Coping With Consequences

Living with a spouse who has been in the clutches of mental illness, an illness whose primary trait in many manifests itself in refusing and/or thinking that they don't need medication, there's always the quest for finding something that will work (whether it be a tactic, procedure, treatment etc.) that will finally get them to at least see and admit that they need help without having to resort to forced hospitalization which can be very difficult in some states.

Back in 1992, when my wife suffered her first blown out psychosis, I never thought that I would still be here in 2011 still looking for a way to convince her that in order take control back of her mind would be through the proper combination of meds and therapy.
One thing that I learned over the years is that it takes the help and love of family which at best can help one cope. Recently I read a review in the New York Times of the book Henry's Demons. The last two paragraphs of the review capture the essence of what it's like to be a caretaker;

1. watching a person unraveling
2. coping with consequences  

“Henry’s Demons” is a probing tour through the glories (and occasional idiocies) of the British health care system, through the history of schizophrenia and through the often barbarous ways patients have been treated. It’s a tour, too, through the psyches of two bright people watching their son unravel, the stitching pulled from his mind like wool from the bottom of a sweater.



“I feel like someone playing an unwinnable game of Snakes and Ladders,” Ms. Montefiore writes in her diary after a bad day. “We’ve just painfully climbed a ladder, now we’re down a bloody great snake, back at square one, goddammit.” By the end of the book, Henry’s condition has somewhat improved. But it is among this book’s bedrock realizations that, as Patrick puts it: “We, as a family, will always have to cope with the consequences of his schizophrenia. But that, after all, is what families are for.”

I don't ever recall someone saying that they were cured of mental illness but one can cope. Coping doesn't necessarily mean that one overcomes it but that one struggles and deals with the illness with some form of success.I remember using the word 'miracle' to describe what I saw after my wife's first
forced hospitalization. Her mind was cleared of the hallucinations an delusions that she had been a prisoner to. Yes there were some side effects but the benefits outweighed them. The mistake that the family made was in thinking that she was cured. Within a year she was off the meds and returned to the delusional world.

Patrick's quote from above needs to be repeated. "We, as a family, will always have to cope with the consequences of (you fill in the blank)."