My son, 24, is homeless, refuses treatment. I would love to hear stories of success to feed my soul
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See if you can listen without correcting his hallucinations and gain enough of his trust to get him on meds. My son when he takes his meds does well- when he feels fine he complains about the side effects of them and quits- and the key is getting him back on b4 he is completely dilutional. Prob is Wen he drinks to kill the voices - he is a mean drunk. Sad.
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At 22 my son had periods of homelessness and refused treatment. Smoked marijuana, which was always followed by a psychotic episode and usually hospitalization. After the last episode, in early 2018, he came home under the condition that he take his medication and not do drugs. He knows I will evict him if he does not comply; I have in the past (therapy helped with this). Since he’s been home it’s been a long road recovering from the episode, but he’s steadily improved. He’s 26 now, participates in household activities, laughs at funny videos, discusses the election, cooks dinner once in a while. Welcome home, bud.
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Yes, there can be successes, you have to keep hoping and keep trying to find the things that will provide good change. My daughter is almost 2 years out of psychosis (since Dec 2018), working a job 30 hours a week, taking care of herself to some extent, and a pleasure to live with. I still support her, and without those years of support she would have been lost. The police, a judge and a good doctor at her 5th forced hospitalization changed everything after her 2nd arrest. She is on a monthly shot that works. Starting in 2016 it was totally different, a very dark, deep place in her life that she mostly does not remember at all.
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I am so glad to hear about your daughters success! My son is on his 2nd arrest, and this time it is a big one. I question if I did the right thing by having him arrested, but all the advice pointed in that direction. He did awesome after being at the state hospital for 9 months and then put under commitment. When they let him off commitment a year later he went off his meds right away. He has been off now for a year, and has slowly declined. His latest and long delusion is the cars are bombs and they are harmful to the body. He got so distraught with us driving that he filled all of our vehicles up with water. My husbands is a diesel truck. He drove it for several weeks and it was giving him problems until we got stranded in the mountains when it just stopped. It is then that we caught our son putting water in one of our other cars. I asked him if he put it in his dads truck and he said yes and that he has been warning us not to drive. Well to make a sad, long story short, the cost to repair the engine in the truck came to $10,000! So we called our insurance and they said we had to fill out a police report, and that let to him being arrested. He is charged with a 2 degree Felony. Our intent was to get him help, and I was quite shocked that he acted on a delusion. I am so distraught and now at the mercy of the courts to get him help. How did you force your daughter to be hospitalized? Mine son refuses to get help. I hope and pray we did the right thing. Any advice?
There are no easy choices in sz. You have to protect youself. You did the right thing. Have you inquired about mental health court in your state? It can be a long program but he is not in jail and the court forces him to comply with treatment It is voluntary, though and it may depend on the type of crime. But it may work for you and your son.
I feel for you.
Please can I direct you to my post about my own success and the realism that not everyone makes it.
I will quickly Cut and paste it and edit
It’s taken my right to a full time job in a high powered role and evenings and weekends socially being fantastic and hobbies and etc but honestly I feel like there aren’t enough hours in the day as it is, when my only responsibilities are towards myself, my husband and mum and sister, who live 35miles away…
I cook healthy home cooked food, from scratch almost every day, (I’m trying to be vegan, and my husband is omni.) I clean almost sufficiently and do all the laundry
I go cycling when the weather is not too raining or windy on my electric bike. I have hobbies like art at the moment, this is an ever shifting thing my hobbies (and I have long breaks from having any)
I watch a lot of tv, I’m addictive and shop on line far too much…But frankly that’s about it.
Overall, I’m not busy like I was when doing 6 months of full time work in my late 20’s, sailing at weekends, cooking for my not live in partner, seeing mum etc
I’m painting quite a rosy picture, but I’m 46 and was diagnosed age 18 the right meds have stabilised me, And I found the man of my dreams.
Someone kind enough and gentle enough for Sensitive me.
For me, my own illness - It doesn’t feel like a loss.
Even When things are acute and terrible, the suffering somehow doesn’t feel like suffering because it’s so unreal.
Don’t quote me I think I would have post traumatic stress disorder if it had all been real
It never occurred to me that people around me were grieving
I guess it is just taking everything life throws at you and going with it.
But with support I’ve lived an exciting and varied and fulfilling life.
I am very lucky
Anti depressants are so important
Antidepressants have been so helpful and completely life changing for activities and emotional stability, they also help a lot with anxiety. And all doctors now recognise that depression is a huge part of life for most schizophrenic people
I’m happy as a constant rather than enjoying maybe one day out of ten.
Capacity changes so much year to year, month to month
With treatment, compliance, care and support bigger than anything I could ever give anyone recovery is possible
This makes me feel I have stolen my mums life actually… with all 3 of us schizophrenic she has a really difficult deal.
When my capacity was low, I did also hate it… but I did what I could
Adolescence and early 20’s can be pretty awful for everybody
I’ve heard it said that everyone is always doing their absolute best at any given time
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Sorry to copy paste I don’t know how to keep my story interesting but I think people have read it all before on here.
