My Schizophrenic brother tried to kill me- Please Help!

Family
1

So my older brother has been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. He had his first breakdown or episode a year and 8 months ago. He has been in and out the psychiatric hospital plenty of times. So last two break downs were the worst. Two weeks ago, he created a problem out of no where and started arguing with me until my mom and I decided to leave the house. We were trying to get our stuff, and he started arguing with my mom to stay. She refused and he started dragging her and forcing her to come talk to him. So i had to intervene and I tried to make him leave her hand and not hurt her. He started punching me and I went outside and he started threatening me that he will kill me and not only kill me because it’s mercyful, but he would torture me slowly…

After he went to jail, he started acting normal. The court gave me an order of protection against him, but I asked the attorney to make it partial because we worked things out after he promised to find a job and keep himself busy. Anyways, last day everything was alright. At night, I had a beer and went to the basement to smoke a cigarette. I heard a sound in the air condition which I thought I was a leak or something. So I called him asking him to check it. He said wait a minute, went to his room and came back. We went to the basement and everything was alright he said there’s nothing wrong with it. Then he asked me if I have cigarette, and I invited him for one. We went outside to smoke and we had a normal conversation. I went to my room, and the next thing is my mom knocking the door saying the cops are here!!

He called the cops telling them that I was carrying a knife in my bucket and trying to kill him in the basement. I do have a knife, but I wasn’t carrying it at that moment. After the cops convinced him to give him a ride to the hospital, I went to his room and I found a screwdriver which I believe he carried it when I called him to check the air conditioner!!

So beside how dangerous he is, my mom is also depressed because of him. She’s old and I am afraid of losing her!

What should I do? Should I take my mom and leave my brother? If I stay with him he will either kill me, or kill both of us! Or my mom will also lose it at some point!

I am pretty sure he will never admit that he’s sick. And he will never get his medication no matter what! Any advice please? What should I do? I don’t want to lose my mother, as well as my life!

2

Thats a very difficult situation - but your first priority has to be the safety of you and your mother. Given that you really want to try to get your brother into treatment. You need to research the options and possible approaches that might work best with him - here are some good resources to study and learn more:

http://www.schizophrenia.com/sznews/archives/005561.html

Contact (if you are in the USA) the NAMI office closest to you and learn the different / best treatment options in your city:

This is a start. I’m sure other people will add other good suggestions.

3

Hard to know what to do. Hard to give advice to you when I don’t know the ins and outs of it.

All I can say is try to get your brother to connect with the local psych team. Hospitalisation against ones will is not always the answer. But your son could avail of other psychiatric services.

If you think your brother is a threat, he could live in a group home. Group homes are basically like psych hospitals but with a lot more freedom. You can come and go as you please but you live by the rules.

4

It sounds like he needs to live on his own. Mental health should help him with housing. You could call the mental health in your county and talk to them and see what services they offer.

5

Thats a pretty scary situation! Its good that he is in the hospital. Not a good idea to have him live with you guys. You are probably right about the medication-he wont take it until he wants to. He is a danger to you and himself. i would stay in touch with the team that is treating your brother so you know whats going on. I would either take your mother and leave, or refuse to have your brother there. They should help him with housing, etc…
Good luck and come back here often

6

Sounds like he needs to be committed to a mental hospital…again…I know that sounds harsh but it would be for his own good. Do call the cops if he threatens you again or tries to kill you.

This illness can make lovers into enemies in the eyes of the person suffering. I became violent once and was committed for one night, I was very drunk so they sort of blamed that and let me go the next morning after I lied to the evaluator about not hearing voices, ect. I just wanted to get home and take a shower, brush my teeth and drink a gatorade, I was filthy and hungover.

