My daughter lives in California and is currently experiencing psychotic delusions. People trying to kill her, etc. We have been trying to have her involuntarily admitted. She was diagnosed 12 years ago and has never stayed on her meds more than six weeks. Unless she is “a danger to herself or others”, she cannot be admitted.
Anyone have any thoughts? She was in a car accident earlier today and was admitted to the hospital. As I live in Arizona, I called the ER and spoke with her nurse asking she be evaluated.
The doctor said she was currently stable and was sorry, but she could not hold or transfer her. She is back at her x bf’s house for the night.
Hello, I’m so sorry for the reality of how difficult it is to get help for our loved ones. I do not know CA laws and resources but it seems you are learning the law! LIving far away makes it especially difficult to have the kind of communication that is needed to help a person who, because of the illness, cannot see herself as needing help. Does your daughter reach out to you? How did you find out about her recent psychosis and hospitalization? I can be helpful if you can establish some relationship with one or more of her friends in the area where she lives, so they can contact you when they have elevated concerns.
Thank you for your reply. My daughter and I are in contact and my husband and I visit CA often. Her text to me last week: “We are working on finding the guys who want to torture me and do things like saw my face off and stuff.”
She is in contact with a “friend” who supplies her with methamphetamine and Whip-it’s, alcohol, etc in exchange for sex. The police have been called to no avail. I called his employer as well. Just want him to leave her alone.
Her psychosis is worse because of her drug use. She craves the escape from reality.
Her “friend” gave her methamphetamine and she totalled her car. This is why she was admitted to the hospital. In CA this is not enough for a 72 hour hold even with the Sz diagnosis in her past.
My daughter is back at her boyfriend’s house. He is losing hope that she will take her medication and her erratic behaviors are creating havoc.
She has private insurance coverage and American Addiction Centers in So. Cal offers drug/alcohol rehab and therapy. They will also dispense her Sz meds. She refuses to go.
I have a question for those on this forum with Sz diagnosis. What convinced you that medication was helping not hurting you? How were you able to accept your diagnosis?
Thank you all for sharing your experiences. I am very grateful for this forum.
I only know from caring for my daughter that she would NEVER have accepted medication not forced on her, and she still hasn’t accepted her diagnosis after almost 3 years of being successfully medicated and mostly delusion/hallucination free. She takes her medicine only because it helps her to work (her words).
Perhaps your daughter’s boyfriend needs to be the one to try the numerous times it usually takes get her force admitted in CA, as he lives with her. Is he wiling to take those steps?
Yes, her boyfriend is willing and has tried numerous times to have her admitted to a BHU. He has called 911 a few times, he has taken her to the ER for various ailments she was convinced she had. He did this with the hope that the Dr would have her involuntarily admitted upon observing her psychotic state. Apparently, in CA, this is not enough to admit her against her will.
Your daughter has never willingly taken her medication? How do you accomplish this?
My daughter takes her medication willingly now. It is a once a month shot. She has been on it now for almost 3 years. However, the prior 3 years of her illness, she would not take medicine unless she was hospitalized and forced to take it. She was held against her will in hospital psychiatric wards a total of 5 times.
After her last hospitalization, she was under a court order to be medicated OR go back to jail. The charges against her were dropped after she was medicated for 2 months, however, she continued going with me to get her shot. I don’t think she understood the call from the Sheriff’s office telling her that she was no longer under court orders. I didn’t tell her either. I just kept telling her when the shot was due, and driving her there. I still drive her there to Directions for Living every month. She takes the shot because it has helped her “to keep a job”. I don’t think she knows it is for schizophrenia.
After my daughter was discharged from the hospital and settled down, we chatted a lot and one of the things I pointed out is that despite the blame she put on me, there seems to be a pattern that she gets hospitalized whenever she went off meds and that she has done well when she was on meds. She seemed to have understood it. She told me one evening that she had been hearing noises, probably a possum (similar to a raccoon), and also seeing things that were odd, like a usb cable standing up on one end, so she quickly took her meds. While the current medication weren’t as effective, her symptoms seemed to have dissipated, just had to make sure she doesn’t get stressed.
