Friends/Family with bipolar/schizophrenia?

Post Reply New Topic

I don't know anyone with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.

my mother was bipolar, seriously manic/depressive. we were poor white trash so she received no help what-so-ever.
you could never admit to being mentally ill in the 50's/60's, it was worse than being a baby killer. she spent about half her life locked up. we never had any sort of relationship.

my father would not have anything to do with me other than to hurt me however he could.

went to live with my grandmother, same situation with the trash lifestyle, only she had schizophrenia. way out there.
her own language, imaginary humans about, bizarre actions. i was very young and could not fight her or get away from her. she would tie me in this tall chair and pick imaginary bugs off me. all day long. then she would spread bleach on me....i can only think it was to kill other critters on me.

one day when she was in a 'mood' she had an axe and was a threat to the neighbors. they called the police and she started attacking them. she was lost to our world. they took her to the 'mental hospital', a terrible place where all seriously mentally ill people were warehoused. in the same area. you can imagine the horror visited on the weaker of the population. to control my grandmother she was given very strong ect and it sure worked. she died.

i bounced around the neighbors who took care of me. i was a wreck. could barely speak. stuttered so bad the humiliation was unbearable so i just stopped speaking. worked where i could. lucked out at 17 and joined the military. tried but could not leave it all behind.

i have been diagnosed with all sorts of things. i'm sure i have a.s. (158/200). i actually think i have PTSD. i sleep little but when i do i still have dreams that have me waking up screaming.

do not blame my mother or my grandmother or my sisters. they could not control their actions. my dad....i do not know why he hated me so or why he did not just kill me. he never asked me a question or told me anything other than to condemn me in some way.

it helps me to write about it. it led to a book.....titled......LOSER......very appropriate, don't you think?

i understand how those of you who are teens and twenties think the mental health system is a joke. you are absolutely right. i do not see things getting better anytime soon. but....it was much worse 30, 40, 50 years ago.

i wish i could offer advise to you that have problems yourself or in your family. i really cannot. my thought is that you need to protect yourself. if someone is lost and cannot be helped....they will take you with them. not from malice, but not knowing anything else to do. being alone and lost is terrible. having someone else along for the ride may make it just a little easier.

one thought on being alone and uneducated in normal things......i was in the shower in basic training, guys joking around, when this kid from alabama remarks about my being 'cut' and being jewish. i had no ideal of what he was talking about. that's how i learned about circumcision and that it applied to me. i had no knowledge of this in any manner. oh man. was i jewish? i didn't know. i have never been embarrassed . do not know how to be. guess that's a good thing.

when i was researching for the book i went back to the housing project. lot of the people from my time still lived there. and their children. actually found the woman who wielded the knife. she was there when i was born. my grandmother was 'aware' that day and was the one who realized the reason i was not breathing was my throat was blocked so she cleared it and allowed me to breathe.

not quite sure how i feel about that.

thanks for 'listening'.

Your resilience is inspiring. Most Americans males are circumcised these days I think.

I don't have schizophrenia in my family. They're probably almost all on the ASD spectrum themselves, but the extreme opposite end to where I am. Don't look at a certain phenotype, with a low IQ, the wrong way. It can get you killed.

My Aunt is Schizophrenic and has BPD
My Cousin also has BPD

I once read that having a parent with BPD increases the risk of having a child with AS. My Aunt had a son with AS.

I forgot that my grandmother's aunt is bipolar and so are her children. They are, for now, the only persons in my family who have anything else than depression or dyslexia/dyspraxia/ADHD

My brother has dysthymic bipolar - constantly has housing issues with him ending up on the street or in another city entirely. He's been going good for the last two years though.

Schizoaffective bipolar disorder here. My mother was too. There are other "neurologically diverse" people in our family history too... my mother's mother was possibly schizotypal, and my mother's grandfather seems to have had a mood disorder too. I really hope I don't pass it onto my son.

