Thank you for this. We have lived for 25 years of vowing to never giving up hope. For a cure, for our son to return. As we age it is clear that we need to learn to cope. I actually found your site and beginning to do some work to advocate for changes.
As someone with a loved one currently incarcerated for the last 16 MONTHS waiting for something to happen. This video is helpful to say the keast but what else do we need to do to get this goin? Weve hired a private attorney but things just arent goin anywhere....
He's been jumped by three inmates that resulted in a broken nose and two black eyes, moved around numerous times due to altercations stemming from his delusiona
Your loved one's incarceration sounds horrible, traumatizing, dangerous, and so frustratingly long. I am so sorry that both of you are going through this. I will share the link to our helpline where our responding staff may find local resources that can help your situation. Here is that link: www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org/helpline/ We also have a list of helpful local SMI resources in each state which you can find here: www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org/look-up-your-state/
As someone who has a loved one incarcerated with a mental illness and a dismissed case, this is a very helpful resource. Thank you for sharing, I will do the same!
Thanks so much for your kind comment and for sharing. I'm glad your loved one's case has been dismissed and am sorry you've both had to go through such a challenging and painful process
He wants to jail people for not taking medication But medication causes mental illness in the long run. Nobody wants to be forcably treated and that’s what accounts for violence in most of the cases I have seen. This guy in another video praises Robert Whitaker but he also is anti Whitaker in the same breath talking about coercively drugging people against their will
This doctor bragged about locking up innocent people before they have done a crime as prevention from them actually committing a crime. Which should be a crime.
Thank you. This is so well done. And you have lived it. It has been 5 yrs of a roller coaster from hell with my daughters SMI and severe substance abuse disorder, and recent incarceration. It is validating to learn about ambiguous loss, and a pathway through understanding and learning both/and thinking and being in the world, and the futility of fixing the relationship. It is deeply agonizing as a parent to navigate my love for my adult child, yet having arrived at a threshold of not being able to help her.
Thank you for this. "You cannot fix the ambiguity." That is part of complexities of the ambiguity itself because there is such a strong need to heal, a strong sense of what is helplessness and where there is help and purpose. The strategies you're offering here are both sensible and sensitivity. Your embrace of ambivalence and the complexities of such intense experiences and living through "worst case scenarios" in real time. I really appreciate that each sentence is stated with slow, careful clarity. It's like you have taken the oars to guide a rocky boat of folks with calm, steady rowing. So thank you. More of this for all.
Thank you for this! My therapist told me I was codependent because I was grieving my sons onset of schziophrenia. I quickly fired her as she clearly didn’t understand I was grieving! This video gives me so much validation.
So sorry to hear about your struggle to find understanding and support during such a hard period. Hope that you have found a compassionate support network since then and that your son is doing well. So glad to hear you feel validated from the video!
Thank you for firing her! I had a similar experience. Many therapists are way too quick to label their clients and over-diagnose with cookie cutter analysis. I wish you solid, informed support that isn't so quick to give a report as opposed to understand the nuances and the complexities involved in loss and coping with our experiences of tragedy.
Thanks so much for your comment Carol! Sorry to hear your family has been impacted by SMI. Hope that everything is going well for you! Let us know if there's any way we can help.
It’s painful to hear all of this. Tell me about a hospital that won’t let them out after a 20 minute visit with an incompetent and irresponsible Dr who always let them go! There’s no help!
