a relationship with disclosure, because you’ve been robbed of that choice.
@Maggotbrane I see what you are saying. Some of his reasons for anger towards me are actual events, me leaving, vs some imagined like me being unfaithful. I agree that he is upset over my ultimatum to take medicine and him not having access to me and our child anymore. And yes, I think he wanted to rush to do it “first” and he is very emotional. All of this has caused me so much stress. I also feel the stigma of this illness as people have questioned me loving him and being married to him.
I understand why someone with SZ would want to hide the diagnosis. However, hiding something like this does more harm than anything in the end. I would like to think that love can overcome anything.
Thank you for the long post. When it comes to psychosis it scares me that SZ behaviors are unpredictable. I also worry just a how bad things can become. I think seeing all of that would be very unhealthy for a young child.
I am going to write a journal or everything that has happened, his symptoms as I think that is a good idea.
As to stigma, you have to be careful not to go looking for it. Your life and your child’s life is not the place for virtue signaling or social justice warrior martyrdom. Where possible I’d try to take this sympathetic element out of it. That’s why I asked you how you’d feel about equally transgressive and stigmatized behavior in the marriage like gambling, sex addiction etc. Advice can be rooted in stigma, but still be sound advice.
As I said, I generally disclose and have what I call ‘the talk’. A flip side to this is if you are largely asymptomatic and your partner has little experience with SMI, I find they still don’t quite ‘get it’. These are very much ‘show me’ diseases. Delusions seem curious and almost funny in the abstract, but when it’s someone you care about and they accuse you of things you didn’t do or engage in violent and self-destructive behavior it can be emotionally scarring.
Love can overcome many things. Personally, my love can’t overcome the damage done to my grandchild by his severely bipolar mother. There was the child he was before his mother got caught up in a manic episode and left him with 4 deep bruises on his legs and swollen lump on his face when he was 2 1/2 years old and there is the child he is afterwards.
In my humble opinion, and do feel free to disregard me, what your love will be “overcoming” is your desire to live life on your terms or his terms, instead you will both live your lives and your child’s life (who has ABSOLUTELY no choice in the matter) on the terms of- an extremely difficult to live with - brain disease. Its a separate element, don’t be confused, its not what you married but it is what you are choosing to marry as you go forward. Schizophrenia will change who your child grows up to be.
Those of us who have children with scz are not able to love our children well. Some of us can love them onto medications, some of us can’t. Some of us get them on meds only to have the illness worsen down the line and they go off their meds.
Going forward you are just not choosing to be a spouse, you are choosing to be a caregiver. My grandson’s father knows that some days he is married to a person, other days he is married to a brain disease he has to manage to protect his family. Its not fair to expect people with brain diseases to be full-time spouses when they spend a good deal of time battling a brain disease on their own. Ultimately they are alone in this battle inside their head and ultimately we caregivers are alone in these unequal relationships.
The caregiver 3 C’s are important. We can’t CONTROL their disease, we can’t CURE their disease and we didn’t CAUSE it. Believing any of these things otherwise is a road to somewhere you don’t want to go.
Best of luck to you.
Hi to Feeling Alone - I am so sorry you are going through this. I know how scary it must be for you especially with your baby to care for. I hope you have family to help you and support you, or good friends and a support structure. My experience was similar- my husband started having sz symptoms and I was freaked out of my mind by it all. He also was rather violent- punching holes in the walls, throwing furniture, not to mention the verbal and emotional abuse. Everything was someone else’s fault. We were married 25 years and had four sons. At the time the youngest were 12 (twins) - he ended up leaving and I had to find another place to live that I could afford on my own and gave me a sense of control over my finances and environment. He got an apartment, then moved to be closer to his family, which was a good thing for him. He had four diagnoses of sz from four different health care providers but insisted that nothing was wrong with him. His family said that he didn’t have those symptoms around them so it must be my fault. He was delusional, carrying around pizza crust and chewing on it because he didn’t want to eat food for fear of being poisoned. Anyway, he thinks “other people “ caused our separation and continues to have absolutely no insight into his illness; no consequences or thoughts of contrition whatsoever. The book and video I’m not sick was really helpful for me. I have no family support but my sons are wonderful and all I have . I’m not truly happy by a long shot, but if I were still with him, my life would be much worse. Whatever you decide to do, my only advice is to try to look one step ahead and choose the path that leads to stability, peace, happiness, positive, self care, and the care of your baby. I’m sure I did it all wrong, saying things like “no one is following you “ “ no one is out to get you” etc., but I was the most afraid in my entire life, and had no idea what to do, had nowhere to turn. NAMI really helped too. I called their hotline a few times and it was refreshing to have an honest and helpful conversation with someone who knows the illness and gets it. Again I’m so sorry you are going through this and I wish you and your baby peace, positivity, and prayers.