Your Family Members with Mental Illness

My sister lives a few miles from what was our state hospital until it fully closed in the 1990s. It held thousands of people at one point. I often look at it and think of how likely I would have been to have lived there had I just been born sooner. It's horrifying.

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Originally Posted by BeyondtheRainbow My sister lives a few miles from what was our state hospital until it fully closed in the 1990s. It held thousands of people at one point. I often look at it and think of how likely I would have been to have lived there had I just been born sooner. It's horrifying.

Sounds like the stuff of nightmares, to be able to still see it.

We have a couple of state hospitals in this region, but not close enough for me to see them unless I drive a ways.

It's a mixed bag, though. Our then-governor Reagan closed the state hospitals in California with the promise that the people living in them would receive excellent and consistent outpatient care. So the patients were released. Then Reagan claimed the funding feel through. That was when the homelessness issue began. Suddenly there were "street people" and (horrible term) "bag ladies" (because they were homeless and carried their possessions in bags). This and that went on; now California has the largest homeless population in the nation because the weather here is mild year-round & there's the ocean with beaches. Most of the homeless are chronically mentally ill. It's a tragic mess.

My family are functioning people, but many must have had conditions that were not officially diagnosed as far as I know. They were prescribed meds for anxiety and depression, so they may have had some diagnosis the doctors noted. My father was in a deep depression due to tragic family events, and was negligently treated by a “doctor?”, who prescribed Thorazine, so they would have given him a diagnosis. He died shortly thereafter.

My family’s behavior, whether due to undiagnosed MI or not, caused me my problems with my behavior (emotions) whether MI or not. It has been a destabilizing challenge to know there’s something wrong with them and having to learn what it means to be a healthy person and be able to do it.

@Beth,
There are many toxic cousins in my family with whom I went low contact as years passed by.Some how I believed this cousin was a good soul.If that was true then what about the scary experience I had ? It was really baffling to me. My sister went through a scary experience during another family reunion she attended, and was sharing room with her.My sister told me what had happened. So that proved she had a tendency to do harmful things.But why ?Anyways my sister too stopped going to these get togethers.Later my cousin became aloof and stopped talking to family members and along the way had two failed marriages.Relatives started gossiping that something was wrong with her and that she was weird.I donot know why despite my scary experience I always had a soft corner for her. The recent conversation with her she voluntarily gave me that piece of info and showed me the medications she was taking.Then proceeded to explain a lot of things that she experienced because of her illness.
To be frank I got a sense of closure and felt relief. Now I know why she did it to me.I actually held her hand and listened to her ordeal as she suffered as an undiagnosed person.It really broke my heart that no body had really paid attention to her plight.

I, too, belonged to a family who didn't believe in mental illness. When I was 14, our family doctor told her that I might possibly suffer from Aspergers or a learning and developmental disability and should be evaluated by a psychologist. My mother grew very angry, called him a quack and left. I asked her what that meant and she said they were all scam-artists. That made me think they were scam artists until I found out otherwise...the hard way. This was something frequently (and still is in some churches) taught by fundamentalist/evangelist churches.

She was never diagnosed, but after she died, my father admitted that she was definitely bi-polar. This was when he finally accepted that mental illness is a real thing and realized it explained a lot about her (and two of my brothers) erratic, violent behavior. My oldest brother suffered from it as well and eventually... My youngest brother is also bi-polar in a very bad way. He refuses to get help or acknowledge it. My middle brother is like me...on the spectrum but also refuses to acknowledge mental illness as a real diagnosis.

I've heard rumors of cousins and aunts who've had issues but everyone is mum about it.