[Sridhar]

All,

I am an IT consultant currently based near Bombay in India. My 38 year old sister is suffering from Schizophrenia for the past 11 years. She is under continuous medication since then. Unfortunately, her husband refused to accept responsibility of getting her treated properly and instead he has filed a petition in a court for divorce citing this as a reason.

She is living in her dream world with artificially created characters and some real ones, whom she has not even seen (like some movie stars). We are trying to explain her that it is all her imagination but nothing is working out in our favour. She keeps saying that these people have cheated her and she is going to take revenge of all of them. We have been giving her all the medicines prescribed by doctors but she is not normal all the times. She has turned violent in the past 1 month more.

Can someone help me with advice or suggestions to overcome this problem that is bothering us for the past 11 years. I am really shattered to see my sister and my parents, who are looking after my sister now.

[Sarah116]

That must be hard, it is ever harder to suffer, I wish you the best and Welcome to PC!
These links are great!
http://www.nami.org/Template.cfm?Sec...ContentID=7416

http://www.mentalhelp.net/poc/center_index.php?id=7

http://www.seroquel.com/cons_sch/car....asp?p=cbip_on

[LMo]

Sridhar, I'm really sorry about your sister. You are a very kind and loving brother to help her like this.

I don't know how to help, especially since you are in India and I am not familiar with the resources available to you. You might be able to find a specialist in the UK, but I don't know if you'd have an easy time getting your sister to another country given the information you have shared here.

There are possibly other medications not available in India -- hopefully someone here will have some ideas since I am not very knowledgable in this area. You might also perform a search in our Drug forum.

My thoughts are with you,
LMo

[DocClyde]

I am curious, has any part of this ran in your family? I mean, schizophrenia like symptoms?

If not, was there any kind of stressful life issue that happened that could of caused this?

How is her medication regiment, and what is she on?

Is she seeing a psychotherapist?

There has been talk of such things as fish, walnuts, and canola oil helping with schizophrenia--but I would definitely not just live with that alone. Omega-3 fatty acids are what you would be looking for in these foodstuffs, and hopefully, adding to the medication and psychotherapy, this could help.

Reducing disagreements, and conflicts would also be a good thing to do. If your sister states she is wanting to harm herself or others, please seek help immeadiately...

Keeping your family involved--which it seems you are doing a great job at--is a good thing to do.

Here is a link to a story about schizophrenia in India:

http://www.islamonline.net/English/S...rticle01.shtml

I see that schizophrenia has been in the news a lot lately, in India, which is a good thing.

Here is another great link for SCARF, which is for Schizophrenia in India:

http://www.scarfindia.org/

It appears they also have a 24 hour helpline there to call as well.

Best of luck, and let us know how it goes.

Clyde