Danandlouie, I'm so sorry to hear about your problems growing up... it puts mine in perspective. At least my Dad was always stable, and kept our family together, and in the seventies and eighties mental health care, while far from perfect, wasn't the horror show you describe. In the UK there was help available. Sadly my mother never took it.

My mother was schizoaffective bipolar, and I've unfortunately inherited the same condition as a comorbid to the asperger's. I've been loved and cared for all my life, by family, so it never got completely out of hand, though I had some very close shaves. With proper help I'm now stable.

one thing that is undeniably apparent, as shown by those writing here, is thzxccvgvbholl,;.....sorry, cat just wanted to comment, does anyone read feline? ok.....is that mental illness is/can be inherited.

humans like michael savage and glenn beck and sharron angle, with their vast audiences, do great harm. people who are REALLY normal, who fit into the first standard deviation, in my experience, want to believe that those on the fringes don't really try. they could change if they want to. aaaauuuuuuggggghhhhhhh.

just like homosexuals. so many hetero's think it's choice, a lifestyle. that way, it's easy to condemn.

years ago, i was in MENSA for about 36 months. i had some articles published, about travel, animal rights, the mid-east, but the editors of the magazine would not accept my piece on' normal' humans (hetero, no mental illness), and how they want to think schizophrenics and homosexuals 'want' to be that way. so they can feel superior. that was too far for a non-confrontational group like mensa. would not publish it.

not all regular folk think that way, but there are enough glenn becks out there to cause problems. am i wrong?

I hate the "pull yourself together, you can manage if you really try" school of thought. I've had whole food purists tell me that medication is the enemy and I'm succumbing to pharmabusiness when I take medication, and evangelical Christians tell me that it's not biochemical imbalance, but demonic possession. The last thing you need when you're spiraling into a psychotic mania or depression is someone telling you that it's the devil making you ill, or that the doctor is involved in a multinational conspiracy with the drug companies to keep you on meds.

My brother, for a long time, thought I could pull myself together, but once he heard my diagnoses he, thankfully, realised that it wasn't my fault, and we've been able to rebuild our relationship. That just wouldn't have been possible without the meds.

My girlfriend is Bipolar. In many ways its quite under control with medication (compared to how she got without meds) but in other ways I feel like the meds make her just a shell of the person she used to be. Very sad.

My mother has a dx of paranoid schizophrenia. She a wonderful person, and while her symptoms are lessened by medication she still struggles a lot, can't work, and essentially had to abandon the life she was planning for herself. Early on she was exceptionally smart and even skipped a few grades before she enrolled in college. She was in her third year when she was forced to drop out before receiving a dx. Since then shes been in and out of institutions and hospitals countless times, but thankfully for the last 15 years or so her symptoms have (for the most part) been dulled. She is still very much paranoid and delusional, but just doesn't act on it anymore (you wouldn't know unless you talked to her). In my experience, its been a sad illness

My aunt was paranoid schizophrenic (her diary entries say it all), and I've always been relieved she died young before it got to the point where she could officially be declared crazy.

Now I'm just worried about her 17-year-old daughter, who everyone says is a lot like her when she was younger.

my sister has bipolar

There are literally 3 people in my entire family (including extended and step) who are not diagnosed with some sort of bipolar diorder, schizophrenia, or asd. I am one of the 3, although I'm pretty sure I have mild as. It is possible that 2 of the men diagnosed w/ bipolar could attribute their symptoms to being in a war, but I don't think it's that simple. Alcoholism also runs deep in my family but, thankfully, I've never been much of a drinker. I spent much of my childhood visiting family in psych wards and/or rehabs. Not only do I believe that there is a genetic link, but also an attractive link because often misery loves company, or so they say.

The part I find most remarkable about my family's history is that everyone thought everyone else was faking or that they could "snap out of it." My mother would say my aunt was faking an anxiety attack or my dad would say my sister wanted attention when she was hearing voices, even after being admitted to a "home," which she's been in for the last 20 years or so. The magnitude of denial has been incredible to watch, as a sort of outsider. Anyway, I've seen it all from failed suicide attempts to fears of invisible intruders and the pain is indeed real.