I will always caveat this with somethings that are cruel, in a way but may be necessary to remember.
She is ill but her tirades against you are a form of mental and psychological abuse. While I fully understand that she is unable to rationalize what she thinks and feels are the result of her illness. Not a true reflection of you or your worth (or lack thereof) as a person. Your decision to stick with her despite the fact you are not married is a sign of your better morals, as often, (and I understand WHY some people choose to leave) they simply go.
For reasons that I do understand, people have left relationships with schizophrenic family members or partners. While it seems cruel, at times it is absolutely necessary if you yourself are on a mental trajectory toward self-harm or blame/abuse. Battered Wife Syndrome very much applies here. Technically, a battered wife is the byproduct of an abusive controlling narcissist. This is a recognized form of mental illness; that being said, it is NOT a reason to tolerate others poor behavior.
IF YOU ARE IN DANGER OF BEING HURT, Do not hesitate to get out and call the police or to get OUT of the situation.
If you cannot record when/where/how/what you have been doing, start recording a diary of dates, times, people met/called and catalog a phone record of all your conversations with others. Hard copies of everything are a must. Log notebooks with your friends or a trusted legal advisor who can be appraised of your situation. 211 has resources
for mental health help and social services and legal aide if you need referrals. An E-mail to your local DSHS while your at work MAY be able to help you with legal resources. Unfortunately people can and often do, believe what a paranoid schizophrenic says over your own word if she were ever to accuse you of crimes, especially if and when you have to call police.
Start a recording when the phone call to EMS happens and KEEP it GOING, before during and after you have made contact with EMS. Have some sort of documentation notarized with her diagnosis and an immediate contact bracelet for a medical intervention team. If she is found to have one by the police and EMS when they come to help, they will be able to tailor their responses according to her mental health issues, so long as your state has a mental health crisis intervention team. State her diagnosis on the phone and specifically request that she be seen by trained police/EMS familiar with her case. DHS and whatever Mental Health Resources are available in your state often include a mental health crisis hotline that routes directly to specialized services during an episode of decompensation.
I would see if her clientele are able to back up when/where/what her work schedule looks like so any accusations against you can be disproven. (i.e attempting to poison/hurt her when you where obviously not there.) It is hard to have to think about possibly reporting her to law enforcement but SZ get worse the LESS TIME SHE HAS WITH TREATMENT.
Eventually her symptoms may stabilize but her mental deficits and problems will only get worse if she continues to ignore treatment. Please remember, this is not directed at you, as in that you must do all this, but you need to take it into consideration. Her family may not help and you have very little recourse or reason to expose yourself to danger and possible suicidal ideation because you cannot help her (boyfriend with no legal documentation/decision making power does not qualify for a care provider. Unless you have it in writing, from a courts perspective it never happened) Proof of caretaker status can be supplemented with evidence of financial support via your shared apartment and helping with her car/shopping/whatever you two still manage to do as a couple. Save receipts.
Sometimes that is the best thing you can do to call EMS when she is decompensating so that you have an impartial audience and a record of what, where, and when things happened. Worst case scenario they can and often do have EMT and Paramedics speak to a patients mental state/ your actions attitudes during and after the case.
For practical advice, I would see if you can get in contact with her family members. Ask a social worker if she can find them for you and make the appropriate notifications. Especially if you don’t already have Durable Power of Attorney, with her mental statue, the social worker can be a temporary liaison for her treatment plan. Unfortunately, your girlfriend must consent to the release of information, ROI, so any and all of her care-team can communicate with each other, and HIPPA for you to be involved. Unless she is an active danger to herself, or you can prove she is mentally incapacitated, at the hospital admission especially, do not hesitate to ask for a social worker. They can provide another disinterested third party to prove your girlfriend has SZ and needs treatment. Masking symptoms and promising to take meds (if she has ever had any prescribed) and then failing to follow through is normal. If and how long you accept how this makes her treat you is up to you.
Remember to tell the Social worker if she doesn’t take meds. Do not fill her prescriptions without keeping a file of how many pills she has left/did not take, if you are going to be present during medication delivery. At else, a pharmacy record where she refused to refill her prescriptions (she has fewer excuses these days, able to drive, work, and get meds delivered to her front door on her days off basically makes med pick up a gift, not a requirement.) Your girlfriend may need help and an outside assessment to be given what she needs both mental health wise and physically. Allowing yourself to utilize as many resources as you can will help her and you in the long run. Refusal to take appropriate medications is sufficient reason to invoke a longer hospitalization, but the paper trail MUST be there to get her that help.
