Something Needs to be Done

As the sister of a man who has a mental illness, there are things I don't choose to think about. Until I hear on the news that a man killed his mother and then walked into a place that should be sacred and killed babies. Then my own personal fears are on the news. When will the day come that I get a phone call that my mother has been killed? When will I get the phone call that informs me that my brother has killed himself? He's admitted to me that he thinks about it. That killing himself would be so easy.

And then there's the part of me that wonders every time he talks, what does he want? What manipulation is he pulling now? Because just after he admits to thinking of suicide regularly, he tells me about his plans to go to graduate school. How lucky he is that he is on full disability and gets special treatment from his professors and full-ride public education. Another sibling informed me after this that his counselor dropped him because he refuses to do what he suggests. That sibling lives in a bedroom of the same house, refusing to sleep behind an unlocked door. My mother, who is almost 60, works 40 hours a week on top of running her own business because she needs health-care benefits and a steady income because she cares for an adult son who has never held a job.

Do I sound like a victim? I've been accused of it. I left my house the second time I called the police because of his behaviour, he was arrested instead of sent to the hospital. I didn't know he would be arrested. I knew he had something seriously wrong with him but we didn't know what it was. My mother was so angry with me, she told me to leave her home and refused to speak to me for a year. Her sister informed me that I had made my choice when I abandoned my family and they were no longer my concern. Strangers were kinder than my family who refused to admit that there was anything wrong besides depression.

When does mental illness become something that's accepted as a serious, fatal illness? Do we blame the diabetic for their defective pancreas and endocrine system? No. We bend over backwards as a society to make sure they get the proper insulin treatment. But, heaven forbid, you are diagnosed with Schizoaffective Disorder. Then you are left to wander the psychotropic halls of eeny-meeny-minie-moe guesstimations of which drug will work and which dosage is effective. And the family doesn't discuss it. Because how dare you suggest that there's something wrong with him? As if he has a disease that needs to be cured?

I read this blogpost today and agree with this mother. They need help! The mothers need help! Their sons need help! Their families need help! Why? Because I'm tired of waking up screaming from nightmares where my brother stabs himself in the chest with a kitchen knife or has beaten my mother to death with a baseball bat or has smothered my sister with a pillow.

And then I turn on the news and someone else's brother has committed one of my nightmares. And the only thing that happens when you call the police when they're having an "episode" is a week in jail where they come out of it and don't remember anything that happened in the past 10 days. Too many live in fear and nothing is being done. It needs to stop. There needs to be more than MHMR. The system is broken and something needs to be done because I for one am tired of living in a constant state of fear when the phone rings.