My uncle has been having delusions since the past three-four years. He distrusts everyone and believes that someone is sending waves to hamper his mind, that everything is part of some organization. He only talks to us(his family) and his talk is full of doubts/paranoia that no one can be trusted and everyone is out there to fool us and that all our relatives, every person we see is a part of a big nexus.
As a result of his delusions, he has sent emails (some threatening, some not so) to various people and organizations. Someone think filed a complaint against him and he was escorted by the police officers to a hospital in the behavioral ward last week. He has been refusing medicines and treatment it seems and as a result has a court hearing soon. Our biggest problem is that we are in India and he is in the USA and we feel helpless. This has been one of the main reasons we haven’t been able to urge him for taking treatment. And now the situation is that he has been escorted to the hospital.
The only silver lining has been that he has been at least calling us from the hospital. However, he doesn’t tell us much about what the doctor is saying. All he has told us that he is not taking treatment and they are asking him every day to take treatment otherwise there will be a court hearing. We want to know about his exact diagnosis currently at the hospital. Also what could be expected at court, would there be a forced treatment. More importantly, under what conditions can the doctors share the information with us without letting him know, especially since we are sitting in India. We can’t reason much with him or ask anything about treatment. He gets angry and our main fear if we force something he would stop talking to us.
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More importantly, under what conditions can the doctors share the information with us without letting him know, especially since we are sitting in India.
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Regarding privacy laws and health… I think that this website might have some relevance even though it talks about aging family members,
It does mention delusions… in most cases your uncle has to say it is okay for the doctors to share the information.
On the bright side being hospitalized and put under mandated medication has been a turning point for some sz sufferers. Sometimes the period that they stay medicated is enough to open some insight into the disease and see that they really can be helped by meds
It must be hard to be so far away but the good news is that your loved one is communicating with you. Ask him to tell the doctor or medical staff that he wants to sign a (HIPAA) release form (see the post above) authorizing the doctor to talk with you (or any other family member, by name). I hope that works for you. If not, just keep the communication open. It is not typical that meds can be forced by the medical staff or anyone else. It depends somewhat on the state, and perhaps even on the hospital personnel how they handle things. Be patient as best you can. Learn all you can. Read the book “I Am Not Sick; I Don’t Need Help”. It is available on Amazon.
Getting to him agree is a hard part. A mere mention of it is likely to flare his temper (which I am not that afraid of) but he might also stop communicating with us. Thanks for the above article, I shall go through it, I had gone through some bits of HIPAA earlier. He has a court hearing tomorrow and I dont know what would come out of it.