Mental disorders

[Grayhead]

Given that it was mentioned in a recent thread, I thought it deserved it's own thread for discussion.
As some of you know, I have a brother who is hooked on heroin and meth. He has never asked for help, or even admitted he has a problem. We both where a product of the 90s rave scene in Florida, partaking in large amounts of various drugs during that time. We both moved on and had families. After 12 years of serving in the coast guard, he decided to walkout in his family for a girl who was as far from being a lady as one could be. So for the past 5 years, they have progressed into absolute dope heads. He is to the point of hallucinating and carrying on conversations with my dead mom.

I have always felt he placed himself in that situation by choice. And could make a decision to change his life when he was ready. Addiction is a nasty thing. His girlfriend has been one for 20 years. She use to turn tricks for cancer patients and was paid with pain medicine. His choice to commit adultery on his wife with this tramp was his alone. The family has begged him to leave her alone, but he refuses. Says he has to save her from herself.
I fear I will get that phone call one day. There have been lots of drug related deaths in my area over the past few years. I hear families say," at least the have found peace
I've always had a hard time understanding that thought. Suicide is a harsh thing for the family left behind. Counseling with people in my church when this happens is one of the hardest things I have ever faced.

But at what point does it go from choice to a mental disorder? What can we do to help this? I've been to the point in my adult life, that I wished I weren't alive, but never harbored the thought of taking my own life. Does this mean I have a mental disorder?

People who go on a rampage with guns, the blame shifts to mental disorders. How can you truly identify this without the government targeting people for their own agenda?

Hearing the cries for understanding this, where does it start, and who defines it? After that, what can be done?

 

[tarheel0910]

Given that it was mentioned in a recent thread, I thought it deserved it's own thread for discussion.
As some of you know, I have a brother who is hooked on heroin and meth. He has never asked for help, or even admitted he has a problem. We both where a product of the 90s rave scene in Florida, partaking in large amounts of various drugs during that time. We both moved on and had families. After 12 years of serving in the coast guard, he decided to walkout in his family for a girl who was as far from being a lady as one could be. So for the past 5 years, they have progressed into absolute dope heads. He is to the point of hallucinating and carrying on conversations with my dead mom.

I have always felt he placed himself in that situation by choice. And could make a decision to change his life when he was ready. Addiction is a nasty thing. His girlfriend has been one for 20 years. She use to turn tricks for cancer patients and was paid with pain medicine. His choice to commit adultery on his wife with this tramp was his alone. The family has begged him to leave her alone, but he refuses. Says he has to save her from herself.
I fear I will get that phone call one day. There have been lots of drug related deaths in my area over the past few years. I hear families say," at least the have found peace
I've always had a hard time understanding that thought. Suicide is a harsh thing for the family left behind. Counseling with people in my church when this happens is one of the hardest things I have ever faced.

But at what point does it go from choice to a mental disorder? What can we do to help this? I've been to the point in my adult life, that I wished I weren't alive, but never harbored the thought of taking my own life. Does this mean I have a mental disorder?

People who go on a rampage with guns, the blame shifts to mental disorders. How can you truly identify this without the government targeting people for their own agenda?

Hearing the cries for understanding this, where does it start, and who defines it? After that, what can be done?

I'm not sure if you can identify a certain point where it goes from choice to a mental disorder. Some people are just born that way and some people get that way through lifestyle choices and just plain bad luck. The biggest problem is it's hard to tell what a lot of these people are going through, because so many of them keep it hidden. There is still a stigma around this type of condition, so a lot of people are afraid to admit it and get the help they need. We need to get people to understand that this is a serious problem, that they are not alone and that it's ok to ask for help.

As far as your brother goes, have you tried to have him sent to rehab or a mental health place? A lot of states can do a welfare check on adults and have them forcibly committed to a hospital or rehab if they think they might harm themselves or others. In the end though, there is only so much you can do for them. You can't help someone that doesn't want help. The only thing you can do is try to get them to see that they need it.

 

[Grayhead]

I'm not sure if you can identify a certain point where it goes from choice to a mental disorder. Some people are just born that way and some people get that way through lifestyle choices and just plain bad luck. The biggest problem is it's hard to tell what a lot of these people are going through, because so many of them keep it hidden. There is still a stigma around this type of condition, so a lot of people are afraid to admit it and get the help they need. We need to get people to understand that this is a serious problem, that they are not alone and that it's ok to ask for help.

