I do agree that family’s do this. I hope you can see how the people at these facilities treat you. I just went to a facility where my grandma is staying, they scream at the tenants, and nurses will steal from them as well. Even if those two things didn’t happen, I doubt anyone could ever feel at home in a place like this. A group home should be an option in a case of violence, or extremely low income low space homes, but it should be a second more extreme option in all cases. Its sad that Ms. Whine can pawn off their family to a group home because they can’t tolerate the little bit of stress that comes from living with someone with issues. People who use group homes as a first resort because they want to live their selfish lives deserve absolutely no respect or escape from shame for doing so. They’ll get their peace of mind by being selfish, but they deserve to feel guilty about it in my opinion. Let these people develop health issue that takes up 100% of your consciousness, and watch how quick they stop whining about someone “coming in late” or other issues. Caregivers need stress management techniques, not the ability to give up on people and let them roam the streets
I cannot answer for any one else…but my own son was homeless for a few years. This was before we knew what was wrong. Now that I know, I can’t leave him to defenseless. He lives with us now, and though it is very hard, I wouldn’t have it any other way. However, other family members won’t let him stay with them, his siblings never check on him, and neither does his father. They all say he just needs to get with the program. They are all intelligent people, but just don’t or won’t understand it is not that simple!! I think some people just can’t understand sometimes, or don’t have a support system in place to help them help their loved ones.
I’m glad you can help him. I know its hard for most people to have empathy for others with mental illness because its so difficult for others to truly imagine what its like, and feel the same emotional stress one feels when your on meds or hearing voices. Its difficult, but smart people can reach this level of enlightenment. Thank you for taking on a small amount of burden to alleviate a large amount of stress that your son has. There are levels of pain, doctors will ask you to rate your pain on a scale of 1 to 10 based on the kind of pain you’ve experienced. Emotional pain needs a scale too, because even though i’m sure you are stressed living with another person, you simply can’t imagine the level of burden you have taken off your sons back, even with empathy its simply impossible to imagine what its like feel his pain without having experienced it yourself.
MANY HOMELESS PEOPLE DO DIE IN THE STREETS EVERY SINGLE DAY. Thank you again for caring about your son. I promise there are many ways to manage your stress levels, many of which the Schizophrenic sometimes just doesn’t have access to.
Yes you will feel the pain of living with someone, possible an inconsiderate someone even. but in the grand scheme of things if you had experienced the pain of a schizophrenic, and even a homeless person, you would rate that low privacy pain a 9 on you emotional pain scale. There are ways to accept it as something one will have to adjust to, and in the end most of these caregivers are just selfish and whining. I do agree it’s not everyone. I also agree no one “has” to by any sort of law, societal expectation, etc. I do think that if someone values doing the right thing, theyll simply find a way to cope.
I am fortunate, I don’t have to work, so I can stay at home with him. And I have found support for myself in the most unexpected people!! I am thankful he is now diagnosed, so now I know what we are dealing with. And actually I am happy that I was with him when he was first diagnosed. I saw and heard and experienced it with him, and that made it so much easier to understand. Plus we were blessed with an ER doctor that knew what he was seeing, and that we were finally able to get help. We are still new to all this, but learning everyday how to handle things. I am also lucky that my son told me in detail later all that had been going on in his mind. Before he was hospitalized he was always keep everything bottled up, and everyone at arm’s length. Looking back, I am horrified that he was in such a scary place in his head, and all alone with it!
I like the idea of emotional pain being put on a scale, that should be part of it! And by the way, I would think that a homeless person’s scale of pain would be high, there is the feeling of being abandoned. Of slipping through the cracks, and there would be a double stigma. The stigma of the homeless that exists, and of mental illness. It is sad.
Be homeless has got to be a hopeless situation. A friend of mine’s mother was homeless, and she was in danger all day long, got lots of infections and diseases like scabies and so forth. Don’t forget to take care of yourself! Take vacations, take yourself out to dinner, do yoga, eat right, and try to accept the things you can not change as much as you can. Anger and stress from being a caregiver mostly comes from them trying to change their behavior, whether on drugs, refusing to take meds, etc there will always be 5 stages of grief over accepting the fact that you might have to take care of him for a long while. We gotta let ourselves get to that acceptance stage, then we can be happy. I read somewhere there was a schizophrenic son smoking weed and they wanted the kid to move out for this reason alone. Addiction as long as its not directly effecting you is still a problem, but all in all buddhism teaches us to accept things for what they are to minimize our suffering. Sounds like im saying you should be okay with drugs in your house, but not really just saying pick battles, and realize somethings are in his control and some not.
