[babyrabies]

Hello,
A week ago Sunday, my husband had a complete psychotic “break”. He is 43 and this is his first episode, although he has dealt with minor depression and anxiety his entire life. His mother passed away in June 2017 due to lung cancer – he and I took care of her for about one year prior to passing. I thought he was dealing with the grief, but he was working a lot, taking extra free-lance jobs and pushing it pretty hard. Then about two weeks ago, he got really paranoid. It escalated to Sunday, when a mutual friend called to say that my husband contacted him, said he knew our friend was trying to kill him and said he would stand outside his truck and wait to be shot.
I drove down and took him to the ER immediately, where he was admitted to the Mental Health Unit of our local hospital. He has been there ever since, over a week now. I’ve talked to him every day and visited him a couple times. However, I’m scared out of my mind. He seems like a different person when I talk to him on the phone. At first, I thought it was because he was drugged with anti-anxiety meds, but they hadn’t even started them until about 6 days into his stay. He seems docile, withdrawn and afraid. He’s afraid something is going to happen to me or our 3 daughters, so every time I talk with him, he repeats that he wants me to lock the doors and not let the girls go with anyone I don’t know (I would never do this anyway).
His confident and outgoing personality seems completely gone. He is obsessed that some mistakes he made early in our marriage are coming back to haunt him. He was an alcoholic but has been sober for 10 years. I knew he was unfaithful to me in the first two years of our marriage while he was still drinking, but it has recently come out that he slept with more women than he first admitted. And he had a fling with another man. They were all brief affairs, but he never told me about the multiple women (I thought it was just one woman) or the man he was involved with. He seems to be riddled with guilt and that someone from his past is trying to harm him, me and our children because of his poor decisions while he was drinking.
I don’t believe this is the case, but right now I’m completely shell shocked. I feel so betrayed, upset and angry about these recent revelations, but it’s also bringing up all these insecurities I felt when we went through extensive therapy after he stopped drinking. I feel very alone – I can’t really tell anyone about this because I don’t want our friends and family to know the extent of how terrible our early marriage was. And I can’t really talk to him about it because I don’t want to trigger anything while he’s still in hospital.
I have fleeting moments wanting to leave him, but at the same time I still love him – the old him. He has worked SO hard to turn his life around and he is a wonderful dad – our girls love and admire him. Luckily, they were too little to understand what was going on when he was still drinking (they were 1 and 3 months).
He also keeps bringing up religion and wanting to get involved in the church again. This scares me because I’m not a religious person, especially in the context of modern Christianity. I’m so scared that he’s going to come back different…..and that I won’t love him anymore. I feel like the husband I knew before this has died. But are my feelings rational? Has anyone else gone through this before and come out ok on the other end? Does this get better? Do people come back normal after a paranoid, psychotic breakdown? I appreciate your thoughts and comments.

You need to see him EVERY day. And please, don't take how the phone interaction is going as a sign of improvement or of lack of it. You owe it to him - and yourself - to see him in person each day he is hospitalised. He needs a demonstration you love him. He needs a demonstration he matters. He needs a demonstration you support him. What he does not need is a demonstration he doesn't matter.

To respond to your questions. No, one doesn't recover and heal from mental illness. Instead one learns to manage it and from this stability comes some sense of normalcy.

I think you need to talk to his psych nurses (another reason to go in) and enquire about help and support for yourself.

Why are you not there everyday anyway?

[*Laurie*]

I see that this is your first post on PC. Welcome to the forum.

I'm sorry about what has happened to your husband, and to your marriage. Is it possible he is substance using?

[babyrabies]

Originally Posted by justafriend306

You need to see him EVERY day. And please, don't take how the phone interaction is going as a sign of improvement or of lack of it. You owe it to him - and yourself - to see him in person each day he is hospitalised. He needs a demonstration you love him. He needs a demonstration he matters. He needs a demonstration you support him. What he does not need is a demonstration he doesn't matter.

To respond to your questions. No, one doesn't recover and heal from mental illness. Instead one learns to manage it and from this stability comes some sense of normalcy.

I think you need to talk to his psych nurses (another reason to go in) and enquire about help and support for yourself.

Why are you not there everyday anyway?

Thank you for your reply. I am not there every day because he has asked me not to come. In fact, I tried to visit him tonight with our youngest daughter and he didn't want to see us. He really wants to talk on the phone so I've been talking to him whenever he calls.

[babyrabies]

Originally Posted by *Laurie*

I see that this is your first post on PC. Welcome to the forum.

I'm sorry about what has happened to your husband, and to your marriage. Is it possible he is substance using?

Thank you for the welcome.

When I took him into the ER, they asked me repeated about substance abuse. I was about 99% sure he wasn't using. Later urine and blood tests confirmed he had no substances in his system. They went on to test him for a wide range of illness that can cause psychosis, like HIV, syphilis, poisoning like arsenic or mercury, CT scan, MRI, some type of urine contamination in the blood....

So, they are pretty positive this was a rarer case of later stage psychosis.

[Wild Coyote]

I am sorry you are in this situation.

