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A brave impressive post. Thank you!. Your message and Christina's most recent are good and heartening to read approaching Mental Illness Awareness week.
These are family and wider community matters of course , everyone should feel included and try to stretch out to reciprocally include if the message is to get across.
Many individuals at times of vulnerability and disempowerment need and deserve unflinching and staunch advocates to act 'in their best interest'. Sadly many languish unsupported without a 'helping hand'.
Best wishes,
Chris,
UK
Chris:
Medications aside, I believe the interventions of a personal advocate can make an enormous difference in the lives of those suffering from schizophrenia, at least within the broken systems of patient care in the USA. As you point out, many do not receive such support. This a tragedy.
I do not beleive that the science or the art of treating those with mental illness will ever be solved in this and many other countries until the general public stands up and, in unison, demands it.
You probably have not seen this in the news, but $700B+ financial rescue package just passeed by the USA Congress has a bill attached that mandates insurance parity in the USA. This is a major event for the mental health community.
Keep in touch.
Robin
A personal note: Oddly enough, I was featured (with others from Europe) in a BBC Manchester film for television entitled "Voices in My Head" directed by David Malone. It is provocative.
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God bless Robin Cunningham, who again by the example of his personal experience helps us all to see more clearly the challenges of facing, and facing down, schizophrenia.
From my perch as father of a young SZ man, I consider myself lucky when I hear the stories of others. We are two years into this arduous journey. They say that the first few years are the hardest, that it gets better in time. I think I can believe this. Already we are seeing improvement, as my son is settling into an accomodation with his illness, is compliant with meds, cooperative with his psychiatrist, and generally at ease. To my amazement, two weeks ago he even admitted to me that, "Dad, I feel happy."
Still, even as he is happy, his father sometimes feels sad. He is so isolated, is paranoid of friends, doesn't want to go out, effectively is a shut-in. He wants to finish school, wants to work, but cannot seem to muster (yet) enough motivation or courage to endure the effort needed to initiate these ambitions. So we wait. And wait. And will wait some more. One thing I have learned is that my son's schedule will for now be more aligned with God's schedule than with mine.
For me the kernel of Robin's submission this time is the thought that his loving parents were "heavily invested emotionally in my welfare, but they had no idea how to help me". Bingo! Yahtzee! This is the essential truth--and, it sometimes seems, the eternal torture--of parenting an SZ child. Not knowing what to do is difficult. Watching other caretakers who profess to know but bungle the care is debilitating. There is no clear way or one sure thing. Sometimes I feel like I am trodding across a foggy moor in an Ingemar Bergman movie...
Pylgrym:
I am both a consumer [50+ years] and a family member [20+ years] and have never been able to decide which is worse.
As a family member, the hardest thing is to wait. Yet, waiting is often the one thing we must do and the only thing we can do. One cannot wait without hope and struggling to keep hope alive is exhausting. The old adage that "hope springs eternal" is simply not true in this sense. We must refresh our supply of hope continuously.
It is most often in the company of fellow travelers, who share and understand our experience, that hope can be found in greatest supply. It is amongst these fellow travelers that we can also find solice.
As my life nears its end, I think often of my grandfather, uncle and aunt. They all suffered from schizophrenia at a period in our history when there was no hope, no balm for their agonies. They never had a chance. If I had been born five years earlier, I would not have recovered from our family's malaise.
The fact that I was born when I was, and that I was one of the first to benefit from medications and effective therapy, fills me with hope for all those younger than I. It can only get better.
Keep the faith,
Your fellow traveler and friend,
Robin