How can we help families

It must be hard being a family member of someone with sz and being sza myself i wanted to ask? How can we help you support us and yourselves? I always think of my parents and how hard it has been for them especially after seeing there son taken away after running his car into a tree and the aftershock of that incident. I just want to be able to support myself so i can make it easier for family to help me and themselves.

As a parent, I can say we want the same as other parents if other children. We want you to have a good, satisfying life and have good relationships with us and other people. It doesn’t matter if you never become president. But we do worry about how you will support yourself when we’ve gone.
My son is now accepting treatment and starting to exercise regularly and study. This is making me very happy. To be honest the next thing I would like is to see him build more of a social network. Step by step…

Dear Kazuma, What a caring question.

When my family member is safe, eating regular meals, and getting along with me and others, I feel much better.

I am sure that when you ran your car into a tree, you were experiencing immense suffering.

What I would like most of all for you and for my family member: if there is an overwhelming amount of pain or difficulty, ask for help. I realize that all family members are just human beings, flawed and having made many mistakes and that trust may be difficult.

By taking care of ourselves, we take care of the people around us. When life circumstances become overwhelming, we ask for help. This bond of trust is like a lifelong guarantee that we will help one another if we can, whenever help is needed.

I am saying all of this based on family members who are non-abusive and engage in healthy relationships.

These illnesses are profoundly difficult. Family members know it is much more difficult for the person with a diagnosis. The question I would ask is, what can family members do to actually help??

As someone who’s had family support for the total 35 years I’ve had paranoid schizophrenia I think I can name a few things that parents want from their schizophrenic children and what we as schizophrenics can do to help get that for us and themselves.

Of course they want the best for us, they want us to have a full, well-rounded, happy lives just like they would want for any so-called “normal” (i.e. non-schizophrenic) child of theirs. Having this disease will make us fall way short of that ideal but the things we can do to are obvious. For the child with schizophrenia; co-operate in your own treatment. That means take your medication as prescribed. Go to your doctors reguarlly, that means both physical and psychiatric. STAY AWAY FROM DRUGS. I can’t emphasize this enough. The surest, fastest way to failure is doing drugs. I don’t want to be too harsh to people who are stuck doing drugs but as a recovering addict, I know the pitfalls of drugs and what drug use brings.

Try to follow suggestions made by people who are trying help you. Doctors and other mental health workers don’t tell you what they think will help you just to exercise their gums. They have seen what works for people and they are trying to help you.

What we can do to help our parents help us is common sense. But yeah, listen and learn and keep an open mind. We as people with schizophrenia have enough on our plate with this disease, we don’t need to run around causing trouble or getting in trouble, we should refrain from doing anything illegal.

Any adult has to do things that he/she doesn’t want to do but are good for him. We as people with schizophrenia are no different. We have to socialize when we don’t really want to. We have to take our responsibilities seriously. We have to try and take care of our own physical and mental well being. And all this is done by a collaboration between the care-giver and the afflicted.

It may seem like us people with schizophrenia are in a separate world than so-called “normies”. But the lines are blurred; if we want a good life in the normal world we have to do these things. We are not failures if we do not succeed at these things a 100%. Even normal people struggle and fail often. But if we succeed at least a little at these things than we will make it easier for our parents and ourselves and give us a fighting chance to have some kind of life.

Thanks for the reply everyone. And to answer your question id say just love us. I always love when a family member gives me a hug for no reason. Helps me get out of the darkness.