I think I was doomed from the beginning. Both my parents are mentally ill. so is my brother, several aunts, uncles and cousins on my mom’s side and an aunt and a cousin on my dad’s side. My mom’s side has bipolar disorder, depression and borderline personality disorder through out her family. My mother has depression and my brother has bipolar disorder. My dad and I share the same illness: schizoaffective disorder. My dad had a cousin who had schizophrenia and she passed away. My dad’s oldest sister also has schizophrenia.
As you can see mental illnesses can be hereditary, I was doomed from the very start it was just a role of the dice that I got schizoaffective disorder. I hit the genetic lotto.
I don’t have a history of mental illness in my family. I have a great aunt who was depressed and an uncle who was an alcoholic, that’s all. I can see the seeds of my mental illness in my personality even when I was young. I guess I got the wild card.
Genetics, however, are not the be-all and end-all. One can make a LOT of headway, even when one was raised in a family like this.
Get a copy of this book and read it and have your family read it, as well. (Torrey can be a bit totalistic and unwilling to see exceptions to his “rules” at times, but most of the book is really worth the effort to plough through.) http://www.amazon.com/Surviving-Schizophrenia-6th-Edition-Family/dp/0062268856
.
Work with that “psychiatrist” (or “p-doc”) to develop a medication formula that stabilizes their symptoms sufficiently so that they can tackle the psychotherapy that will disentangle their thinking.
.
If you/she/he needs a professional intervention to get through treatment resistance, tell me where you live, and I will get back to you with leads to those services.
.
Look for “mental illness clubhouses” in your area (which can be hugely helpful… but may also pose risks). Dig through the many articles at Google to locate and investigate them.
I did join a group of mentally ill people the last time I was at my current clinic. It was helpful, I learned a lot.
My mom is the only one in my immediate family besides me that gets help for mental illnesses. My dad stopped going to a psychiatrist because they told him to give up the beer and he chose the beer over getting help. My brother is a similar story like my dad he was told to give up something this time weed and he refused.
That may be true though I wouldn’t say doomed is the right word to use. I have schizophrenia and despite I’ve only maybe been a 6/10 at best with recovering and just about every sign of a bad prognosis is true for me, I’m currently living independently in my own apartment with my cat even if I occasionally get sloppy and lax with chores until it starts looking like a big mess.