Isn’t boring I guess, oh dear
Thanks. It is good to hear a first person account.
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Thank you for sharing
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I hope it wasn’t wrong just copy paste.
Right now after 14 years out of hospital with no voices and no delusions- only the odd flash in public like normal people might get that I am as well as I will probably ever get and today my CPN said that I could leave the services and have just befriending relationship, awareness that if things get worse I will go back to the services.
For nine months and for three months I was hospitalised as well as several 10 day spells in the course of three years - 2 spent in psychosis.
For the moment this is behind me I have the right to life long psychiatric care, In the UK this happens once you have been sectioned for six months.
It feels like a big move, it might be nice to be befriended by someone
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I am sorry this illness has made your life so distressing, although I fully understand. Everyone’s life is turned upside-down when hallucinations and delusion are acted on.
I went to court when the judge was scheduled to see my daughter from jail. I asked the Sheriff to speak to the judge, which is normally not allowed at an arraignment. I had under a minute to get across to the judge that my daughter was mentally ill and needed to be forced onto medication and kept on it. He court ordered her hospitalization and a requirement to stay medicated or go back to jail.
An earlier forced hospitalization occurred when I called the police on her during a delusion that “everyone in this house should die”. But she wouldn’t stay on her meds.
I believe you did the right thing to fill out the police report on the vandalism your son did. Mental illness doesn’t excuse committing crimes in my opinion, and the law supports that usually. Just as a drunk or a person who is high and commits a crime goes to court/jail, a crime during psychosis is prosecuted. Hopefully the legal system will help him get medicated. You should try to advocate for him if you can. I wish you the best.
Don’t count on the courts to get him help, at least that is my experience with Washington …the mentally ill have rights is what the courts hide behind instead of getting help for those who so desperately need it.
Just keep trying, change the approach if you have to, and take care of yourself
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Agree. Beyond the rights narrative there is a deeply troubled heath care system that just does not want to spend money on the mentally ill. So as I see it, the “they have rights” is the perfect excuse.
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Hi, my heart goes out to you because I’ve been where you are and it was a very traumatic time for my son and our family going through this. But there is HOPE! My son was 26 years old, off his AP meds and went homeless for close to 9 months. He self-medicated with meth and heroin during that time and became highly addicted. It was very difficult to get him clean and into psychitric treatment but it worked! During that time, it took a lot of effort, determination and consistently having him amended into the Psych ER for being a danger to himself… which he was! I looked for my son daily and always let him know I loved him unconditionally. We can’t make them get help but we can be a positive influence. My son was so psychotic and addicted and I visited him in so many hospitals where I was the last person he wasnted to see as I also was the person for the most part who had him admitted. I’m so glad I never gave up. My son was finally admitted to a hospital for 6 weeks and it broke the chain of homelessness. He has been living in a 24-hour nice Group Home for the last year and a half. We also found a very effective AP med, Clozapine. That has been an incredible med and he takes it without any problem - sometimes asking for it at night. Best wishes to you!
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I haven’t posted in a long time I just want to thank everyone for all the support I have gotten in the most darkest time with my son. It’s been 18 months now that my son has been out of the hospital in ontario when you get a diagnosis of schizophrenia they take your drivers license away. He just got back his license after going through all the tests. If he stops getting his injection he will lose his license again and probably never get it back. I think he is doing really well but he complaints to me every day saying he can’t do anything because of the drugs. He doesn’t seem to remember all the things that he was doing. Every time he goes on like that I start to panic. He hasn’t seen his dr. since covid it’s a phone call. But for now I have hope.
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I’m really happy for you and your daughter
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My grandson is schizo affective and a heroin addict. 6 years ago we got him on clozapine and he got clean took a couple of years but he showed huge improvement when he started clozapine. We have moved he started a new full-time fully benefitted job and is now going out with his own friends. Clozapine was the miracle drug for him. He came home on all kinds of meds after his last hospitalization and we slowly weaned him off. He now only takes 250mg clozapine
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I wouldn’t say I’m a success but I’ve had successes. I was diagnosed in 1980 at age 19. At first I spent over a year in a group home for schizophrenics. In that home I went through hell. After that I was in a psyche ward where my most vivid memory is being put in restraints where they chained me to a table with thick leather cuffs by all four limbs and left me there for four hours. It was the worst experience of my life.
Anyways, from that psyche ward I was put into a long term hospital for 8 months where I suffered tremendously. It was a scary place with many of the people being homeless prior to coming in and a lot of the patients had been in jail or prison. I survived there and my parents found a nice, clean, safe group home for me.
I was still fairly new in the mental health system so I didn’t realize how unique this group home was. They believed the best way to treat mental illness was with structure so the house was heavily structured. That included getting up every morning at 8:00 am to do chores and doing chores at night. It was mandatory for everybody to eat dinner together. People rarely got out of that commitment. We all took turns cooking dinner for ten people and then cleaning up afterwards. We had two mandatory groups a week; a Thursday group therapy meeting and a Sunday business meeting where an elected “house manager” ran the meeting and gave his grades on how we performed our chores, made a shopping list for the week for groceries, assigned chores and a few other responsibilities.
