I am so sorry for what you are going through. My son was never violent towards me……until he was. I ended up in the hospital with an MRI of my head to be sure nothing was broken. If he hasn’t stopped punching me on his own, he would have killed me. I’m 59, and there was no way I could defend myself. I never thought he would ever hurt me. He doesn’t remember the attack, and to this day, will deny anything happened. Again, I am so sorry this happened, it is not your fault. it is NOT your fault
Hope, This is very true.
my Son is very non-compliant on meds. I can only force him to take meds through Court order or calling 911 when he decomposes. I wish the system can help more and recognize that someone with severe mental illness needs to be in long treatment center/Facility for a while instead of being discharged from hospital after 2 weeks or after on month. it does take time for find the right antipsychotic combination of meds to make a mentally ill person more functional.
junegirl2409,
I am really sorry about that happened to your dad. My son did really hit me on my hand recently because I was always reminding him to take his medicine. I get him admitting for a month to a local hospital he is now on Clozapine but he started cutting his medicine and taking 1/2 of the does as soon as he was discharged from Hospital. I am planning to do a court order soon by afraid of the consequences… God help all of us.
Praying for you and your family. Be safe.
I agree with you JARCA2016. Getting on to meds and adjusting their lives is something that would take much longer - I really think more like 6 months or longer. Its a process that will continue for the rest of their lives. 2 weeks or a month is unrealistic.
I’m so sorry that happened to you! I’m so glad you are ok. Is your son living with you currently? Thank you so much for saying it’s not my fault. I think it’s human nature to question if could have done more but hearing that makes me feel better.
Our paranoid SZ family member has never, to my knowledge, at least, shown any inclination toward violence, so it sounds as if we are very lucky. What is difficult to understand is how people with very serious mental illnesses such as SZ can simply refuse medication, thereby increasing the level of danger to themselves and others. SZ has definitely played a part in some high-profile criminal cases of late, in which those with effectively untreated mental illness were both perpetrators and victims. (In some of those cases, judges would not allow disclosure of the mental illness to the jury. Not sure what the answer is, because we can’t have a system in which the mentally ill are treated as second-class. On the other hand, severe mental illness can impair judgement, making sufferers behave irrationally.) Many commenting here have indicated that medication refusal can make caring for sufferers extremely challenging, as well.
You are fortunate, but it is more the norm than the exception. Unfortunately where the exceptions occur it can be horrific and we family members, according to Dr E Fuller Torrey, are the most at risk.
An opinion from another parent…
Herschel has a child with schizophrenia, more of his thoughts can be found at mentalillnesspolicy.org particularly his article - “Uncivil Liberties”.
We are told that our family members ON medication are NOT more likely than the general population to commit violence. My F to F teacher asks that I stress the “ON medication” part.
When events of violence occur, they do get a lot of attention. To me, it seems as though the court system in some states according to their laws, will, -at that point- finally force medicate them in order to be able to put them on trial for an event that occurred during psychosis. To me, these high profile cases are similar to witch trials. Our family members are often portrayed as “evil”, the comment sections are merciless. A society that won’t force meds and won’t listen to our calls for forced meds when we express our concern, will suddenly line up to throw comment section tomatoes at our family members.
Of course “where meds are necessary” is the tricky bit. Who can make that decision in a country that has firmly established the rights of our family members to not be medicated? Some of the states, individual counties and cities are working to make it easier based, often its based on arrests and incarcerations. Yes, that is at least something. Many have new laws on the books that aren’t used -yet. Generally the current US plan for our family members, who we are concerned may commit violence, is to wait until they do have an incident and throw them into prison.
NAMI in Family to Family also teaches that the best indicator for violence is if the person had violent tendencies before they were mentally ill. My son did not have violent tendencies before he was ill. He still does not have violent tendencies. What he did do before he became neurodiverse/scz was defend himself. He would stand up to bullying and if challenged he would present ready to physically defend himself.
Add paranoia, visual and auditory hallucinations and we have a person who, at times, firmly believes people are trying to kill him. He would buy guns and arm himself for the attack on his person. That is a dangerous situation and not a single law had been broken. As time passed, his delusions began to focus on his father.
We couldn’t get him to take meds, we tried all the recommended ways. We knew we would lose in a court battle to force meds where we live, because he had never done anything illegal or violent. We heard twice from the local mental health officer “its not illegal to have a mental illness”. Our son could have easily shown in court that he was making capable decisions in other areas. We had cameras outside with voice recording capability, we never heard or recorded a threat. He raged around the outside of our home demanding we stop harassing HIM. We were able to Amador’s methods to obtain other goals. We lessened his stress wherever we could - reducing his stress was probably the biggest impact item. Living in a space by himself reduced his stress. When we moved him away from his dad, that was another huge relief of stress for him.