As far as your brother goes, have you tried to have him sent to rehab or a mental health place? A lot of states can do a welfare check on adults and have them forcibly committed to a hospital or rehab if they think they might harm themselves or others. In the end though, there is only so much you can do for them. You can't help someone that doesn't want help. The only thing you can do is try to get them to see that they need it.

He called me one day and said he had to get away from his girlfriend. I assumed they where fighting, so I went to him. He was completely out of his mind. Picking things out of the air, his hair, inside his mouth. Claiming they were entities. I spent several hours trying to talk to him. He refused to go home, claiming someone was trying to kill them. I .managed to have the law meet at his house without him knowing I called. They wouldn't do a thing for him, just told me to make sure he was warm for the night.

 

[Raising Heel]

Mental health and substance abuse are inextricably linked. I used to think homeless people and panhandlers were just lazy bums. That was before I spent two weeks standing out in Harvard Square in Boston observing their behavior. That included seeing a man overdose before being resuscitated by paramedics.

It's my opinion that mental health is the biggest healthcare crisis in this country that no one is talking about. The opioid epidemic is a symptom, not the disease. It's an escape from mental anguish, which in many cases is caused by chronic physical conditions. Nowhere are we failing more than with our veterans.

 

[tarheel0910]

He called me one day and said he had to get away from his girlfriend. I assumed they where fighting, so I went to him. He was completely out of his mind. Picking things out of the air, his hair, inside his mouth. Claiming they were entities. I spent several hours trying to talk to him. He refused to go home, claiming someone was trying to kill them. I .managed to have the law meet at his house without him knowing I called. They wouldn't do a thing for him, just told me to make sure he was warm for the night.

Sorry to hear that. The only thing I can recommend is just try to stay in contact with him and let him know you are still there for him. Just knowing that there is still someone in his life that still cares for him can mean a lot and hopefully one day he will recognize that he needs some help.

 

[tarheel0910]

It's my opinion that mental health is the biggest healthcare crisis in this country that no one is talking about. The opioid epidemic is a symptom, not the disease. It's an escape from mental anguish, which in many cases is caused by chronic physical conditions. Nowhere are we failing more than with our veterans.

Agreed. Until we can find a way to get rid of the stigma people have about it, it will be hard to make a big change. A lot of these people who need help, won't ask for it because they are afraid to admit they need it. I'm not really sure what we can do to get rid of that except for talking about it and trying to educate people about the issue. That's something that will take time, but hopefully in the future we can make the problem better.

 

[Raising Heel]

He called me one day and said he had to get away from his girlfriend. I assumed they where fighting, so I went to him. He was completely out of his mind. Picking things out of the air, his hair, inside his mouth. Claiming they were entities. I spent several hours trying to talk to him. He refused to go home, claiming someone was trying to kill them. I .managed to have the law meet at his house without him knowing I called. They wouldn't do a thing for him, just told me to make sure he was warm for the night.

Have your family and his friends ever discussed an intervention?

 

[Grayhead]

Have your family and his friends ever discussed an intervention?

No. Not sure how to go about that route. Everything that i have witnessed in my life in these cases, is you cant help them unless you want to. As is the case with my brother, he never really reaches out unless he wants money. Then i go though the whole, you think drugs is my problem, and him attempting to shame me because i refuse to give him money, to I'm not much of a Christian for not helping my blood kin.

I recovered from drugs the day I woke up and God moved within to help me make my mind up that I was finished. He has never once reached out asking for help in that way.

 

[Grayhead]

Agreed. Until we can find a way to get rid of the stigma people have about it, it will be hard to make a big change. A lot of these people who need help, won't ask for it because they are afraid to admit they need it. I'm not really sure what we can do to get rid of that except for talking about it and trying to educate people about the issue. That's something that will take time, but hopefully in the future we can make the problem better.

I had/have a stigma about homeless people as well. My help usually extends to giving them a 5 dollar meal card. Never money. Seeing people flock to food banks is hard for.me as well. Knowing some are driving away in nice rides with a trunk full of groceries while others are doing without is repulsive. Same with food stamps and welfare. It's the people who abuse the system that makes it impossible to help. I am a deacon in my church. People will come in during service and ask for money. We tell them to sit o the back pew and after service we will talk with them. In my years at serving, I think one stayed. The rest gets mad and bashes us on Facebook. We have to investigate every case. People grow dependant on help.

