Sometimes when mental illness turns a person into a malicious abuser, we have to protect ourselves regardless of whether we blame them fully for their actions or not. Nature turns the person into a disaster (sometimes, it’s not like EVERY case is like this), and when it does that, we’re justified in doing want it takes protect ourselves, to keep from being abused or harmed - not blaming them doesn’t mean we have to go out and stand in the storm, so to speak.
Here’s wishing you peace and happiness. :)
At the same time, I implore you not to give up. For people with mental illnesses like you describe, access to reliable Healthcare is everything. A good doctor who monitors their medications is everything. If I were to describe the situation in engineering terms, I'd say that every single support such a person receives is load bearing. Which is why it can be just so difficult, when only one failing can lead to collapse.
I hope you are able to help her, provide her with something. If nothing else, try to put a roof over her head. Being homeless makes all of those other problems of access worse.
It does suck. I hope you try again. If you need someone to chat with feel free to reach out to me. My email is mayreply at my name dot com.
It's like a double whammy. Not only is your childhood destroyed, you now are somehow considered by society responsible for her just because she is your biological mother.
Even if you have good healthcare most doctors and even most specialists are terrible at dealing with anything that they don't see on a daily basis. Having a spouse with multiple rare chronic ailments has been eye opening.
That said, the state in a truly civilized society could take better care of people who aren't neurotypical. Something I believe is lacking in the US.
They should expect to have their efforts to "help" be sabotaged for seemingly no reason, be betrayed as a means to get self esteem, constant testing of boundaries, etc. Then they should make the decision of whether to take the project before ever needing to interact with the person.
I'm quite confident that's part of why therapy did me so much good. He wasn't going to make less money by actually being effective.
Its actually pretty disturbing to me that multiple people felt necessary to share their opinion about that here.
I share the same feeling with you, although I'm still struggling if I should help her.
Two years working in support trying to perform RCAs on arcane issues and I can't find an answer to why my girlfriend is angry sometimes. It's disheartening to say the least but I haven't given up yet.
Learning DBT skills (The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Handbook) helped me a lot too especially emotional regulation.
Having an amazing therapist who was supportive as well as a professional and personal support network helped too.
I have borderline and I think working on myself has ironically made me a much better communicator. So there's hope.
I don't know if this is the right explanation but I think someone with BPD is essentially a burn victim except with feelings. I am super sensitive and extreme. You're either amazing or the worst person in the world. When things get bad, I don't have any memory of good times. I can only see black or white- no grey.
This comes from my childhood. My parents were extremely abusive. My dad told me to kill myself when I was suicidal. That's how I survived my childhood. I needed a clean slate and forget all the bad things. Today it hurts me more than it helped me then.
In the past when I got upset, it was instantly I think we should break up. The pain whatever it was, was intolerable. And all those break up pains add up. Not only do they hurt me, but it hurt my partners. And I didn't feel like I could survive the feeling of being broken up with, so I was always trying to protect myself by breaking up first. It's still my first instinct whenever I get a whiff of something going bad - shit, do I need to end this? But now I keep it to myself. I wait. I put my crazy emotions together. Talk calmly. Use a lot of I statements. When you did this, it made me feel this. I'm lucky to have a ridiculously supportive partner. I think he's an alien or at least superhuman. We've never raised our voices at each other once since we've been together except to say I can't hear you from the bathroom haha.
I've gotten a lot better. I'm still working on myself. I hope this helps a little and I wish you and your girlfriend the best.
https://www.verywellmind.com/support-empathy-truth-set-for-b...