My son refused meds for a long time, even in the hospital it was challenging. At various points in this journey, his option was going to a homeless shelter post-hospitalization or getting treatment. He opted for treatment but became hospitalized again. Eventually, he ended up in a group home (parents’ choice (meaning we paid for it, too) but he had to sign the contract) where med-compliance was required. In that environment, he lived with others similar to himself, everyone was taking medication, and he was given some gradually increasing autonomy. As his brain healed on a new med, he realized (from what he could even remember) the difficult place from whence he had come. For awhile, when the idea of the need for medication was mentioned, he’d say “Well, I don’t know about that.” but he was still taking the med. Now he fully ACKNOWLEDGES his need for medication, keeps all his own psychiatric appointments and required labs (he is on Clozapine), and picks up his med from pharmacy. I do not do ANY of that. He lives by himself and TAKES THE MED as prescribed. I realize this is not going to be every person’s exact story, but THERE IS HOPE.
Thank you for this story. It seems my daughter knows deep inside that she needs her meds, but her psychosis is telling her they are dangerous.
I am praying for the day that she accepts the medication. She is currently back with her bf which is a good thing. He has (once again) taken her into his home. I turned Mama Bear and straightened out the guy supplying her drugs. Don’t think he’ll come around again. Since she totalled her car she has no means of transportation to seek him out.
What do you think about deceiving her into taking her meds? In her current mindset, she believes she has M.S. Possibly the meds can be presented as a “cure”? I’m afraid that such a deception could backfire and reinforce her paranoia.
Thank you for this information. My daughter has agreed to take the monthly shot. I provided her with contact info for TalkSpace. They provide online Psych appts and will prescribe LAI’s. She made contact herself (which is huge) and has an appt on the 22nd.
Thank you. I am getting the impression of “whatever it takes” to achieve med compliance.
This is my feeling as well. Without meds, there is no real life being lived. Only torment. A message she sent last week was of an article about V2K mind control. With the internet, she is able to find backing evidence that she is being controlled.
I am so happy @MominCrisis that your daughter has arranged a doctor and has agreed to a long acting injection. I hope it changes her life (and yours) for the better as quickly as the LAIs worked for my daughter!
Hello. I want to update the group on my 29 year old daughter’s progress. She is finally getting the help she needs and accomplished what I could not!
During a horrible psychotic break she called 911 13 times in 2 days trying to get admitted to the hospital. Finally, an officer with a Sz family member recognized what was going on and called ahead to the hospital where they placed her on a 72 hour hold. She agreed to take an LAI and is getting stable! (She has never been med compliant more than a couple of weeks).
Once stable, the plan is to send her to a longer term treatment facility where she can attend drug counseling and therapy. She is excited about the plan and I am feeling more hope than any point since her diagnosis twelve years ago.
I do have a question to any of you who have taken or a loved one has taken a LAI. When first taken is it common to experience a mental struggle while the mind attempts to sort through past and present thoughts and emotions?
I ask because while speaking with my daughter over the phone she will be speaking in her “normal”, calm, thoughtful voice and suddenly, she becomes fearful, upset, angry and negative.
I am thankful to the officer who recognized my daughter as a confused young woman struggling with mental illness and DID something!! I am also thankful to her Social Worker who continues to push back on the doctor who has wanted to release her since her 72 hour hold expired. She is currently on a 12 day hold which expires in four days.
While I’ve never had injectable treatments, I can speak to recovery being in fits and starts on neuroleptic medications. You can seem and feel “of two minds” about things. I often say here these drugs do not work like switches and you shouldn’t expect symptoms to vanish immediately or completely. It’s more like the volume getting turned down or stations on a radio getting tuned in a bit clearer. There’ll likely still be some static and other annoyances, but gradually life becomes a bit more manageable.
