Isolation: For People With Schizophrenia, it can be Lethal!
In today's blog I want to explain why people with schizophrenia isolate and what happens to them when they do.
24 years ago, I had allowed myself to get into a pretty horrible state. What led up to it was a number of things, but eventually what it came down to was I lowered the dose of one of my critical medications, and I had become so involved in life within the tiny apartment I inhabited, that there simply was no one to tell me I desperately needed help.
I was living in a bachelor apartment literally 10 feet by 15 feet. Most homes are around 1,000 square feet for two people. This was a shoebox which contained a bathroom with no tub, just a shower, a sink, stove and fridge and a ton of stuff I had accumulated over the years. The walls were stained with the smoke from my 2-pack a day habit and there literally was no ventilation for half of the year when winter weather froze the windows shut. I tried opening my door to get some air, but a neighbour complained that my apartment smelled and I had to stop doing even that.
One of the things that made me stop going anywhere or interacting with anyone face-to-face was that I had gotten my hands on a decent computer and had become addicted to chat rooms. My only exercise was walking the mall once or twice a week for movies or food.
One of the things I had a very hard time dealing with was friends (or so-called friends) that made no attempt to understand or allow for certain behaviours caused by my mental illness. During that time in my 150 square foot apartment, so many people made the decision to cut me out of their lives. One guy even said that me giving him a call 2 years since last seeing him got his family all upset. I had never met his family, but he must have painted a pretty ugly picture of me to them to use their reaction as a reason to cut me out of his life. We had been practically best friends in high school.
I think often what tends to happed when a person isolates is a few things. A person may have social anxiety disorder, I know I did. One time I ran into a young woman I had known from school and the idea that she knew about my past and incidents at school due to my mental illness literally terrified me. This resulted in me ending our friendship because I felt like I was some kind of intruder.
It didn’t help that a few years before this, I had some delusional ideas in my head about a romance that didn’t exist with a few women I had known in the past. Although it literally took years to get a simple explanation out of them as to why they didn’t want to communicate with me, they were quick to block me on social media and call me names like psychopath and stalker. I should mention though I have said this before, my illness has absolutely nothing to do with being a psychopath, which is a situation where a person cares nothing about harm or misfortune of people other than themselves.
One of the funny things about my situation was that I really thought, likely because of the years of hard work and a crystal clear reputation, when I became mentally ill, people were very quick to judge me. I had the mistaken idea that one day I would be able to reconcile with people I had grown up with, that it would just take time. I looked forward to attending my high school reunion and re-solidifying old friendships but when the time came I was to ashamed to attend. One reunion came by and a couple of females I had known wrote me an incredibly scathing letter delivered to me by the organizer of the reunion.
I had really thought the people I grew up with were my only friends, and that if I ever wanted friends or relationships with them again, I could redeem myself. Fortunately I have gotten over that now. I live in a closely knit community in Edmonton and have a great deal of friends, and even more people who know and respect me for the work I do in mental health.
One of the things I did while I was in full recovery from my schizoaffective disorder was to write a number of books. I had actually believed while writing my first book that the writing would go out to all the people where I grew up and that so many people would feel bad about treating me like garbage because of a mental illness that was beyond my control. I was even mentioned and interviewed several times in my former home town newspaper. Once, I had them let readers know I would be doing a book signing at a book store in my former home town. No one I knew showed up, except for one It was a teacher I had in elementary school who I dearly loved like a family member. She was my special education teacher (I was considered a gifted student in elementary) for five years and had been one of my mom’s few close friends. I am so glad she came out to see my books and to talk with me. She kept saying (my mom had passed by that time)
“Your mom would be so proud.”
Sadly, my mom wasn’t proud of my first book. I had talked a lot about the abuse and neglect I experienced that may or may not have led to me being diagnosed with a mental illness and, largely because she had gone through shock treatments and that my dad and her had come into a new kind of relationship after I left home, she all but called me a liar.
One of the unfortunate truths about schizophrenia is that, even though there are millions of us in the world, as many as 40% will attempt suicide and 10% will die by suicide. This is due to stigma, isolation, misunderstanding, and the sad downward circle many people with schizophrenia experience as the go on through life and lose more contacts.
Although it isn’t a universal fact that everyone with schizophrenia receives a disability payment, I think often poorly managed disability supports are the cause of people dying by suicide. There is a government agency that will give benefits to people who are disabled where I live, but that is all they do. There is no counselling offered, no housing assistance. No assurances to the people who send out the benefits that the person is even alive. I often think of an article I read from Germany where a person had an apartment a direct-deposit pension sent to him and he was in his apartment not just dead but mummified from an extreme amount of time since he passed compared to when he was found.
One thing that really bothers me is that the disability benefit people don’t even require that a person stays on needed medications. Part of the benefit includes the cost of most medications, and they know every time you miss a renewal from your pharmacy, but they don’t do anything about it.
So very much needs to change.
So in the end dear readers, many of you may not have a mental illness. Many others act as caregivers for those with a mental illness. My dream is that you and I together can help change some of these statistics. No one should be left alone to become so desperately lonely that ending their life is their only option. No one should be given a medical benefit when they are in the grip of their illness and possibly addictions and they are headed for a very serious train wreck. My own opinion is also that some of these places that offer a mailbox service should be put out of business. They act as a place for street people to receive their benefit cheques, and all too often this is so that they don’t need to maintain a home and can spend all of their money on drugs instead of rent. This needs to stop and supports must be put in place to help people at the very least be in some kind of harm reduction program. I see the results of what happens to homeless people every day where I live. They sleep outside even in winter and are all too often amputees. They are in severe psychosis and are not being treated. While you advocate for loved ones or yourself as a person with a mental illness, advocate for those who are out there who are still suffering desperately.