As for the homeless, that's another tough nut to crack. Any help you give, and it brings out the roaches of society to take up that help

 

[tarheel0910]

I had/have a stigma about homeless people as well. My help usually extends to giving them a 5 dollar meal card. Never money. Seeing people flock to food banks is hard for.me as well. Knowing some are driving away in nice rides with a trunk full of groceries while others are doing without is repulsive. Same with food stamps and welfare. It's the people who abuse the system that makes it impossible to help. I am a deacon in my church. People will come in during service and ask for money. We tell them to sit o the back pew and after service we will talk with them. In my years at serving, I think one stayed. The rest gets mad and bashes us on Facebook. We have to investigate every case. People grow dependant on help.

As for the homeless, that's another tough nut to crack. Any help you give, and it brings out the roaches of society to take up that help

I agree that there are plenty of people who try to take advantage of the system. It's hard to root out who really needs the help and who doesn't. It's good that you give out a meal card instead of money. My dad would offer to buy people a meal when they would ask. Unfortunately most said no, because they could just go get it themselves. Obviously they were more than likely going to use the money for drugs or alcohol, but that goes back to what @Raising Heel was saying about drugs being linked to mental health. It's one of those things in life that's hard to figure out. Does the homeless guy want the drugs/alcohol just to get wasted or is it a self medication thing because of some illness he may have. If we can figure out how to address the mental health issue in this country I think that will cut down on the number of homeless by extension.

 

[Grayhead]

I would hope it would come from the private sector. If the government is involved it will be a political hot.mess, as is all this government

 

[Littlejon]

I am very sorry to hear about your brother. I guess I can relate somewhat as I had an uncle who was an alcoholic who put the family through hell his entire life. Wife and kids left him and after he finally got his license taken away from so many DWI's, he got a moped and almost killed himself on it so many times we lost count. Depression runs rampant through mom's side of the family and he and my mom both were hit hard with it. He passed away several years ago. Cancer ate him up as the result of his hard living. Mom, who battles it to this day, never drank or took drugs, outside of prescriptions. Luckily I was adopted so I don't have to worry about that being passed on.

What makes this difficult for me is I wonder if the mental illness is present before the drugs & alcohol in some or if the drugs & alcohol eat away their brains after so long that it causes mental illness to set in. I know some are that way long before, but some perfectly normal people who get hooked end up that way after abuse. I don't know, but I DO know it is hell on families. At least it was for mine.

I guess I finally had enough when in college. I came home one break and he said he was finally ready to check into rehab, so mom and I drove him 2 hours away to a facility only to have him balk while checking in. That was it for me. No one in the family except mom really had anything to do with him after that and she only did what she had to do in order to keep him alive.

He died alone having never reconciled with anyone, including his children.

It is tough and I wish I had the answers.

 

[Hark_The_Sound_2010]

People who go on a rampage with guns, the blame shifts to mental disorders. How can you truly identify this without the government targeting people for their own agenda?

This is the biggest problem, IMO. Mental illness is such a tough thing to prove, and is regularly used as an excuse, or a legal defense, even when it's not the case. Unfortunately that makes people hesitant to believe it even when it actually is the case.

I used to think homeless people and panhandlers were just lazy bums.

Oh, they are. But usually they're like that due to the drugs as you mentioned.

It's my opinion that mental health is the biggest healthcare crisis in this country that no one is talking about.

I feel like that used to be the situation, but now after every high profile OD or suicide you hear people talking about mental health. I think it's pretty well discussed at this point. Now whether anything is done about it other than just discussing it or raising awareness for it.... that's another issue.

 

[Raising Heel]

Now whether anything is done about it other than just discussing it or raising awareness for it.... that's another issue.

Thank you. Yes, that's more the point I was trying to make.

What little I know from working in healthcare is that there's no money in providing mental health services. That explains a lot.

 

[tazki]

Given that it was mentioned in a recent thread, I thought it deserved it's own thread for discussing

I have always felt he placed himself in that situation by choice. And could make a decision to change his life when he was ready. Addiction is a nasty thing.

 

[tazki]

Gray, that's the bottom line. I may be wrong but I don't call it a mental disorder. Like you said, you always felt he made the choice. He did and so do so many others today. once you get on the crap it changes everything about you. I have a dear friend who's daughter is on heroin, etc and she has been revived three times. Beautiful girl from a well to do family but she is hooked and she's going to die unless some miracle takes place. The drugs in the this country are out of control. I hope and pray your brother somehow gets the long term help/recovery he needs. That crap takes at least a year for your brain to get back to normal.