There can also be a period of what I call “The Rip Van Winkle effect”, where you gradually adjust to the reality of your situation. It can be disorienting, because over time you’ve become accustomed to your delusional thought patterns and hallucinations and so on. They were like old often abusive friends you felt might never go away, so you learned to put up with them and as they recede, you don’t know your place anymore and can become fearful and upset. And if you’re lucky months or years later, someone will say that they noticed you’re doing much better, even though on the inside you’ve been self-conscious and unsure while you’ve been sorting things out and learning to understand the new you.
Thank you. Your descriptions are very helpful.
She seems to be in what you call the Rip Van Winkle effect, running her thoughts past me for fact checking, trying to sort through what is real. She is still mistrusting of her bf who she thinks has been pimping her out. As she tells me the story (for the 100th time) this time, she seems hesitant as if she is hearing her words for the first time as she is speaking.
In the past, I would defend her bf saying that he cares about her, and he is trustworthy. Now, I am taking a more delicate approach and asking her questions about her delusions. ie. Why do you believe such-and-such? This has allowed her introspection rather than immediate justification of her truth.
I was looking at the treatment advocacy website about the differences between states on involuntary committment. California hs a “D-” but Arizona has a “B.” Not sure how helpful that information is but California is notoriously bad. Grading the States - Treatment Advocacy Center
That’s a better approach. It’s better to foster a shift to more critical thinking rather than pointing out every last thing she got “wrong” and “correcting” her. It may help to find a cognitive therapist to help her sort through this and work with her to form constructive thinking processes to interpret past, present and future events.
I did this part on my own. It involved sort of a mental checklist: what do i think is going on? why do I believe this? why am I concerned about it? what other possible interpretations are there? which interpretation is most likely? what’s the consequences of thinking this way? how can I verify my suspicions are valid without making people think I’m crazy, etc. (aka as reality-testing) I feel ingraining these sorts of thinking patterns inoculates you from relapse. Relapses tended to be more mild and manageable when I employed these thinking patterns.
As I said it can be a disorienting time, and another facet of the process is letting go or letting yourself off the hook. There will be some experiences she won’t be able to find an explanation for, or a definitive answer of what was real or not, and that’s okay. I say at times when reflecting on past delusions, “you had to be there.” I might not be fully able to explain how I came to believe these things or whether they were real or not, but that’s in the past and it’s not as important to me as it used to be, so let’s move forward. It’s sort of an acknowledgment of the type of suspension of disbelief that gets you wrapped up in movie, novel or video game plots and so on, and how these experiences can be compelling but it’s not practical to live your life that way.
Thank you for another informative post. I am thankful that my daughter learned critical thinking skills in high school and from her father who was huge on the notion of “question everything”.
I very much am trying to incorporate the “let’s look ahead to your future” as I hold my breath wondering what that will look like.
She is on day ten of her two week involuntary hold and will be transferring to a residential treatment facility, I expect on Monday or Tuesday. My husband and I will drive her the six hours to the new facility, due to her current mistrust of strangers, particularly men.
My feisty, intelligent, well spoken, sometimes forceful, 4’ 10" daughter is one of the strongest women I know. I pray she holds the course and once released will allow herself to be admitted to the new facility.
One day, one step, one breath at a time.
Yes!! You are correct. Mental health services in AZ seem to be more accessible. It is beyond my comprehension how this all came to fall into place, finally receiving treatment in California.
She called 911 16 times in 2 days asking asking to be taken to the hospital to be 5150’d! They said they could not help her and eventually locked her out of the ER!! Over the phone, I could hear the nurse yelling through the locked door that the ER is for patients only!!
The laws around mental health need to change and it appears to me that California is one of the worst states to be mentally ill.
Since she totalled her car she has no means of transportation to seek him out.