It's difficult to tell what's going on with your husband and what his future may look like. It really depends upon what is going on.

I'm encouraging you to balance your own care with reaching out to him. You cannot be there for anyone if you are not okay. It's okay to not go to the hospital every day. Again, balance is helpful.

Hopefully, there will be a family meeting where more information will be shared with you and you will have an opportunity to ask more questions and voice your concerns.

You may want to start thinking about couples or individualized counseling. In addition to his recent illness, you've just found out about extra-marital affairs.

You both need some extra consideration and care during this confusing time.
Time will help to sort this out.

My best to both of you.

Wild Coyote

[Perna]

Hi, babyrabies, welcome to PychCentral (PC). Your experience(s) sound very frightening and lonely. Is there any way you can find a counselor/social worker (perhaps through the hospital) to help you with all this, can you call your previous therapist and maybe get some individual support? I imagine when he gets out of hospital they will have references for him for getting support for himself; I'd seek to take good care of yourself now so you can help your girls, too.

I'd try to imagine a positive scenario for all this, that he won't be the "same" but will be able to use this experience to build on like he did the former drinking/alcoholic status? He worked hard to rebuild after that so sounds like he knows what hard work is and what is "good" and maybe all this will form an even stronger base for him. One cannot just bury worries, insecurities, and past problems, they have to be worked through or something like this can be the result? Hopefully he has good doctors/therapists and can work this through. I hope you can find help and support too!

[Wild Coyote]

Welcome to PC.

I did not see an Introduction post for you, so will welcome you here.

You may also find some helpful information in the Caregivers forum.

I hope you find the information and the support you may be seeking.
Please make yourself at home. Jump in wherever you feel led to do so.

Your first 5 posts are approved by a moderator before they appear. After 5 approved posts, you will also have access to chatrooms and to the Private Messaging (PM) system.

I hope to see you around the forums.


Wild Coyote

Originally Posted by babyrabies

Thank you for your reply. I am not there every day because he has asked me not to come. In fact, I tried to visit him tonight with our youngest daughter and he didn't want to see us. He really wants to talk on the phone so I've been talking to him whenever he calls.

How difficult for you emotionally yourself. I am glad to hear then you are trying. Important too was your attempt to take your child. In my own experience with hospitalisation I clung to the visits from friends and family. It was the only sense of normalcy I had during the stay. It is a shame then that your husband does not see how helpful the experience of visitors can be. Do you think it might be that he is embarrassed or ashamed? It could be too that by not allowing visitors he is escaping from acknowledging he has broken down and has a problem.

Tell you what, I still encourage you to spend some time with the psych nurses; if not only to keep up to date on his situation, but to find support for your own mental health. I imagine your own stress and worry about the unknown is excruciating.

I witnessed numerous experiences and attitudes while I was hospitalised. You are right, there are some who for whatever reason insist on going it alone. Perhaps they are isolating themselves from the truth. Perhaps they don't want to be a burden. There are sadly many more who sit alone because no one will see them including spouses. I apologise for making an assumption and grouping you in with such people. There are also those, like myself, who clung to the hospital as a safety net being fearful of what lay beyond the door.

So try to keep at it. The nurses may have some recommendations on how.

Incidentally, he will be seeing a psychiatrist while in there. As long as he designated you as a support person, you should be entitled to discuss his situation with them.

It sounds like he might be there a while. Rest assured that when the time comes, a treatment plan will be drawn up which will likely include yourself.

[possum220]

Glad you found PC. His treating team at the hospital will work with you and find a medication that will help. Give him time. You all need a break.

[babyrabies]

Hello everyone and thank you for all the supportive comments. I've taken a good week to sit and digest everything that has happened. My husband is still in the hospital and I talk to him about 5 times a day - he calls frequently to talk to the kids and me. However, he does not want me to come and see him. I'm trying not to take it personally; I think it's because he is ashamed but also fearful that something is going to happen to me if I go up there. I've been in constant communication with his psych and social worker. They diagnosed him with severe depression that manifested in paranoid delusions. They have recommended ECT to treat it, along with out patient daily therapy for the next couple months. He has been in hospital for nearly 2 1/2 weeks and the girls and I are all feeling the stress of not knowing when he's going to be home. But the psych assures me he's going to get better, so I'm thankful for that.

I will go and fill out my introduction profile and check in with the caregivers thread. I think I just needed some time to soak everything in. And thank you for sharing with me your perspectives on what it's like to actually be hospitalized for this type of illness. The worst part about this whole experience is that I feel like I can't talk to too many people for fear of judgement or people saying "try vitamins or essential oils" or something like that. And that fear is isolating and alienating. So, thank you all.

[Guiness187055]

Remember time is your friend.

Hi again. It looks like you are doing all that can be done. You are a good person to support him like that (again an apology for my prior assumption). How do you feel about ECT? I want to assure you there is little reason to be apprehensive. I have undergone the treatment. It gave me my life back. Other than a sketchy memory of those weeks I underwent it I have had no side effects of any note. It was back in the summer of 2015 and Depression has stayed relatively at bay since.