CHOICES II-12 - The Reactions of One's Immediate Family

A most intersesting blog, Robin.       Including the broken coffee cup.    You are right in saying that the "family stigma" exists today, even aster an incredible 50 years of history since your onset.       For me, I did not have a lack of understaning in my household partly because my father was in medicine.       But even to this day, I know that they treat me like a mental patient with a 30 year history instead of a brother, uncle and son.         I guess a family is a unit and tends to preserve itself as such. Therfore, a mentelly ill person is viewed as a threat to the unit and excluded or treated differently.          Maybe that's why families drift apart over time.

 

Don

I can appreciate your blog, Robin, because my father's father had paranoid sz and his mother before him. So my father was determined he would not "allow" any of his children to be mentally ill. And he ignored his own depression till it ruined his relationships. But the way he chose not to "allow" me to have depression and schizophrenia was to encourage me to pull myself up by my own bootstraps. Actually, if my mom and dad did every discuss me + sz, it was in the kitchen with both doors shut using low voices. I never once heard them mention it. Only they must have said something, because years later my mom said they thought that I might kill them in their sleep. Now, am I wrong or not, but if you were afraid someone might kill you because of mental illness, wouldn't you want to get them into treatment as soon as possible? Their ultimate solution was to get me to see a pastor who thought all mental illness was a result of sin. And he said he only had 15 minutes for me between other engagements. Apparently the man thought he could heal me in 15 minutes by getting to the "root sin" and ferreting it out. For once I refused to do what my parents said. I told them I would rather go to the state hospital, which is what my doctor advised. No telling whath would have happened if I had tried a "religous cure." I think it would have been better if they had presented a God of love and acceptance rather than a God of judgment. Of course, my dad's view of God was reflected in his own actions. I say thank god for doctors and medications that help. I just wish my parents had (for once in my life) actually included me in their behind-doors conversations. It was as if they believed that saying the words "mental illness" or "schizophrenia" would unleash some horrific unseen force. What they didn't understand was that this force had already been unleashed inside my head. Carolyn