We all took turns being house manager for a month at a time. We all had to have a daytime activity, people either worked, went to school or there was a vocational program down the street. We had mandatory outings once a month to places like museums or the beach or to restaurants etc. And when spring came we all had to do spring cleaning and detail the house and the outside yard. That was the structure but we still had plenty of free time to ourselves and evenings were often spent playing backgammon with the staff in the living room or watching TV.
We had weekends free and I would catch a bus to my parents home and spend the weekend. I mentioned the vocational program; that was my daytime activity. I went there five days a week where they held classes and groups and sometimes had speakers. We also chose and rotated between doing mailing projects for the post office and doing yard work out in the community. They had a staff of five people who oversaw us and helped us, the idea being to get us ready for employment.
After 9 months I got a job through the vocational program being a maintenance man at a hot tub joint which were popular in this area in the 1980’s. It was perfectly legitimate and they had massage and sushi bar there too. The boss had a deal where he rotated in new workers from the vocational program every three months but he liked me and this other guy from the program so much he kept us on four years!
During the year at the group home I had became what they called in the 1980’s “stable” meaning my symptoms were not so extreme any more and I was functioning OK. After almost exactly year at the group home I moved into their supported housing they called satellite housing. The agency that ran the group home and the vocational program would rent a cluster of houses and apartments within a mile or two from each other and let 2-4 of us mentally ill people live there. We payed rent and cleaned our house and they put a counselor in charge of four houses at a time. The counselor was on call so if we had any problems with the house or with each other we would call him and he would come to the house and hopefully solve the problem. We also had a meeting once a week where. all the residents of the four houses would take turns meeting in each others houses and it was runny the counselor. These were mandatory meetings, it was hard to get out of them.
Anyways, like I said, I stayed at that job four years and during that four years I lived in different supported houses. We often had to move out of a house when the owner wanted it for themselves or his relatives so we moved into other houses. I made friends sometimes in the houses and we did fun things like got to the park and hit a baseball around or rode bikes or played in pickup basketball games at a nearby park.
Unfortunately around 1986 when I was 25 I got addicted to crack. I smoked it heavily during the next four years, getting in trouble with the police and hanging out with very bad people in very bad places. I sold or traded almost all my possessions for small amounts of crack. I traded a $500 stereo for $60 worth of crack, I traded a couple TV’s, my clothes and my car stereo for crack that was smoked up in ten minutes. I got in some dangerous situations but escaped mostly unscathed and without being arrested.
I finally got clean in 1990 in AA, CA and NA. They really worked for me and I went to meetings and got sponsor and worked the steps and tried to practice the principles in all my affairs and practice rigorous honesty. In 1990 I had moved away from all the places and people I had used with and moved into another group home.
I had relapsed the year before and been hospitalized 4 or 5 times in 1989 and I had nowhere to go so I found this board & care home. I got another job while I was there, enrolled myself in college and was going to 5 or 6 AA, NA and CA meetings a week. I made a friend there and we did fun things on weekends and hung out at the house. I stayed at that house 5 years and I was only unemployed a week the entire time I was there. I was doing stuff with my friend and doing AA functions like dances and barbecues and picnics and on some weekends I would do fun stuff with my family. Those were some good years, I even flew back east with my dad several times on vacations.
After the five years I was looking for a place to live and my sister had a spare bedroom in her duplex so she rented it out to me. I payed about $300 a month in rent which was the going rate for a nice room back then, I did my share of cleaning and shopped and cooked for myself. I lived there three years then she wanted to live with my two nephews there so I found a room through the classified ads of the newspaper to rent. This was when PC’s first were becoming popular and the internet was in its infancy.
Anyways I lived in the new place for 3 1/2 years and during that time I got a job as a park ranger. I had a uniform and a walk-talki and a company truck to drive around and patrol the parks.
Anyways, I won’t go into any more detail but I ended up living on my own for the next twenty years and had several different jobs some of which I got fired at but I always just went right back out and got a new job. I moved into my own studio in 2007. That was fun, I liked living by myself and it was in a nice area. I lived there 6 years. During all these times I had symptoms but they were managed by medication. Around 2008 my symptoms started getting better. I had often heard that symptoms get better as you get older and it’s been true with me. Now they are less intense and intrusive.
Now I’m 64 and I’m looking back on being employed almost steadily for the past 40 years. I got my college degree in 2023. I live on my own in a low income housing. I don’t have friends but that’s kind by choice. I go to work three days a week. I take care of myself, I make and go to all my doctors appointments, I shop and cook and manage my money. I go out to eat sometimes and to the park for walks but I spend a lot of time in my studio.
I wouldn’t say I’m happy but I’m content a lot. In the beginning of my illness my symptoms were horrible, they were mental torture. I was heavily medicated and I had no peace of mind and my mind was racing constantly. Now my mind has slowed down and I often have peace.
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