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Looking4Help
Starting Member
2 Posts |
 Posted - 12/14/2006 : 16:15:49
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Hello. I am fairly desperate to find help for a very close friend of the family. She means a great deal to us all, but is sliding downhill very fast, and I am fearful of the worst possible outcome. Any insight or help would be appreciated.
I believe, from a very unprofessional and uneducated perspective based on information from this site, she suffers from acute paranoid schizophrenia. Ever since a death in our family she has gotten worse and worse. She is convinced there is a massive conspiracy against her. She believes it encompasses everyone...including those that love and are close to her. It includes things like messages written to her in the local newspaper and on the radio. It includes email messages that she can (mysteriously) never reproduce, and phone messages that seem to erase themselves. She is convinced she is constantly being followed. And it is getting more pervasive every day.
Over the last several years she has managed to alienate nearly all friends and acquaintances except a few of us who stick around simply because we know what she was and still could be. And because we love her.
Not long ago she and her husband left our community (she said because she was being followed and harassed constantly.) She sold EVERYTHING they owned, or gave it all away. Those things included personal affects that were extremely important and sentimental to her. She even trashed her beautiful sunroom of plants she had built up over many years with someone she loved dearly.
Recently, living in a new town, she and her husband got a divorce. She is now all alone in a strange place with a steady but depressing job and has NO friends. Phone conversations are at an all-time low; where once she was simply despondent now she tends to get very irritated, sometimes yelling and swearing and hanging up, then only to call right back seemingly unaware of what she had just done or said. Where once my mother was the one person she would confide in as above the conspiracy, my friend now sees her as in the middle of it. I'm worried that our only remaining communication link may soon be severed.
She flatly refuses treatment; either when she was here or now in her new community. We've tried over and over again. When she was still married, we tried to get her husband to take her, but he is a very proud man and I think the thought of admitting a problem like that was too much for him. I no longer can contact him at all, as I don't have a phone number or address in the new town, and I don't believe he ever has used email.
She is aware that if she says anything about hurting herself or others there could be grounds for some type of forced help. Her response to inquiries about suicide are now seemingly programmed: "I am fine. I would never hurt myself or anyone else." She repeats that every time. Yet I know she carries at least one handgun and has access to others, and the tone of her voice and her despondent expressions tell a story very different than what she says.
We talked with the county attorney and to a psychiatrist about how to get help, and they both said than unless she is an immediate threat to herself or others that there is nothing we can do forcibly to get her treatment. So, I'm stuck. She won't voluntarily get treatment, and I can't force her to, yet I am 100% convinced she is on the fast track to suicide at this point. My whole family feels helpless and can't stand to sit by and watch her spiral out of control.
Is there ANYONE out there that has faced anything similar? Is there ANYTHING I can do, other than watch a tragedy in the making?
Thanks,
Looking4Help  |
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| Looking4Help
Starting Member
2 Posts |
Posted - 03/05/2007 : 13:28:42
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| Hi, Cindy. THANKS for your reply!!! She is currently living in Montana. I've tried to look for some resources in Montana, but as I am completely ignorant relative to the laws surrounding mental disability issues, my luck has been sporadic at best (the terminology itself is a challenge at this point!) Any advice or help would be GREATLY appreciated! -- LFH |
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| Pat1967
Super Member (250+ posts)
533 Posts
Gratitude: 111
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Posted - 03/12/2007 : 12:27:58
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hi there just wondering how your friend is doing. I can never understand why someone would not want help to release them from the nightmare of scz, untreated. I went through many years of being mis-diagnosed but was always looking for help.......I mean if everyone felt as horrible as I did, and they do, why wouldn't some one want to seek help. its not like everyone goes through what someone sick w/ scz goes through. I can't fathom how someone would want to live in a continous nightmare. It sounds like your friend is doing this the only thing you can do is ask them if they're happy or they wish they were happier like you for instance well I hope your still checking the board and you get something out of this.....or you've found some sort of answer take care of yourself and your friend Pat |
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Good Friend Needs Help