Most of the time, things are never good, nor bad. The just are. If there bad your seeking to stress yourself out about stuff. It might not feel good or rewarding either. Sometimes it just is.
You should look up some terms on the internet like “displacement” and “fundamental attribution error.”- even “prejudice” and “stigmatization” Your own personal issues with your family should not be projected onto caregivers as a general group like this! Especially in a place where caregivers come where they should be able to feel safe, and open and be able to vent, share information, and talk about whatever thoughts, feelings, and attitudes they want to and need to! That is highly inappropriate! You want to say disparaging and prejudiced things about caregivers go to one of the other subforums and do it! If anyone of us said such prejudiced things about those with sz I would hope people would come out in droves on this site and speak out against it! We deal with enough prejudice and stigmatization as caregivers for sz as it is. You think your pain is so much more real than anyone else’s, because it’s different, because it is more divergent?!? Trauma is subjective and individual, PAIN is PAIN is PAIN! I respectfully and sincerely suggest you should consider some counseling for yours, since you clearly are not over whatever your family has done to you, not done to you, or not done for you.
And to the moderators here, you should be ashamed for not doing more to protect caregivers from this stuff yourselves-I sincerely hope you have that may be I just don’t know about! Since it’s continuing today I have my doubts. I have spent two years growing an understanding of this illness, in successfully supporting a daughter with a sz spectrum disorder, and keeping myself from being incapacitated from it in the process. I have a lot of information that could help caregivers, which in turn would help people with SZ. Do you know how difficult it is to find an active sz caregivers forum on the internet? I have half a mind to 1) not care if I get banned from this site for this post and 2) quit coming here which would be a shame all the way around. And I’d rather not hear any placating stuff about how we all need to have varied opinions and how there is a avenue for reporting abuse of the forums. There are caregivers who have clearly been upset by some of this stuff and deserve to have someone defend them and call a frigin duck and duck-if you know what I mean.
I was hoping that the responses to this thread would help Cactus Tomato understand this better from the family’s perspective - but it doesn’t seem like that has happened.
I know a Jewish family that has their son with Down Syndrome live in a kibbutz. My cousin with Down’s moved to a care home when my aunt died and my uncle got older but my uncle had him over every weekend.
Yes, I take my responsibilities as a parent to care for my son with Schizoaffective. He didn’t ask for this illness. In fact, my genes passed it down to him as well as his fathers.
All I can say is people are people and there’s good people and bad people and there’s lots of dysfunctional families. If a person with schizophrenia is born into a bad family he may not get understanding and support, that’s just the way it is. Some family members can treat other family members horribly and schizophrenia may be an excuse to treat a person badly.
Schizophrenia is often a hidden disease, you can’t tell if someone is schizophrenic by looking at them whereas with Downs Syndromes is fairly obvious and it is just inherent in society that you care for your Downs Syndrome child and can’t abandon them to the streets anymore then you would abandon a child in a wheelchair to live on the streets. Schizophrenia is looked upon in society differently, people with Downs Syndrome have an accepted way of being treated.
In a way, people with schizophrenia are more functional than Downs Syndrome children and maybe more is expected of them and it is more acceptable to put a schizophrenic in a sink or swim situation when it comes to life. and it could be said that people with schizophrenia are more aware and functional and able to make life choices more and they often make the wrong life choices resulting in isolation and homelessness.
Where I live it is quite the norm to see people suffering with mental illness on the streets. I see the social workers trying to help them, and I see the people refusing the help offered. All they want is a cigarette.
People with schizophrenia can be extremely disruptive and frightening. I can totally understand why people abandon their loved ones. You have to make a choice about your own family; for example I’m so glad I never had kids because I would never, ever expose them to the hideous monster that Billy was.
I stuck with Billy to the end and paid with my own life and sanity. That’s the choice many face. When I see a mentally ill person abandoned by their family, I don’t judge. I know why.