Family and Mental Illness

Are you dealing with mental illness in your family? I've noticed there is very little understanding or recognition of the confusion and pain that family members of the mentally ill must endure. Lately I've been reading about the woman who shot and killed her two daughters. She was mentally ill. We see pictures of an obviously vain woman, and these two young girls, her beautiful daughters. She killed them on her husband's birthday, so she could ruin that day forever. I read he had told her, this is the last birthday you will ruin.  He thought a divorce would spare him from a lifetime of pain with this woman, but she was not about to let it end. This sparked a lot of painful memories for me.

My own mom was mentally ill. She was smart, vain, vindictive, no ... vicious, and like this woman lived to ruin other people's birthdays, weddings, social functions just because her own life was miserable and she found it entertaining to destroy their special day. As she aged, it was nearly impossible to deal with her as she spiraled out of control. After she made a scene on my son's first birthday and left me crying, she followed up by telling me my adoptive father never loved me.

I made a decision that day to keep her away from my son so she couldn't ruin every event in his life. I was trying to protect him, and myself. I had reached the end of the line with her. She reacted by trashing my name to all the relatives and ruined every relationship I had. I had gone through this with her my whole life. She had ruined birthdays, holidays, my first wedding. She stalked and verbally abused my first husband and created unbelievable pressure in that marriage.

Now I was the target of her rage. Only my husband and son knew what hell she put us through. She stalked me and I had to change phone numbers. She stalked me at work, on the phone, on my cell, and by mail. She called my neighbors to accuse me of crimes. I "lost contact" with everyone that knew her so I could have some peace in my life. I couldn't take the chance that they would tell her my new phone number. Eventually she was put into a mental facility and even from there she got on the phone and sent the police to my house. I had to apologize to them and explain her condition, that she was in a mental health facility. My husband and son came home that day from his middle school basketball game and they found me shaking and in tears.

She is gone now and I look at this story in the news and shudder at how much worse it could have been.  I've slowly been reconnecting with some family and friends and I've tried to tell them what happened, about the other side of this woman that they didn't see. She put on a phony face for most outsiders but her children got the worst of it. My brother left us years ago because of something she said, some lie she told, and he's washed his hands of the whole family. I've lost him because of her. There is no way to get back what she stole from my life. If you haven't gone through this, you really don't know how much pain and suffering a mentally ill parent can inflict on a family.

Mental illness is such a destructive force. The victims are not just those with the illness, but their families and social circle. Because of privacy laws, mental health practitioners are limited in what they can tell a patient's family. We need laws protecting the rights and safety of families who are dealing with this. Most of us just are not equipped with the knowledge of how to handle the instability and abuse, and what are appropriate actions to take when dealing with mentally ill relatives.

If you're dealing with this in your family, there are support groups that can help you and your family through this crisis. Here is a place to start:

http://www.ajwfoundation.org/mental-health-month-5-topics/