Family to Family made the point over and over again - reduce their stress! For my son Amador’s LEAP method made that possible - one couple from our class has made absolutely no progress with their son. They attended the class, they read the books and didn’t follow any of the advice. The mom still pleads with the son to see a doctor for meds because he is SICK. The dad comes home and argues with the son about getting a job. Yeah, not much stress reduction or any sort of progress for them and its been 9 years since the class.
When a young Houston area man killed his parents (one parent attended my Family to Family class) the police found him just standing there covered in blood. At first the police thought the people on the ground with the sledgehammer next to them were some sort of Halloween decorations. They loaded the silent, compliant, blood covered young man into an ambulance and sent him to the hospital for treatment. At the hospital they discovered he was uninjured. Our Family to Family class met to process and grieve, not everyone attended and not everyone attended the funeral either.
He had been an only child. We learned at the reception that his parents had told friends and family members he was a drug addict.There was only one picture of him in the video of photos. He was a young boy and all three of the looked very happy together. I used to keep track of him on the court pubic records. Every now and then they bring him to court to simply remand him back into our state’s forensic prison. Last I knew, they have not been able to medicate him enough for him to stand trial for the deaths of his gentle parents. An only child, his mom told us in class that he was the pride of their life, her eyes glowed with love when she spoke of him. In other classes she told us he was threatening to kill them, she would imitate the voice he used. She said she often stopped her car at the entrance of her subdivision after work, she was afraid to go home. When they are violent, we family members are the most likely victims.
To say the least, it was a pretty startling introduction to the world of mental illness. Our teacher never taught again. While some classes keep in contact and do reunions, our class scrambled to exit.
I want to touch on the violence part too. In my experience with my brother he had never been violent up until that day. Even growing up he was the quiet, polite kid who never brought about confrontation. He was never in any fights either. In the time he lived alone with my dad, it was never mentioned that he was violent in any way. My dad had said if he felt threatened he’d change the locks and kick him out. Now I don’t know of any confrontations at that time or if my dad just didn’t tell us if he felt scared. It’s hard to speculate because I wasn’t there. This one event could have been the first and only time a confrontation arose and it ended up in violence.
Fear of the experience that your dad had is part of the reason that I told my spouse that his brother could never live with us. I’m not sure that he would hurt one of his siblings, but I’m just an in-law, and the last time I spoke with his doctor’s nurse, she told me that I needed to be careful not to be seen as the main person pushing his disability application. That makes me wonder what he said to them about me. It’s true that I have urged him to take disability, but there are very good reasons for that, chiefly that he is unemployable (has been fired several times, as he simply cannot get along with others), but also because we cannot continue to pay all of his bills forever. We have been very patient with him, but naturally the siblings who haven’t been paying his considerable costs are less anxious for him to receive benefits.
Its okay to be concerned about your safety. I promised my husband that if my son ever voiced a threat we would move him off our property. We were quite dedicated to getting a threat recorded to force meds. One night when my son was having the worst episode we ever saw, we were trapped in our house while he raged around the outside. The evening is detailed on a thread here somewhere. It was frightening, you could see by his actions that he was seeing and hearing things and was being tormented by them.
We thought it might be enough that evening when our son threw a rock towards me. We called for help, it was the weekend, we didn’t get the mental health officer, the officer we got was not impressed. I guess the rock needed to actually hit me. Luckily (unluckily?) my son wasn’t able to throw it very far, it was one of my solid granite large landscaping rocks.
Shortly afterwards, we were told by my son’s second psychiatrist that she was concerned about my husband’s safety. We helped our son move away as quickly as we could.
@junegirl2409 as you say, it is impossible to speculate because you weren’t there. Your brother may have no memory or inconsistent memories. My son has described events in the past to me in conflicting ways. He seems quite convinced when telling all versions. Such a tragedy for you and your family. Heartwrenching.
Hi Hope…were the threats that were made to harm you specifically? We are receiving threats that are more indirect…telling us we will burn in hell and deserve punishment and that we should drown ourselves and that he wants us to suffer. He says he will destroy or lives and harrass us till we die. I don’t know the right way to address these. I plan in my mind that when I talk to him I can have a reasonable conversation, but it is impossible. There is so much hate, rage and false accusation. It is in texts today and a couple days ago he began calling me names on the phone so I hung up as I have told him I wont tolerate that. I just don’t know if what I am doing is right or not. Should I try and calm him down (which doesn’t work) or let him rage? Should I block the calls and texts or watch for more threats? I have no idea what is the right thing to do.
Trixie12, I am concerned about your safety. When the situation was reaching extreme levels with our son we moved him away and for a long time we didn’t communicate with him unless he initiated contact or it was essential “business” information. Would it be possible to move your son further away from your location? Would he be interested in moving?
While its not based on anything except our experience, my husband and I believe that threats, even indirect threats, must be considered seriously. Again, this is layman experience, but we believe that the threats our family members voice during psychosis should be considered as an alert.
I started reading this book, it is consistent to my husband’s and my thinking that we can’t be too wary when our family members are vocalizing warning of danger. Our Family to Family experience made a deep impression on us. The son had threatened to kill them many times. Another family woke up to find their garage on fire. Their son had been warning them to get rid of a new car they had purchased. He claimed the car was possessed, when they didn’t get rid of it, he started the fire.
