I feel people don’t get to see enough of the children/families perspective on schizophrenia. So here goes.
I was an unplanned pregnancy, shotgun wedding and all. My mom was 19. Until I was 6 all I ever knew of my mom was that she was an emotionally distant person with a lot of anxiety and an addiction. I raised myself, and ended up helping raise my younger sibling. She was first diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and I remember her trying to explain it to me “something is wrong in mommy’s head”. Then they thought it could be a personality disorder, and finally it was schizophrenia. All in this time she was abusing drugs and alcohol to self medicate. Most of my life she has been married to my much older stepdad (17 years age difference) never had to work, but wasn’t a stay at home mom either. It felt like I didn’t exist most of my life. But I grew up in the midst of all of her issues and I ended up being the mother, for my mother. I took care of her as much as I could most of my life, but I don’t think I can anymore. Not everyone who suffers from this is prone to violence or dangerous behavior, but my mom wasn’t so lucky. Her mania and psychosis are so extreme when she goes off her medication, which she mostly refuses to take. I grew up with the responsibility to give her her medication and check under her tongue. She missed a lot of my birthdays because she was in a psychiatric hospital or in jail. In my moms thinking her schizophrenia is not her fault and wasn’t caused by her, so therefore it’s not her responsibility to manage it. She also fails to even understand or acknowledge the mental health issues I now struggle with as a result of my childhood. She has been on numerous antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, and antidepressants. And every single time she refuses to take them. She has been hospitalized at least 15 times now, in 3 different states. She won’t respond to treatment, she hates medication and psychiatrists as well as therapists. I worry about what it’s going to be like for her as she goes into old age. I worry that she’ll always be in and out of hospitals. And even though her illness caused her to be a very flawed parent, my heart will always go out to her.