My son has schizophrenia

I am hoping to get some assistance from those that are dealing with what I am right now. My son has schizophrenia and I have been dealing with him for a year or so. I am finding that I really cannot work or do much of anything since he is so needy. Some days he is VERY clingy. He just turned 19, but has the brain of a 12 year old. How do you deal with this in your every day life? How can I get my life back?

Maybe enroll him in some kind of day program with other mentally ill people? Everybody would be in the same boat and not a lot is required of the client. I was in one in 1988. I was in the middle of a relapse but the day program was low stress and easy and some of my fellow members were not that high functioning either. But it was good to be around people and structure is good for someone with schizophrenia. Some of the activities we did was playing board games, having very informal groups, playing volleyball, cooking lunch for ourselves. If your son was in one of those it would give you time each day to get some things done.

I don’t know where you reside but where im at the common practice for that is to turn your back and walk away.

Thats why before the whole economic drop most homeless were either addicts or mentally ill.
i think it’s great that you want to help your son.

This is an excellent idea!! I know structure would be awesome for him!! I appreciate your input :smile:

Thanks so much!!

I was part of a day program for a while. We took kinda of like classes. Stuff like managing your emotions, trauma therapy, current events, and healthy living.

Those classes are great

You might check and see if there is an early psychosis treatment program neer you. These are well funded and really good (and free) and have the latest research and science behind them:

http://forum.schizophrenia.com/t/early-psychosis-treatment-centers-how-to-get-great-help-for-free/12743

In some areas, mental health workers will come to your house and try to help a person and even take a mentally ill person on an outing to coffee or to the park or even just on a walk. It would be good for your son to relate and connect with other people besides you.

I joined an Adult Ed course once at my local college where they taught people how to be more independent. They taught life skills to disabled people. They taught cooking, paying bills, good hygeine, socializing skills, how to catch a bus, and many other things. Turns out I had already been doing these things but it seemed like a useful class and it only cost $30.00 for a semester.

If worse comes to worse you could maybe have him move into a group home like a board & care. I lived in one from 1990-95. It was clean and relatively safe and I was comfortable there. It was just a bunch of guys living in a big two-story house in the community.But it took the pressure off of my family to be safe and not depend on them so much. And I still saw my family often while I lived there.

That’s great!! I’ll check into this tomorrow :slight_smile:

I’ve tried looking into the home care and couldn’t find anyone to come to our area with his type of insurance.

I need to get him involved in something definitely, but he’s not very cooperative right now. I may need to make him do it and see if it works for us!!

Maybe try a church. Maybe they would send out a counselor or a volunteer to visit your son. When I was shopping around for a new therapist my then-current therapist gave me a three page list of counselors and therapists in my area who either worked on a sliding scale or took Medicaid (Californians old health plan) . But several churches were on that list. As were many independent programs of college students or therapists who worked cheap because they were just starting out and that’s the way to attract clients.