Your son’s verbalizations would not be enough where we are located to get a hospitalization.
Forgive me if you have mentioned it before, but have you taken measures to make sure you are safe in your home? Does your son have a key to your house? Do you have a dog? Is your bedroom secure? Do you have outside cameras? Do you keep your entry doors locked at all times? If your son has a credit card of yours, do you have instant text alerts to tell you the card has been used and where it has been used?
I think you are doing the right thing by simply hanging up and not responding to his texts.
What sort of police response do you get in your area? Would a mental health officer or a crisis intervention team respond and check on your son? Again, I apologize if you have said so before. I have my grandson with me and have limited time to research your past posts.
Thank you for your response. I actually had ordered that book through amazon but have not yet received it. We have taken some precautions and have installed a camera outside. The doors are mostly locked except my husband forgets frequently. I am concerned about the indirect threats as well. I just dont know how a person can contain that much hate and rage and not take it out on someone. The police here is not too good and we live in a state that has extremely liberal laws for the mentally ill. We contacted an attorney and it looks like our hands are tied. Sadly, I think the only thing that can get him treatment is if he is arrested. I sure dont want that to happen though. The poor guy. Even though this is hell for us, my heart breaks more for him. If a person has cancer, people have compassion for their disease. If they are mentally ill, people have contempt and call the person evil. Thank you for your advice on that it is right to hang up when he is being verbally abusive. I wish there were more resources. I think so many of us are just lost and floundering.
“Trying not to feel like I could have done more to help in this whole situation is definitely something I’m trying to overcome”
@junegirl2409 You must stop second guessing what else you could have done. You did what you thought was right, and that is ALL you could have done. Your father chose to help his son, and did the best he could too. Whatever delusions or hallucinations your brother was suffering with were the cause of the murder, and his lack of response afterwards. No one, including your brother, will ever know what was in his mind that night.
I wish you peace in your own mind, take any moments you can to be kind to yourself until the memories aren’t eating you alive.
To all who wonder why the system isn’t stronger than it is for forced medical help for the mentally ill, I agree that it should be easier for caregivers to get help for their severely mentally ill relatives. But I think it is most important to try and figure out the way to make the system AS IT EXISTS to work for you. To help your loved one, you need to know all of the laws yourself, all of your local rules, the organizations that can help you, etc. and to keep getting ideas from those you meet in support groups, etc.
There is a fine line that the police, courts and doctors must walk in trying to treat the mentally ill, as well as trying to protect those who aren’t mentally ill. I have a work friend, at the law firm I work as a paralegal for, who was Baker Acted against her will after several fights with her boyfriend. Earlier she refused to call the police each time to report his numerous assaults and batteries. He used that against her later when he called the police himself to maneuver an involuntary hold on her. They had violence in their relationship but she was not mentally ill. She was abused by a conniving boyfriend (and contributed by fighting back). Her boyfriend was a police officer himself, she could never win against him, (as he KNEW how to maneuver the laws in his favor) but didn’t break up with him or report him. She now has a police record and a restraining order because of that relationship, and she was the victim. Not every involuntary hold is correct. Nor is every release correct. The key is what the police see when they come.
I am very very lucky that my own hard experiences and the “forces of the universe” all came together to help me end my daughter’s 3 year psychosis. Her second arrest I went to the arraignment to ask the judge for forced medication while she was in jail. And I also had earlier learned what to do when the jail released her to a hospital without telling me, so I could find her doctor and get her on THE long acting shot that worked (which I knew of from previous failures to medicate her long term. ) No one else’s experience was like mine, but I knew from posts on here and NAMI teachings, enough facts to help me figure out what to do to UTILIZE the law in our favor.
Key was to NOT make excuses for her behavior, to get over my reluctance to FORCE her, to report with detail every threat and bit of violence and to stress how scared I was for my safety. It is easy to downplay or ignore your loved ones’ actions because you DO love them. But I believe that we should never ignore violence or threats, as they ARE illegal, not just behavior mistakes. In the end, 40 police visits to my home, 2 arrests, 5 involuntary holds, and 6 wrong medications resulted in the correct medication. My daughter’s story is a hard-won success story.
I wish the best to all of you to figure out how to help your loved one.
I am concerned about the indirect threats as well. I just dont know how a person can contain that much hate and rage and not take it out on someone. The police here is not too good and we live in a state that has extremely liberal laws for the mentally ill. We contacted an attorney and it looks like our hands are tied. Sadly, I think the only thing that can get him treatment is if he is arrested. I sure dont want that to happen though. The poor guy. Even though this is hell for us, my heart breaks more for him. If a person has cancer, people have compassion for their disease. If they are mentally ill, people have contempt and call the person evil. 
Thank you for your advice on that it is right to hang up when he is being verbally abusive. I wish there were more resources. I think so many of us are just lost and floundering.