So my brother was diagnosed with early schizophrenia back in July, we had an incident where he started hearing voices in the furniture and started throwing holy water all throughout the house. It’s clear that he developed this over time as my brother was never religious and was quite social, but he eventually became withdrawn and stopped talking to most of my family. After we took him to the hospital (where we had to tell police he assaulted my mother so they would take him) he refused to let the doctors get anything out of him or even talk to him. The doctor gave him a pamphlet just describing what he may be going through and my brother ripped it up and said he wasn’t crazy. Since then he seems to have become gradually worse, while he is a bit more social its in a negative way. He constantly shouts at mother for little things such as her making too much food or her not getting expensive food that is 100% organic. He even shouts at her if she picks up the phone telling her all the friends shes ever made are bad people and bad people go somewhere bad. Other situations involve when we went to purchase a new van and he started shouting at the salesman because he had heard him say that my brother is a smaller man and he is better than him, forcing us to leave. You cannot argue with him or represent any opinion because he must be right or else he will become more angry. Other weird cases involve whenever my oldest brother comes to visit he will often stand in the kitchen and just stare at us, not for a few minutes but for a lengthy period of time.
He refuses to take any medication or even any suggestion that he needs help in anyway, he is under the constant assumption that living in North America is a hellhole and that he is going to leave. He refuses to work despite my parents growing age and we cannot seek welfare without his consent. He seems to barely sleep and will sleep for maybe just a few everynight. We are unsure of how to deal with him because it is drastically effecting our lives. We do our best to include him, but he always seems negative and angry. This man used to play video games with me and play with me, now I cannot even look him in the eye without seeing something is wrong. I’m worried that he seems to be getting worse and he is more angrier as the days go by, what can I do short term and long?
I just want to say this sounds SO much like my brother and what we are dealing with. I wish I knew what to do as well. I’m so so sorry you & your family have to go through this. I hope both of our brothers can get help at some point, I have no idea how to make that happen when they are so paranoid! Best of luck to you.
I guess the first thing would be to learn what you can about schizophrenia.
Search Xavier Amador and LEAP on youtube.com. You will find some good videos on how to use LEAP. It’s a way of communicating to help cut down on arguing and build trust. http://www.leapinstitute.org/ - under resources are free videos on using LEAP
LEAP is a way of communicating to build trust. Listen-Empathize-Agree-Partner. http://dramador.com/ - Dr. Xavier Amador is a clinical psychologist whose brother had schizophrenia. He is the founder of the LEAP Institute. Wrote the book: I’m Not Sick I Don’t Need Help! Can buy from his website.
Also look at: Treatment Advocacy Center - under problems you will see anosognosia
Anosognosia looks like denial but is different. Bayes for Schizophrenics: Reasoning in Delusional Disorders - LessWrong - helped my understand delusions http://www.nami.org/ - National Alliance on Mental Illness.
If you are in the US then NAMI should be able to help you with support groups in your area for the family.
I recognize the negativity as my son was pretty bad with it for awhile. He couldn’t see that the negative emotions were coming from himself so he put them on outside sources. If your brother is experiencing high paranoia then from his point of view it’s logical that it is being cause by others.
I also looked into how to discipline adult children with ADD/ADHD and ODD (Oppositional Defiant Disorder). It helped to teach me how to walk away from arguments.
Without treatment then it probably won’t get any better. Maybe try an approach of acknowledging his high anxiety when it comes to dealing with what others are doing. That perhaps an anti-anxiety medication could help. Some anti-psychotics also have a mood stabilizing aspect to them and that is why my son takes them for his anxiety. That is something we can both agree that he has. I had to take the approach with my son that I insist on being treated with a certain amount of respect. If he couldn’t do it then I walked away. Left the home on occasion. There were times he walk into a room and start swearing about the negative energy we were giving off and make no wonder he didn’t want to be here. The room was perfectly calm before he walked in. He couldn’t tell that he brought the negativity with him. When I pointed out to him what he had said including the swearing he said that he didn’t say it… Unfortunately you can’t do much at this point except walk away. I do my best to not be the second half of the argument. It takes a lot of patience. Honestly it got a lot worse before it got better.
It seems like your brother is dealing with high paranoia and voices. His paranoia is probably causing his need for organic food. Staring at you guys when your oldest brother comes could be any number of things. Voices telling him things or even just trouble following what is going on. Hope I helped…
I do not know how to answer you, I have not seen my brother in 19 years, but I know he was involved in some activities against me, back in May 2002 when I arrived back to Finland from America, he called my father and then I talked with him on the phone briefly, he said that he would take me to ‘Harjamäki’ the famous mental hospital in Finland, but he did not know it was closed already in the 1990s, I made a criminal complaint against him, but cops never investigated this, only after two years one cop called and wanted to know, if I still wanted this complaint to be investigated, but it was an old case already. But I still gave his sons a gift, 20 euros each, when I saw them in 2012.