I sympathize with the life circumstance that have led to your resilience but would close with this. We all have one life to live. Supporting others is a selfless gesture, especially considering the number of people who are inconsiderate of others. This is a kindness so many don’t deserve and you are doing it anyway. However, you can and already do have signs of caregiver fatigue. Seeing a counselor or psychologist (who by the way may be able to point you to resources to help her and yourself) is a must. Aside from respecting your own time and health, it’s necessary to set boundaries with yourself and with others, coming from an abused background where you were never considered. It’s a horrible place to be and I sympathize.
My brother has Schizophrenia and my mom has Type II Bipolar with Schizoaffective tendencies so I have been here before. My younger cousin accused multiple people of rape before being found out as a liar. She has Schizophrenia as well, partly due to an sexual abuse case that we have absolute concrete proof of, and unfortunately she has been committed to long term adult supportive care, via Medicare and her, quite frankly, Richey rich parents. That was not the case in my family (the having money/time) to care for them part.
Whilst my mom has been in a long-term stable state for 7 years now, my brother has refused treatment so many times and FINALLY after collecting practically every speeding ticket, hospitalization, job loss, and odd behavior that he has ever had, getting help. I collected evidence from Psyche professors to former colleges and EMT’s. He is receiving a partial permanent stay in a psychiatric facility until he is stable enough for long-term monitoring and disability housing options. At this point my father, who recently had a minor heart attack, and my mother, whose symptoms and medications can get worse/fail to respond to treatment with enough stress, cannot take care of him anymore.
As horrible as it sounds, I took pictures of his room. How he cannot clean and care for himself. He refuses to unclog toilets to the point of leaving them overflowing with feces and urine, and the MANY MANY job losses that have resulted form his lack of timeliness and attention to personal hygiene. To say nothing of the times he was escorted off the premises of his work claiming that everyone he worked with was a homophobic bigot, among other things which were nonsensical and available on camera for voice and video audio. The irony is he worked at an LGBTQ positive clothing store. No gender stereotyping and a trans boss as his manager. He took a swing at a customer and got a “absolutely possessed” to quote the customers report, look on his face, when he made the accusation against them.
For my parents safety and my brothers (he goes missing and doesn’t tell us where/what he is doing) I have cameras installed in the front of the house and in my parents rooms/the kitchen. 2 party consent laws make this a tricky thing to navigate but my brother is a tenant and my parents the primary owners. Because they are not in places where you expect a reasonable degree of privacy, like a room or a bathroom, the evidence is something you can bring up in court/to a counselor, even if it proves inadmissible, it is the only reason I could show someone that his symptoms were as bad as they are. We never ended up using the evidence because it would be thrown out due to a patients (his) inability to consent to filming or audio recording at the time of the incident. Save some major lapses in speech that I have recorded in public (no expectation of privacy as I also tended to pull out my phone around family members as a cover. He likes being included in social events without truly realizing his insane mumbling is what has kept any of my siblings from allowing them to have a relationship with their kids.) I will not disclose all of his medical history except to say his SZ effects his libido and he will act on it with strangers or people willing to abuse him. It’s disgusting to have to have filed a report of sexual abuse on a known predator in the community that contacted him via the internet. The police and medical staff noted he was in a decompensated state after his initial panic/fear response. This is better evidence than what I could provide as a caregiver and as a related family member. They are both impartial and obligated to speak to their patients best interests, while also being realistic about what the situation is like.
I have had to do most of this research myself or had to call people on my own time. (I had to leave college to become my brother and my mothers primary care givers and haven’t had a real job in 5 years.) As such, I say this without malice but with envy, I would love to be in YOUR situation jobwise. I get some payment for being a register caretaker but it isn’t enough for me to live on and eventually, I will have to cut my losses and leave if I don’t want to die in poverty. My parents were the first in their generation to have good job opportunities but due to my brothers constant messes, that has gone the way of the dodo. He has a care trust but they can’t provide anything to my siblings and I because his medical needs are so expansive and expensive.
In one respect I’m better off than most because I already know what I want from life. No kids, a place to live, and maybe time to pursue my own hobbies in peace. I would never drag someone into the disaster that is my life knowing what this is like. My circle of friends is likewise, small. Ditto for my chances of providing the family with grandchildren. I don’t want to deal with this ever again once my brother and mother pass, despite the fact that I know it has, thus far, skipped me. I don’t want to foist another mentally ill person on the world knowing what I do about the risks of heritability.
