Hi, I'm new to the forum. In short, my wife was diagnosed with Schizophrenia last year. We are in our mid thirties with two young children aged 8 and 4. She just has just recently relapsed again and spent around 3 weeks in hospital. She has been home for 2 days and seems to be no better than when she was admitted. She's very delusional and paranoid, yet seems to be able to function, at and times cognitive and aware that she has an illness.
I have struggled to accept that she has this illness and I still think I can make her see reason, much to my own ongoing disappointment. She is very intelligent, having graduated with honours from Uni as a teacher, majoring in psychology. She is a beautiful kindhearted woman and loving mother who is also a well respected contributing member of our local community. It breaks my heart to see this disease taking her quality of life away from her. She no longer works and now has withdrawn from her community groups (eg. vice president P+C, scout leader, playgroup president, football club treasurer etc), as well as her social groups. She has no history of alcohol or drug abuse. Her diagnosis is genetic (mother).
I am fustrated by the public mental health system that seems to lag most other proffessions. I struggle to accept the "let's see if this works" approach to medication (she has been on so many I have lost count) which inevitably ends up being a case of maximising the dosage to drown the symptons. There is no (from what I can tell) attempt to ascertain the cause of her illness (I'm not referring to a generic collective etiology but an individual eitiology) nor does there seem to be any evolvement in the understanding of her particular causes to psychosis ie. nature and nurture. No extended education in identifying early warning signs or preventative care that we can apply to minimise the risks associated with relapse. Imagine if an aircraft technician were to apply the same logic to his craftwork?
"Well we don't know what caused the engine malfunction, it's happened before so it's no surprise that it's happening again. I'm sorry but once you have engine malfucntion, there's nothing you can do. It's complex and frankly we can't possibly investigate, measure and analyse every component of the engine, so instead we'll house the engine for a few weeks and let it rest where we'll inject enough lubricant and fairy dust into and hopefully when it goes back on it'll be good to go long enough to get from A to B. If not - bring it back and we'll try some other recently patented fairy dust."
I know it's a little bit of a cynical pragmatic mechanical analogy applied to a complex cognitive arena, but the priciples of applied professionalism should stand. History, survey, analysis, report, repair, maintain, monitor (data collection), prevent. Not a template but an individual investigation and case study.
Am I being unreasonable?
I'm also finding it difficult to cope with the stress. I'm back at work next week ( I have two jobs- one full time, one part time) and with the increasing demands in a market that is extremely competitive, I don't know how I'm going to be able to perform well enough to maintain my position.
Lastly, is their any Dad's out there in the same position as me? It would be great to hear from you or if there are any support groups I could attend that you may be aware of please let me know.
I feel like I'm trying to do this on my own and it's wearing me down and it's having an effecton my children.
Cheers.
Brad.
