Quote:
Originally Posted by afc wimbledon
I have a deeply psychotic lad living with me right now, hears voices sees things, is utterly convinced that a kid he lived next door to is plotting to steal his soul, but he is at the same time normal, essentially he is a normal person reacting to what he believes are real deeply frightening supernatural events.
He's on enough drugs to knock out a rhino but they are doing sod all to help him and the fact that they don't feeds into his delusions, he tells me when I tell him the voices are a symptom of his illness 'if I was psychotic the drugs would work therefore the voices must be real and you are lying to me'
Beyond my ability to cope with, I haven't slept properly in weeks while they look for a better placement for him, at the same time he's a desperately sad kid, his friends are avoiding him because he scares the bejesus out of every one now, but a year ago he was pretty much a normal kid.
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My brother is schizophrenic. It started a few years ago. One day he tells me he wants to visit Calgary from Toronto soon (he stayed with me for a few months in the past for work). I said there were issues the last time, but he insisted. I was shocked to see him at my door after I finished working an evening shift later the same day. He was pale as a ghost and just acted odd. He stayed for 1 day, having run off while I was at work, before he left me the craziest letter saying how people are going to kill him and he doesn't want to get family in trouble (he was writing scared). I thought his thought process was not rational. He ran off the furthest he could go in Canada without a passport (basically Victoria), until he realized he had no money or food and did a cry for help. He went back to Toronto safely after I bought him a ticket back home.
It took some time to figure out that the incident was a schizophrenic episode (I thought at first he got involved in something real bad and he was escaping them). He was OK for a few months after, but he got gradually worse after. My dad had to convince him to get off the roof of the house one time. He was scared, but would act normal to people talking to him.
Unfortunately in Canada, unless the person does it voluntarily, you cannot force him on medications or in a mental hospital unless it is proven that he is a danger to society (my dad tried and tried). An incident with him and a waitress happened where he would litterally stalk her, he became violent with an older man, and he was banned from the restaurant (my dad pleaded for the owner not to press charges). He briefly did get help because of a shrewd doctor who realized my brother was lying one time that my dad took him, and somehow convinced him to sign up for some medications. The problem is that if the person does not believe he has a mental disorder, he will only see the medication as a new cause of fear. He convinced his doctors that he was going through with the medication, but in reality he thought that my dad was the cause of his life being ruined (he thought he was normal and the medications were part of my dad's attempts to control him), and eventually he just stopped showing up for the medication after a mandatory set time.
He was closest to me in the family and I spoke with him the brief time he was on medications, and he was normal but was incredibly distraught. He eventually cut off all contact including me a few years ago, no phone, no address, no internet. He put all his stuff in storage and had my name as the contact unknown to me as they were trying to collect payment since he disappeared.
He's like the Greyhound guy, but he's on the loose right now without medications, and there is nothing that can be done about it until a tragic event happens. When left untreated, incidents like the Greyhound beheading and the Brentwood murders are often what ends up happening. Schizophrenic people are normal people like anyone here, but hear or see things that seem to be part of reality. My brother genuinely believed that a few guys were stalking him, and followed him to his home a few times.