People need to wake up and realize that a Mental Health Advance Directive COULD alleviate this problem. I am an Agent of a Directive and my Principal stated in it that he wants to have a "Determination of Capacity Evaluation" if at an ER. He does NOT want the ER to call the mental crisis responsders (here in WA state=DCR) because they only perform evaluations based on imminent threat and gravely disabled, usually after he's been sedated and consistently release him to the streets. All he wants, if determined to be "incapacitated" is his antipsychotic medication to get him back on track and he provides consent for this. He created the Directive because he knew, after crossing over into psychosis, that he will resist all forms of treatment and be in denial that anything is even wrong with him. DCRs do NOT perform "capacity evaluations." In fact, capacity evaluations are more similar to competency evaluations, which he has failed twice and ordered to be admitted to state psychiatric hospitals for 2 weeks treatment. This can all be stopped LONG BEFORE he ends up commiting a crime, through capacity evaluation at the ER. Yet it seems no state, absurdly, recognizes this and instead seems to make a MHAD for elderly people with possible dementia or similar. NO !. Stop this insanity and stop allowing people with mental illness "breaks", to be released to the streets only to commit a crime, fail a competency evaluation, and have to sit in jail waiting for a bed in a state psychiatric hospital. No wonder they all clogged. Look at WA state "TRUEBLOOD" case. My Principal was part of that. For those WILLING to create a MHAD to prepare for the next crisis, there should be a direct and easy path to determining capacity and if written in the directive, access to the requested medication. Here in WA, there is NO direct path. I've called the ER social workers in different cities and they've informed me that even IF, I were to somehow get my Principal to the ER, then they will be calling the DCRs. The insanity of this is stunning. DCRs will just release him to the streets AGAIN, even if the ER diagnosis is Acute Psychosis. This scenario has already happened 4 times. I've known my Principal 20 years and know for a fact that he wouldn't be able to answer a single ACE "capacity evaluation" question sufficiently, and would fail it. He would get his meds and not even need to be admitted to inpatient treatment for 2 weeks even though he does actually provide consent for the too in the Directive. Get meds, become stabilized, come home and avoid the entire criminal justice system.
Trust that one will not be overmedicated for their metabolism must be established. Protections within the body are destabilized, thereby showing signs of psychosis. There is always a root physical cause or trigger for these developments. The answer does not lie in forced treatments, but in love, compassion and mutual trust. Prevention is rooted in understanding the needs of all Humanity starts with the formative years, ages 0-6. We live in a toxic world. Solve the toxicity and solve the preponderance of sickness and dis-ease at it's root.
0:52 my ex shared this with me, saying I have the inability to seek treatment or therapy.... that's funny as hell. Because i have put myself into extensive counseling AND therapy, (4×'s) FOUR TIMES, in 6 years.... and funny thing about that? I didnt ever need any kind of therapy before, or ever, before i got with my ex. And mental illness patience are absolutely accurate in their accusations towards those who have contributed to their mental health being weak Lol. I laugh at this because my ex is a grandiose, covert narcissist, who plays victim, but says the most disrespectful and destructive things to someone who has a strong drive to succeed, with self-induced, dopamine highs... Lol I have never laughed so hard and with so much desibles, in a long ass time. .
Please listen with your heart…support, donate, or just think it can happen to your family! There is stability With hard work, amazing people that care, success stories & faith. In peace and passion within!
Anosognosia is not lack of awareness but an neurological condition commonly caused by strokes. Not taking psychotropic nerve poisons is not Anosognosia. There has never been an a valid objective clinical Diagnosis of an endogenic Mental illness in human history. There is no valid Nosology in psychiatry, its all made up by humans and has no basis in reality. The recovory rate in treated patients is worse than in untreatet patients. Psychiatry and clinical psychology are both pseudosience and reject the scientific method. 99% of "scientific" papers in psychiatry and clinical psychology are junk science. The Human brain and the psyche are both blackboxes. 10-14% of TREATED so called "severe mentaly Ill patients" kill them self in comparison to untreated 3,6-5%.
Thank You for this education on what may be the root cause why voluntary treatment in the community often fails, leaving the person with a brain illness encounter law enforcement, put in jail and adjudicated by laws, in courts, not created for them. Why do we continue to “ set up”young people stricken with brain disorders during the prime of young adulthood, for the past 60+ years, in community care, if we know about Anosognosia?
Unfortunately, intervention is forcible and non compassionate. Instead it is controlling on the part of the interveners and to their own, not the patients best interests.
I've read a couple of Torreys books, Surviving Schizophrenia and Surviving Bipolar Disorder....both a great references...he makes a good case for our miserably failed mental health system and potential was to bring it back. You can't really fix something that isn't there....we will need to build it.