 

[Grayhead]

Well it's official. My brother is homeless. I habe a bed avaliable to him locally at a rehab program as well as bethal colony in the mountains of NC. It is killing me to hear from him, but I still refuse to help. If myself or any of my family was to get around him, we wouldn't be able to get rid of him or that skank he is with. I hope he will get sick of sleeping in the woods and being hungry and ask for help. I know anything I do for him right now will just contribute to his problem. If he was to ask to go to that program, I would help immediately. I feel like a dirt bag knowing I sleep in a comfy bed and had a nice meal. This is part of the agony of being a person who has an addict around them.

 

[Raising Heel]

Each year, my employer provides suggested readings on certain healthcare topics. This year's topic is addiction and mental illness, and one of our employees has written a five-part series about coping with her son's addiction issues. Below is the final installment in the series. I hope you find some words of comfort here.

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When we love someone who is an addict, one of the most difficult challenges can be learning to let go. As I have discussed in previous articles, the best thing you can do if you love someone who has the disease of addiction is take care of yourself. I've shared some practical ways to do that and have offered advice on how to truly help those you love. This installment will discuss letting go – one of the hardest, but most essential things to learn when you love someone with addiction.

The concept of "letting go" encompasses a lot of different things in terms of relating to someone suffering from addiction. In all instances, we have to let go of the illusion of control – along with our effort to control – and accept that we cannot change another person. This is not easy to do and is at the core of step one of the 12-step recovery program: "We admitted we were powerless over the addict and that our lives had become unmanageable." As long as we try to hold on and control, our lives will remain crazy and we will not find serenity. It is scary to let go because when we stop trying to control, we also have to accept that things may not turn out the way that we hope. We have to let go of having a certain outcome. "Letting go" for some of us means that we have to step completely aside in order to protect ourselves.

Many folks have asked me: How do you know when to stop? How much treatment should I continue paying for? When is it time to get off the merry-go-round? These are difficult questions, and there are no easy answers. However, once you start focusing on yourself and setting healthy boundaries, I believe the answers to these questions will become clearer. As a rule of thumb, if your loved one's addiction has reached a point of being truly harmful to you, then it is time to let go.

Denial is one of the five stages of grief. Those of us who love addicts have been hurt deeply and have much to grieve. Often, it is more than we can bear. I tend to believe the best of folks, and I try to have a positive, hopeful outlook on life. While these are generally positive qualities, they have also contributed to my own state of denial about the reality of living with an addict, causing me to minimize things, overlook warning signs and continue the status quo. Those suffering from addiction also are in denial — they do not see clearly how their actions are hurting themselves and others.

In addition to denial, it's often hard to know if our loved one is truly in recovery because a symptom of addiction is lying. As someone who loves an addict, we also desperately want to believe that things are getting better or that they are not so bad. I learned the hard way that I need to believe behavior rather than words. It took me a long time to understand the concept of "verbal reality" – that an addict's words are just words and nothing more. I learned the importance of looking at behavior over time to see whether he was truly in recovery or simply continuing to manipulate me.

Recovery from addiction is a process. It does not happen overnight, and there are usually setbacks along the way. Once the addict becomes willing to change, he or she must continue to pursue recovery one day at a time as addiction is a lifelong illness. Addiction is a cunning and baffling disease, and an addict who becomes complacent and does choose recovery along with working his program daily is at risk for relapsing — a heartbreak for everyone.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Many of us who love addicts have developed a high tolerance for insanity, not realizing how abnormal our life has become because we have been doing it for so long. We often do not realize that we are riding a merry-go-round of craziness. In other words, this is the part of step one where we admit that our lives had become unmanageable.

Some of the addicts in our lives will choose recovery. Others will not. Some will experience recovery for a while, decide that staying sober is too much work and go back to their life of addiction. Regardless of what our loved ones decide, as we become healthier, we learn that we are not victims. We learn that we also have choices, and we have the power to decide how to respond. One of these decisions is whether we stay in relationship with an addict or not. Walking away from someone you love whose continued actions hurt you is one of the hardest things to do in the world. However, sometimes it is the only choice we have to protect our own health and well-being. Part of our recovery includes learning to let go of expectations and outcomes. Only the addict can decide if and when he or she is ready and willing to change. And only we can decide what we can and cannot tolerate – and act accordingly. For many of us, this will include letting go of destructive relationships in order to save ourselves. The best quote that I have heard in recovery related to this concept is "you don't have to set yourself on fire to keep someone else warm."

 

[Grayhead]

It is the second hardest things I have faced. My own addiction was number 1.