eg, this study:
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/183929
> In patients with schizophrenia, 1054 (13.2%) had at least 1 violent offense compared with 4276 (5.3%) of general population controls (adjusted odds ratio [OR], 2.0; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.8-2.2). The risk was mostly confined to patients with substance abuse comorbidity (of whom 27.6% committed an offense), yielding an increased risk of violent crime among such patients (adjusted OR, 4.4; 95% CI, 3.9-5.0), whereas the risk increase was small in schizophrenia patients without substance abuse comorbidity (8.5% of whom had at least 1 violent offense; adjusted OR, 1.2; 95% CI, 1.1-1.4; P<.001 for interaction). The risk increase among those with substance abuse comorbidity was significantly less pronounced when unaffected siblings were used as controls (28.3% of those with schizophrenia had a violent offense compared with 17.9% of their unaffected siblings; adjusted OR, 1.8; 95% CI, 1.4-2.4; P<.001 for interaction), suggesting significant familial (genetic or early environmental) confounding of the association between schizophrenia and violence.
There also does not appear to be a definition for what they define as a 'substance abuse comorbidity' Looking it up: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2669586/
"Schizophrenia Patients Report Consistently Higher Rates of Substance Abuse Than the General Population, Notably With Respect to 4 Licit (Nicotine and Alcohol) and Illicit (Cannabis and Cocaine) Substances"
it also says this is not to be used as a baseline for studies but if Schizophrenia is commonly co-morbid with substance abuse then pointing out that mental illness doesn't increase violence by much seems like a red-herring.
No.
It tells us that people who are mentally ill are about as violent as the general population unless they also have substance abuse.
> it also says this is not to be used as a baseline for studies but if Schizophrenia is commonly co-morbid with substance abuse then pointing out that mental illness doesn't increase violence by much seems like a red-herring
When trying to predict risk of violence knowing that someone has schizophrenia tells you almost nothing. Knowing they have substance misuse tells you a bit more.
And knowing that people with schizophrenia are not more violent than the general population means community treatment is easier to provide.
thats a 2.5 difference in patients with schizophrenia compared to the general population
> When trying to predict risk of violence knowing that someone has schizophrenia tells you almost nothing. Knowing they have substance misuse tells you a bit more.
That is simply not true though. Substance abuse changes the rate at which it happens but Substance abuse seems to have a high comorbidity with Schizophrenia and while the rate is significantly lower when there are no substance issues it is still higher. Substance abuse, per the link you provided, creates a 3rd and fourth population subset (1: schizophrenics 2: neurotypical 3:Schizophrenics with Substance abuse 4: NT with Substance abuse) Which after your response, seems like you're being intentionally misleading in order prove your point.
Also, sometimes you can have empathy, but can't personally handle someone. You have to do what's best for yourself, also.
In judging a harmful person's character, all that matters is whether that person has definite potential to become a net-good person given spiritual instruction, social support, medication, or whatever. But if such a process is infeasible, then the person needs to be written off. Some people are irredeemably lost, and the only thing you can do is love them and pray for them, at a great distance.
Occam's razor prefers the first, right? You're introducing an additional explanation.
Tautology has no explanatory power.
mental_illness -> shittiness
being_a_naturally_shitty_person -> shittiness
mental_illness = true
shittiness = true
So, from that starting point, we already have an account for the shittiness being exhibited since:
mental_illness -> shittiness
and
mental_ilness = true
The shitty person pushes you overboard.
Shitty people sometimes become quite pleasant as dementia progresses. Some really nice people become completely nasty. Sometimes there is no change.
I raised two special needs sons. They are okay in part because I wondered why they did things. I was curious about the first person perspective. I was interested in finding out "What's their motivation?"
So I think this is a much more complicated thing than you are making it out to be. People have a relationship to themselves. They have a relationship to their environment. They have a relationship to other specific individuals and to a larger society.
Mental health discussions often posit that you are mentally healthy if and only if you get along smoothly with other people. They often don't wonder at those other elements and they don't question the possibility that maybe it is the other people who are all messed up, not you.
I think this is a vastly complicated topic. It is both broad and deep. It touches on psychology, sociology and philosophy.
And I don't know that HN is really a suitable place to try to dig into it in a meaty way, frankly.
Who gets to decide what is a "negative" behavioral issue?
I assure you that the computer types will be among the first to be medicated to to take the edge off their "negative" behavioral issues.