I kept it together, stayed in school, gained insight as a psych major and was evaluated privately and then diagnosed about a month after the incident. Its a funny story with my friends now, even though I assaulted them. They sent seven cops to surround me. I am quite dangerous to be honest, I am trained in Krav Maga and lift weights. Ive gotten into powerlifting, which is where you lift the heaviest weights as possible, but I am thinking of ditching it for bodybuilding soon because it is known to screw people over and leave them with permanent injuries, while bodybuilding is less associated with hernia, slipped disks, ect. People just get stretch marks from bodybuilding, LOL I have some stretch marks on my ass since I recovered from a few lower body injuries and started squatting again.

But anyways yeah I sort of was your brother. He cant tell what is real, his delusions have him confused as to who to trust- I trusted no one while I was psychotic, now I have been on medications for a year and am quite normal and healthy, but I still smoke cigarettes, I picked that habit up when I had my break at 18.

He can recover. I refused medication for over a year, now I have been on it for over a year, I just turned 21 and had my break at 18 1/2 and was mistaken to have depression until I was 19, then I was given psychosis NOS by my therapist, which I completely denied. I did take the evaluator (different person) seriously, he looked me in the eye and firmly stated “you’re very crazy.” He deals with death row inmates and wasnt scared of me, he talked sense into me as well as he could and I listened selectively. I did listen when he told me I had paranoid schizophrenia.

Recovery can take years or even decades, so dont lose hope. If it werent for my major, psychology, I would probably never have asked to be evaluated. I was studying schizophrenia and it sounded too much like me. I am now halfway through college and almost done with my psych classes, I just have to take a research class and write my thesis in my senior year, I have tons of psych class hours completed and have written papers and given presentations on schizophrenia. Im a little obsessed with it.

People like John Nash or Elyn Saks (if you havent heard of them, look them up, Saks especially) did not recover in a year like I did, but they achieved so much that their achievements on paper look like a joke.

It sounds like he lives with you, how he got out of the psych hospital multiple times beats me. Usually they find a medication that works and make you continue to take it. Well good news- they make depot injections of lots of antipsychotics which last for like a week or two, maybe longer, I wouldnt know I havent had one, just remember reading about them (vaguely remember). He could be taken for injections once a week or so and that way you KNOW he is on medication!

There are options. You might want to see a psychologist and ask for an opinion on your brother and also to keep yourself together. My parents are rather exhausted from my struggle, and so am I. I would completely lose it sometimes and either throw a fit and have to be calmed down or I drank myself to sleep. Drank myself to sleep most of the time. At least your brother isnt doing that.

If this is really making you that upset, I would call the police and tell them about his death threats, which will land him in a mental hospital again. I was too smart to threaten to kill anyone while psychotic, I thought that I was under surveillance and my friends were wearing wires so I didnt speak much at all. I remember speaking like 4 sentences in November of 2012. I didnt talk to my parents or anyone at school. I remember saying “Im doing fine” to someone who knew me who saw me at the gym.

7

I have dealt with this repeatedly. Often hospitals are unable to keep patients longer than the insurance will approve for, and if a patient can present as not harmful, out they go, with a prescription and an appointment at the community mental health service. If the patient is in denial, both of those things get tossed into the trash, and they are on track to come back in the revolving door in a short time.

Keep up your good progress, I’m sure you are making many people proud!

8

I’ve never been in a psych ward for more than four days…I present as normal no matter what’s going on in my head. But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t dangerous during the apex of my psychosis…hell I at one point constructed a Molotov cocktail launcher out of stuff lying around the basement after being awake for three days in an amphetamine fueled schizophrenic rage. Once ran my father out of the house with a hunting knife at 6 am in his bathrobe because I was convinced he had raped my mother…

But never been in a psych ward more than four days. I don’t know about what they do at the state hospitals but in the psych ward they tend to let you go if you present as stable. The last time I was there, four and a half years ago, the doctor actually told me that my mother was trying to have me committed to the state hospital and he thought this was ridiculous so I checked out and headed south with a borderline cutter…eeek.

But yeah psychosis can be very dangerous, especially in my case as no one other than my parents had any clue I was dangerous at all and no one would take my parents word for it as they’d talk to me and go “huh…”

-hope you can get you’re brother the help he needs, recovery from this is possible!