When a loved one is mentally ill, family members often feel that they too are losing their mind. The line between reality and illusion is blurring. The truth and the lie cease to be unambiguous. Communication with the sick person, although extremely difficult, is nevertheless possible.
One Sunday, the mother of thirty-six-year-old Grzegorz scattered various objects on the floor. Her husband collected everything patiently, but the next day after returning from work, the view in the apartment was even worse – there were piles of clothes and dishes on the carpet, torn wallpaper hung from the walls. He made his wife a fuss, did not understand her strange explanations. He called for help from Grzegorz. He heard from his mother that the malicious demon was hiding her necessary things, she was only looking for them. She told about angels who came to her aid. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He hoped the mother was joking.
Is it true or false?
When someone close to us begins to suffer from a mental disorder, they rarely (or rather never) make a decision about treatment. However, the opinion that the symptoms of disorders are not noticed by him is wrong. Often the sick person realizes that something is wrong with him, but it is difficult for him to distinguish between what is true and what is only an illusion. This uncertainty causes great tension and anxiety. People suffering from mental disorders often put a lot of effort into maintaining the opinion that nothing unusual is happening with them. A person suffering from schizophrenia described his mental state on the forum www.psychiatria.info.pl/forum/ as follows: “At certain moments I realize that I have hallucinations. Sometimes it is difficult for me to distinguish between truth and hallucinations. There are also times when I am sure that something happened, and others tell me that it is impossible, it’s just delusions. “
For a person suffering from mental disorders, information from the environment is very important. When they cannot trust their own judgments, they learn from healthy people what is truth and what is only a hallucination. In such moments, loved ones can either help a lot or harm a lot, a lot depends on their reaction. Meanwhile, for healthy people, mental disorders in a loved one are often such a big shock that rational thinking, empathy and faith in the possibilities of medicine fail.
Grzegorz was horrified by his mother’s health. “I didn’t know how to help her,” he says. – I was hoping that in a day or two she would feel better, maybe she just got scared and for a moment her head was confused. It was only my aunt who explained to me that my mother was treated for schizophrenia in her early youth. We realized that she was not pretending and started to persuade her to be treated, which at first she did not even want to hear.
It is not easy to imagine a conversation that is more difficult than trying to dialogue with a person suffering from a mental disorder or disease. Family members feel confused and do not know how to react to messages that sound absurd, funny, scary to their ears. How, for example, to respond to the accusation that we wanted to poison a sick person, that a conspiracy was conspired against him, that a demon was circling around the apartment, or that the sick person was another incarnation of Napoleon? Confirm, so as not to “irritate” the sick person, or violently deny?
Before you get to the doctor
According to psychiatrists, confirming a patient’s delusions is the worst possible path to cure. The ideal would be to never be forced to deceive a person suffering from a mental disorder or disease, but sometimes this is the only way to calm them down, make contact or persuade them to see a doctor.
The son of Wiesława, fifty-two, from Gdańsk, he was very stressed about his secondary school-leaving examinations. After graduating from high school, he went with his mother to rest in the mountains, but on the train he suffered a strong panic attack. He shouted that the war had broken out, the passengers seemed to him menacing SS men. People on the train were very scared by his behavior. Mrs. Wiesława managed to persuade her son to go out at the train station in Warsaw and visit the doctor only after she convinced him that the train could be bombed. Thanks to the sedatives given at the clinic, they were able to return to their hometown. After treatment in the hospital, the boy recovered, nothing disturbing has happened to him for several years.
Psychiatrists argue that Ms Wiesława’s method is an absolute last resort. The patient should be calmly explained that what he sees, hears or feels is the result of a disease that the doctor can help heal. Although sometimes it is very difficult to control emotions, you must not shout at a sick person, insult him or convince him that he is “crazy”. For him, hallucinations or delusions are as real as for a healthy person reality. It must be remembered that although the patient speaks, feels or behaves differently, he is still the same, loved and respected person who found himself in an extremely difficult situation. One of the worst things we can do is deny his illness. Few words can hurt him more than: “I don’t believe you” and few that help as effectively as, for example: “I believe that you feel this way as a result of your illness, and I assure you that it is just an illusion that I cannot see.”
A person with schizophrenia described the very unpleasant reaction of her family as follows: “My parents do not fully believe in my illness; sometimes they ask if I really feel that bad, they say maybe it would be enough for me to pull myself together. When I was about to go to the hospital, they didn’t believe I really needed him. Dad prophesied that I would destroy my life (because the treatment involved going on leave, that is, informing the management that something was wrong with me). “
It is not necessary to pretend that you believe in the existence of illusions created by the mind of the sick person. Just believe that for him they are real.
No electroshock
The patient’s fear of being treated can have many sources. Some people are afraid of staying in a psychiatric hospital because they have bad experiences in dealing with medical staff. In this case, it is worth explaining that Polish psychiatric treatment has changed a lot in recent years. Today it is recognized that the best help can be obtained by the patient in his own environment, not in the hospital, so the ward stays are kept to a minimum. Instead of staying in the hospital for months, the patient visits the clinic from time to time for regular meetings with a doctor, and at home takes prescribed medications. The number of beds in psychiatric hospitals is constantly decreasing, while there are more and more places in psychiatric hospital wards, where patients have a greater possibility of communicating with the outside world. The role of psychotherapy is also growing, and psychiatric treatment is no longer mainly about administering pills. The vision of a closed hospital, in which patients were given electroshock and cold baths, is just a film vision straight from “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”.
Some patients are afraid of treatment also because it means having to deal with difficult things, hidden in the subconscious. It is often easier for a patient to endure the unpleasant symptoms of mental disorders than to face fear as their primary source. It is worth convincing the patient that during psychotherapy he will only have to deal with what has already happened in the name of a better future. The monsters behind the veil of oblivion have long been dead.
There are such complicated family situations, in which the patient refuses treatment, because he sees the urging to see a psychiatrist as another symptom of a longer-lasting family conflict. If, even before the illness, relationships at home were full of misunderstandings, family members were not considered trustworthy and reliable in assessing their mental health, this distrust will worsen in the event of an illness. In this case, it is worth asking another person close to the patient for help. If she also notices disturbing symptoms in him, she will surely start persuading herself that he should, however, start treatment.
In order to help a loved one decide to start treatment, it is good to provide them with support, give them the fullest possible sense of security. If he does not wish to do so, do not inform family and friends about the hospital stay. Often the sick person is afraid that he will have to give up work for some time because he will not be able to perform his duties. However, it is worth providing him with such an opportunity, because in the period of improving his health, a gradual return to work and social life is very advisable. We should remember that no one who has no professional training can be an arbitrary judge of the health condition of other people. Before we start persuading a loved one to visit a psychiatrist, let’s discuss our opinions and observations with someone, ask other household members for their opinion. At the same time, let us react to everything that seems strange to us, let us not ignore any disturbing messages from our loved ones, because they may indicate a developing disease.
Text: Sylwia Skorstad
Source: Let’s live longer