Davidsbrother

Health Interests

schizophrenia suicide

Drugs I am Taking

Davidsbrother has not shared any drug information.

About Me

My brother David committed suicide last month (June 2008), and my whole family is in chaos. We didn't realize how deadly schizophrenia can be. If there was one thing that I wish I could do about schizophrenia, it would be to let the public know how dangerous and deadly schizophrenia actually is. David has been schizophrenic since he was in high school, but no one in my family realized it back then. He went untreated until he was in his late 30s and he started having delusions that his co-workers were trying to poison him. His company called the paramedics who then transported him to a psych ward of a local hospital. It was then that we started to realize he was schizophrenic. But looking back on it now, we can see that ever since high school he has been obsessed with his health and always worried about people following him, watching him, spying on him, etc. Then about one year ago he was arrested at the airport in Phoenix because he was talking about bombs in other passengers' heads. The police called in a psychiatrist who committed him to another psych ward. We mistakenly thought it wasn't a big deal and we got him out and then he came to live with me. I encouraged him to take his medicine (abilify) but he refused because he thought it was poison and that the antichrist was trying to kill him with his medicine. We wouuld often have long arguments going around and around in circles where I would make a futile attempt to reason with him and appeal to some logic left in him to try to stop him from thinking this way, but it never worked. Eventually he thought I was somehow out to get him and he left my house and ended up at a house in South Phoenix. He was very clever in that he knew how to work the system and ended up with literally hundreds of thousands of dollars in credit card debt. He had taken, for example, over $100,000 in cash advances from a credit card and used it to buy a foreclosed home in South Phoenix. There was no way he could ever pay it off, but the voices he heard in his head told him to do this stuff, and so he did. I don't think the suicide was intentional. On a very hot day in Phoenix (around 115 F) he took off all of his clothes and went out in his back yard and sat on the hot concrete in the full sun and died from heat stroke. Just before this he had been very concerned about a rash on his chest. I told him to just put some corn starch on it. Another relative suggested that he get some sun on it. We never thought he would take it this far. He had corn starch on him and on the floor of his car, etc. He was trying to get rid of the rash, and it ended up killing him.