Bipolar and Schizoaffective Disorder (No-BPD)

Written by Dr. Leland Heller

QUESTION:

I am working with my 26 year old son's case manager but I have to tell you, not by way of complaint but out of day-to-day angst, that the help I receive, while being supportive, is also s-l-o-w. These professionals are very likely overworked and poorly paid. At the same time they are expected to help some unusual clients.

What I'd like to happen is that all the medications would have so few side effects, that my son would be grateful to have them and would take them for the duration, if need be. What is happening instead is that he wants to get better, have a good life, but is so overcome with mental illnesses (bipolar/schzoaffectve diagnosed) and I think probably one of the personality disorders, probably borderline, that he is in denial, lives in run-down housing having other mental patients and drug addicts as neighbors and is pretty much resistant to help, sadly.

His father died of AIDS in '89, his only brother lives in NY, I am his sole caretaker except for the Medicare and the case manager's help. It seems as if this is just going to go on and on and on without end. He does not take anything, though he has medications in his bathroom medicine cabinet. Connecting with the web sites on BPD is encouraging but not local, that is, Dr. Heller lives in Florida and doesn't make home visits, for heaven's sake! A couple of the sites don't have contributors so I have no support there. Dr. Heller is so far away. To get my son to go there would probably be an impossibility because he is so sick that it would take a miracle to convince him to go for the much needed diagnosis of which the dr. speaks. Plus, if he were to agree to go, the logistics seem overwhelming to me. I mean, I am exhausted with all of this stuff. I have survived a marriage with a homosexual, ten years of raising my two sons alone while teaching full time and getting a Master's Degree from UIC in two and one half years, a second marriage to a sex addict (dry but not sober alcoholic), numerous moves and now to discover that my learning disabled son had finally found his knish in CAD and worked with an engineering firm for three and one half years, just fell off the face of the planet and disappeared for 8 months and then came home completely psychotic and hospitalized. Yuck! What a nasty thing mental illnesses. I feel such sorrow for anyone suffering this kind of predicament. I myself am sick of it.

Perhaps I just need a nap, having just returned from a trip That time away from home has given me a reprieve from the sadness in my son's life. He is talented, educated, handsome, intelligent and a really sensitive person. Aren't there some easier answers? Can't you please come up with easier answers?

DR. HELLER'S ANSWER:

It's always so sad to read stories like yours. It shows why treating children and adolescents is so important.

Not all is lost. I strongly recommend two things.

1. You've had a rough life, and he may not respect you enough to want to get better - from his standpoint he may say why, so I can have a marriage like you did? The single best thing you can do for your son is become a happy, serene and peaceful individual. He needs to be led by example. If effort alone from one's mother was enough he'd be well by now. I highly encourage you to take the screening test yourself, read the books I recommend - "Happiness is a Choice" by Barry Neil Kaufman, "Embraced By the Light" by Betty Eadie, "Your Erroneous Zones" by Wayne Dyer, "Looking Out for Number One" by Robert Ringer and "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie. I'd also highly recommend you listen to Ziglar a great deal. Leading by example is your best hope. Get any and all of your diagnoses treated if present.
2. Ask your son to look at that screening test also, as well as the front cover of Life at the Border. Suffering people don't want to suffer, but they need to know that hope exists. He may not feel there is any. As John Maxwell so eloquently put it "when there is hope for the future there is power in the present."

next: BPD and Gender Identity Problems ~ back to: Borderline Personality Disorder FAQs Table of Contents