I started participating in a web-group geared to Schizophrenics and their care givers. Usually it is very interesting and touching. But I just read a post by some Little Mary Sunshine type who recommended happy thoughts or meditation to the schizophrenics in the group, because she thinks pills are a bit extreme, and if we would stop stigmatizing them they could get all better.
I think she meant well, but it pushed my Mother Lion Button and since you're not supposed to rip someone a new one in a support group, I controlled myself and posted this reply:
*Perhaps you have never witnessed a person in the midst of a SEVERE psychotic break.
None of us, who deal with some one who gets that way, if they go off their medicine, get off on making this person feel stigmatized. Life is traumaticly difficult at these times for all involved.
We're talking about a whole 'nother level. My son has no idea he is insane when he is insane, and is not in touch with reality enough to know or care what stigma is. More than once, he has broken bones when he is like this and not known what the cast is for and why he can't get this thing off his hand. He has torn bloody holes in his skin to let creatures out. He has been x-rayed to help reduce his panic when he thinks there is "something" inside his body that should not be there. The list is so long, I'll stop here.
He does come back to reality, but not clearly, like before the illness. Would you want him driving on the highway next to you when he is psychotic? It is not stigmatizing to keep him from driving for three years to protect the innocent public, and him, from death by car. A mentally ill friend of his killed herself by walking into traffic. My sister's boy friend killed himself and he almost took one of my sisters with him! Sometimes a positive attitude and force of will are not enough.
Of course I know you have the best of intentions, and truly care about the mentally ill. Thank God we do not have to drop our loved ones off at mad-houses for the rest of their lives or cull them from the tribe anymore. Families and care givers are not trying to inflict anything stigmatizing on their loved ones, unless you are very unlucky and have an ignorant family.
I'd like nothing better than to "let go", but I don't want him starving under a bridge or getting raped again, because we are "letting him take responsibility for his life". He is still a magnet for predatory freaks; they can pick him out of a crowd with chilling ease.
Before we take him to the hospital to be x-rayed to show him that there probably isn't "something" inside his body, we try reasoning with him. I was trying to narrow down what kind of "Thing" he thought might be inside him. I asked him if his toothbrush was missing. That makes me laugh now, but at the time...
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