Seems like my sister has a Schizophrenia, how can I help her?

Hello everyone.

It seems like my sister has some symptoms of Schizophrenia, I really wish to figure it out but I don’t know how, cause she lives in Los Angeles, and I live far away in different country.

I think she needs to be tested on this disease, but I know that if I tell to do that she will not go because she thinks that she is the best person in the world, she is better then everyone, and if some is wrong its not with her but everyone else.

She has a husband and a great child, and I really worry about her mental health.

Can please somebody advice me what can I do in this situation, how it is possible to test her on this decease?

If you suspect she has this disease that maybe she is in state of confusion she doesn’t know it’s denial maybe is this new? Her symptoms? Before you take action find out more because convincing a person they have a disease especially from a different country will be hard to manage. As with a person dear to me I have been care giving for her because she doesn’t understand mental illness. And never will that’s the harsh reality of it. It’s twice the fight for all of us to look out in strength for family and one another.

Express your concerns to her, and ask her to see a doctor. I’m not sure what else you can do. There isn’t a blood test for the disease, the psychiatrist just takes notes of the symptoms and then makes a diagnosis.

Thank you so much for your answer.

She was a good person, helped our family a lot, I’m her brother and I’m 10 year younger then she is, so she is 37.

Right now she thinks that everybody is wrong about everything, only she is right. She started to hate mother, and tell mom that mother hated her since childhood, but that is completely not true, because mom did so much for her, and always treated her good. My sister doesn’t have real friends, because if somebody is disagree with her she brakes any relationship with this person. She became ver very selfish, and thinks only about her and her little daughter. She has a great loving husband, but he is suffering so much from her disrespectful and inadequate behavior.

It is hard to see that she is ruins her life and people around her.

I know that if I will ask her to got to the doctor and check her mental state she will say that I need go to a doctor, because she is fine, and if I think so it means that I’m sick.

If there could be a way to check her mental state without going to doctor, or may be some one can do that undercover, so she would not understand that she is taking a test.

Thank you for your reply.

I guess this is not gonna work for her, she is very stubborn and thinks that she is always right, and everybody is wrong. And if I tell her that she will say that I’m sick and I need a medical treatment.

  1. Get a copy of these books, read them and have your family read them, as well. (Torrey can be a bit totalistic and unwilling to see exceptions to his “rules” at times, but most of his book is really worth the effort to plough through.)
    http://www.amazon.com/Surviving-Schizophrenia-6th-Edition-Family/dp/0062268856
    http://www.amazon.com/The-Complete-Family-Guide-Schizophrenia/dp/1593851804/ref=as_sl_pc_tf_til?tag=schizophren0c-20&linkCode=w00&linkId=XKLY6NWSWJSQ3VYN&creativeASIN=1593851804
  2. Get properly diagnosed by a board-certified psychopharmacologist who specializes in the psychotic disorders. One can find them at…
    Find Top Psychiatrists by State. and Find Psychiatrists, Psychiatric Nurses - Psychology Today
    .
  3. Work with that “psychiatrist” (or “p-doc”) to develop a medication formula that stabilizes their symptoms sufficiently so that they can tackle the psychotherapy that will disentangle their thinking.

Augustus F. Hawkins Mental Health Center *
Ward C
1720 East 120th Street
Los Angeles, CA 90059
(310) 668-8212, 8108

Aurora Charter Oak Hospital
1161 East Covina Boulevard
Covina, CA 91724
(626) 966-1632
Adolescent Unit (626) 859-5232

BHC Alhambra Hospital
4619 North Rosemead Boulevard
Rosemead, CA 91770
(626) 286-1191
Youth Services x 212

Canyon Ridge Hospital **
5353 G Street
Chino, CA 91710
(909) 590-3700
Child and Adolescent Services x 6

College Hospital Cerritos
10802 College Place
Cerritos, CA 90703
(562) 924-9581
Youth Services x 1202

College Hospital Costa Mesa
301 Victoria Street Costa Mesa, CA 92627
(949) 642-2734
Adolescent Unit (949) 574-3344

Del Amo Hospital
23700 Camino del Sol
Torrance, CA 90505
(800) 533-5266
Youth Services (310) 784-2272

Gateway Hospital
1891 Effie Street
Los Angeles, CA
(323) 644-2000
Adolescent Unit x 303 or 305

Kedren
4211 South Avalon Boulevard,
Los Angeles, CA 90011
(323) 233-0425
Children’s Inpatient Unit x 130

Aurora Las Encinas Hospital
2900 East Del Mar Boulevard
Pasadena, CA 91107
(626) 795-9901
Children’ Unit (626) 356-2712

Loma Linda University Behavioral Medicine Center **
1710 Barton Road
Redlands, CA 92374
(909) 558-9200
Children’s Unit (909) 558-9218

UCLA NPI *
760 Westwood Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90095
(310) 825-0511
.
4) Psychotherapies for that currently include…
DBT – http://behavioraltech.org/resources/whatisdbt.cfm
MBSR – Welcome to the Mindful Living Blog
MBCT - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22340145
ACT – ACT | Association for Contextual Behavioral Science
Vipassana – Samatha-vipassana - Wikipedia
.
5) the even newer somatic psychotherapies like…
MBBT – An Introduction to Mind-Body Bridging & the I-System – New Harbinger Publications, Inc
SEPT – Somatic experiencing - Wikipedia
SMPT – Sensorimotor psychotherapy - Wikipedia
.
6) or standard CBTs, like…
REBT – Rational emotive behavior therapy - Wikipedia
Schematherapy – Schema therapy - Wikipedia
Learned Optimism – Learned optimism - Wikipedia
Standard CBT – Psychotherapy | NAMI: National Alliance on Mental Illness & scroll down
.
7) Get two or more of those “down,” and one can use the skills therefrom in this way to combat delusional thinking and emotional reactivity very quickly: 10 StEP – Pair A Docks: The 10 StEPs of Emotion Processing
.
8) If you/she/he needs a professional intervention to get through treatment resistance, I would use those search tools in item 2 above. Look for clinics that include intervention and treatment resistance services.
.
9) If you or your sz patient suddenly becomes manic: What to do when your depressed patient develops mania | MDedge Psychiatry?
.
10) Look into the RAISE Project at Google.
.
11) Look for mental illness clubhouses in your area (which can be hugely helpful… but may also pose risks). Dig through the many articles at Google to locate and investigate them.

Dear all,
Perhaps it is difficult to understand for non-Swiss, but here doctors do not work with the family of thick kids. My wonderful 24 years old daughter was diagnicated with parranoic schizophrenia, this was confirmed in Washington DC, in Peru and in Switzerland. Nevertheless she does not accept the diagnostic and have seen over 30 physicians and psychiatrist bfore finding a french doctor working in Switzerland for having been suspended in France. Nothing happens except wierd medication supposedly for Lyme. My daughter cannot study, cannot work and livesvat home. She is up at night and sleeps during the day. She is gtting worse continuously. What can I do, without the right to talk to her physician? What can I do with my daugter thinking I am the devil? What can I do in order she accepts he disease? What can I do in order she takes her medication? It is a question of life and death for the whole family. Who can help?

Dear aguasan, I am sorry your family is going through this.

Perhaps create a new topic in this family section about finding help in Switzerland? Maybe another forum member will know more about Swiss laws.

The struggles your family is experiencing are familiar ones and none have easy solutions; I hope the best for you all.