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Helping Families Cope with Mental Illness Part 1
by Norman Bales
All About Families


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More than a fifth of the American population suffers from a diagnosable form of mental illness. The ripple effect on their families is probably not measurable. Within an affected family, mental illness tends to be one of those "elephant-in-the-living-room" kind of issues. It has an enormous presence; you know it's there, but you don't say much about it.

My mother suffered from schizophrenia from the time she was 39 years of age until she died of cancer at age 72. Although I've been involved in various forms of public communication over the past 45 years, I've never chosen to openly address the subject until now. My observations are not professional. They come from my own experience and the experience of my immediate family. I've chosen to speak because I have encountered many other families who are concerned about how to deal with mental illness in their families. Every situation is different, but it is possible that some of my experiences will parallel the events in the lives of other families. Over the next few weeks I want to address how mental illness affected my family, some of the obstacles faced by a family when mental illness is present and address the business of coping.

Perhaps I can best describe how it affects a family by simply relating my own involvement with the problem. I grew up as an only child in a lower middle class rural home. We were a Christian family and regular in church attendance. My parents were both serious Bible students. Until I was twelve years of age, I thought we were a normal family. We were poor, but we didn't know we were poor, so we didn't resent our station in life. Perhaps there were indicators of my mother's deteriorating mental condition, but I didn't see them until I awoke one morning without being told to get up and get ready for school. My father had gone to work, but my mother was still in the bed. That never happened. She usually arose before anyone else. She sat up in the bed fully awake, but made no verbal response to my questions. For the first time in my life, I went to school without breakfast.

She did not speak for a week. That was terribly confusing to a boy of twelve. On Sunday we persuaded her to get into our truck (our only family vehicle) and drove to town. We decided to miss church that day. Considering her strange behavior my father and I didn't think it would be a positive experience. However, as we drove around town in the afternoon, she started talking. Her conversation was normal. We drove home; she prepared dinner and for several weeks, it seemed as if our lives would go on as we had always expected. We didn't know what to make of her week of silence, but we were glad it was over.

Several months went by before another episode occurred. This time she talked incessantly. It seemed that she never slept. She sat in a chair and talked in a rhythmic pattern. The phrases were incoherent. Normally, she did not use profanity. Now her language pattern was laced with obscenities and profane phrases. Within a couple of weeks, she again reverted to rational behavior, but the psychotic behavior returned a few weeks after that. She was admitted to a state hospital in Galveston, Texas. She remained there over a period of several weeks. The physicians told her she was anemic (which she probably was). With proper diet and rest, she returned home in great health and good spirits.

Things went well for the next three years. My father had gone to Odessa, Texas where he was employed on a construction project. He came home every weekend. My mother and I held things together at home. By this time I was into my teen years and perfectly capable of performing farm chores. We were doing fine until another psychotic episode occurred. Outwardly I was a teenager without fear, but inwardly I was scared to be the only person in the house with a person behaving so erratically. We didn't have a telephone, so I walked to town and called my father. He arrived about daylight the next morning. Again we went through episodes of rationality followed by irrationality. She also began to show a tendency toward violence. Most of her hostility seemed to be directed toward my Dad. She burned all our family pictures. Once he caught her in an attempt to burn the house down. Another time, I had to restrain her from physically attacking him. Our local physician advised us to have her committed to the state mental hospital at Wichita Falls, Texas. I will never forget sitting through the court hearing when a jury committed her to the facility. At Wichita Falls, she was given electric shock therapy. Within months, she returned and life seemed normal again for a while.

Over the years, there would be multiple hospitalizations. She responded reasonably well to drug therapy for a time. Some of the drug treatments had terrible physical side effects. Her psychotic episodes began to last longer and her periods of rationality were shorter.

Next week I will share Part 2 of "How it Affected My Family"

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