Have you ever had a loved one, a family member or a close friend that had any sort of mental health issue at all? If so, did you try to help them?
I slapped some handcuffs on them and dropped them via parachute into Syria. Said if you can make it back home whatever problem you thought you had will seem trivial.
But, seriously, if you can be more specific? It might get you more responses. Things like drug addiction need to be responded to differently than say, post traumatic stress disorder.
Also, the depression thread might be a good place to post as well for support and advice.
Yes. I did try to help. More than one, unfortunately, both family and friend.
Look on www.youtube.com for videos about psychological topics.
Some interesting ones have made it to my choices, from generalized topics like the “Signs Revealed before You Know Someone is Toxic” to more specific ones, like signs of pathological narcissism.
As far as individuals with mental illnesses, at least one family member I would say displays everything from toxic behaviors, for example, can’t share in something that’s joyous to me, to pathological narcissism, and it’s best for all if I not dump entirely, but pull back & distance.
I tried killing myself a couple of nights ago. Took a bunch of pills and drank.
You know to me, there is almost no worse feeling in the entire world than trying to kill yourself, and waking up the next day knowing that you failed, and the embarrassment of it from people that are close to you finding out about it. ~Sigh. Yes, I seek help for my issues, and no I currently don’t want to do myself harm.
My grandmother.
She had dementia.
I helped take care of her until her death.
My grandma had it also. It was very painful to go over and see her, and she didn’t even know who I was sometimes. I’m sorry that your grandma had that, and it shows that you’re a very caring person that you helped take care of her.
It helps that we’re all easily amused over here.
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Ah! Easily amused people are my kinda people!
They’re usually easy going, and don’t take a lot to please.
This is about a year and a half old. I was trying to bleed out. My relative was able to stop the bleeding, otherwise he would have taken me to the ER. I didn’t want to go to the ER, because then they would have admitted me to the psych part after stiching me up. I did go to my general doctor like 3 days later and he gave me external stiches and told me that I probably should have gone to the ER. I always wear a brace around it any time I go out. I don’t believe that children should be exposed to the things that adults are. 
Random aside: I’ve been thinking about being easily amused since these posts and I’m pondering the possible inverse relationship between being genuinely easily amused and being easily offended, especially being easily offended by proxy (IOW, offended because you imagine it’s something that should offend others)
That’s not me saying people who are easily offended have no sense of humor, just that being easily amused may help to prevent being easily offended.
I dunno. I’m easily amused. I know that much for sure. I’m happy sitting around and playing go fish for hours on end. Seriously.
My father is mentally ill. Probably bi-polar though I don’t know that he’s ever been officially diagnosed. He refuses to accept that there could be anything wrong with him and often punishes those he feels has slighted him even though there is no way any rational person could see slight in it. For instance many years ago I was dating a girl and we decided to get married, we also were having a kid. He freaked out over it and literally refused to talk to me again for over 4 years. Did I mention I was 25, had graduated college, and was well situated in my adult life? This wasn’t a case of me being 15 and messing up my future. Later in life he and his new wife broke. They had an eight year old son and he in order to punish his ex wife refused to talk to his son. Yeah that will show her, utterly confuse an 8 year old kid about why Daddy won’t talk to him in order to get at her. That was 17 years ago and to this day my little brother still has not talked to him since.
It was then I decided to cut my father out of my life forever. He had finally started slowly trying to make amends over my wedding / baby freak out and had contacted me. Then I found out what he was doing to my little brother and decided there was no way I was letting him back in my life or my children’s lives.
Haven’t talked to him since and never plan to try. As far as I know he’s still alive living a couple states away but he could probably die and I wouldn’t find out and I don’t care.
There are a number of problems associated with mental illness. First, is that psychiatry isn’t an exact science - there seems to be a lot of “we know it works but we don’t know why it works”. Even if the science were better, psychiatry is one of those fields that is understaffed - just not as many medical students going into psychiatry. It’s both a very difficult field, and a very poorly compensated one.
Secondly, there is tremendous social stigma to being mentally ill. People generally aren’t embarrassed or stereotyped if they have diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, or suffer an injury or heart attack - they are “ill” or “injured”, not “nuts” or “loony”, they are regarded with compassion, not ridicule.
And that makes it difficult for many of the “functionally mentally ill” - those not incapacitated by their illness - reluctant to seek treatment or to be compliant patients. As for what family members can do - nothing really, unless you’re a medical professional. If you’re not, you’re no more qualified to address a family member’s mental illness than his/her physical illness. You can support their treatment, but you can’t be a substitute for treatment. Allowing yourself to believe that your compassion alone can “fix” them is a form of enabling.
Compassion alone won’t fix it, but it definitely helps.
