Surviving A Family Member's Mental Illness

Written by HealthyPlace.com Staff Writer

Discussion on the needs of children who have parents with a mental illness. What is that like and what can be done to help children, even adult children, who have a parent with a mental illness?

Tina Kotulski, author of the Schizophrenia book: Saving Millie; A Daughter's Story of Surviving her Mother's Schizophrenia is our guest. She says children of parents with psychiatric disabilities are all too often ignored in every area of health care.

Natalie: is the HealthyPlace.com moderator

The people in blue are audience members

Natalie: Good evening. I'm Natalie, your moderator for tonight's Schizophrenia chat conference. I want to welcome everyone to the HealthyPlace.com website.

Tonight's conference topic is ""Surviving A Family Member's Mental Illness." Our guest is Tina Kotulski. Tina's mother has schizophrenia. She went undiagnosed for 20-years; which made for a very difficult life for Tina.

Tina tells her story in a book entitled "Saving Millie; A Daughter's Story of Surviving Her Mother's Schizophrenia" (you can purchase a copy of the book by clicking on the link), and you can visit her website here: http://www.extraordinaryvoices.com/.

Good Evening, Tina, and thank you for joining us tonight.

Tina Kotulski: Thank you for having me.

Natalie: Tonight, we're addressing the needs of children who have parents with a mental illness. We're going to discuss what that's like and what can be done to help children, and even adult children, who have a parent with a mental illness.

Your mother has schizophrenia. She went undiagnosed for 20 years. You say: "Mental illness, like any affliction, is a burden not only to those with a diagnosis, but family, friends, daughters and sons, husbands and wives, and medical professionals." I'd like you to elaborate on that.

Tina Kotulski: Being diagnosed with a mental illness is just the beginning. Regardless of how long a family member has been displaying symptoms, finding the appropriate treatments and physicians that are knowledgeable on drug interactions is a real struggle. As a family member, we know our mentally ill family member's baseline status. We know when things are starting to not go right for them. Yet, when we try to intervene and try to communicate that, to either the mentally ill relative, or to mental health professional, we are not listened to until there is a crisis. Our system is set up to deal with a crisis, not preventative measures that save money, hardship, lives and time for all involved. That includes the mental health system, itself, that spends more money on crisis. Therefore, mental illness is a burden to all of society, not just the person who is diagnosed with the illness.

Natalie: Your mother has paranoid schizophrenia -- probably one of the most serious of all psychiatric disorders. How old were you when you began to realize something was wrong with your mother and what year was this?

Tina Kotulski: A person learns what they live and it was not until I was removed from my mother's care when I was thirteen, that I really understood that my mother was not well. Living with my mother when my sister and I were younger, I was left to straddle two worlds. One world was surviving in my mother's world; psychosis, paranoia and, at times, sweet and compassionate. The other was my sister's world. She preferred to avoid my mother, whereas I tried to control my environment, so I could get my needs met.

It was not until I went through my own therapy, after being removed from my mother's care, that I learned that straddling both of these worlds in order to survive was harmful to my very existence. There had been no consistency, structure or nurturing. That always quickly changed with my mother's moods. My identity was based on my successes and failures at trying to care for my mother and keeping her in a mindset that was healthy and nurturing for me and my sister. Essentially, I was the caregiver.

Natalie: What was life like for you during this time? Your relationship with your parents, sister? Did you have friends? How were things going for you in school? Do you remember how you felt about yourself; your self-image?

Tina Kotulski: Lonely, isolated, sad.

Natalie: That is a very tough existence! especially for a child....a teenager. Was your father was home at that time? If so, did he try and help?

Tina Kotulski: My father moved out when I was six months old. Occasionally I went to visit, often at Christmas time and once during the summer. But their environment was restrictive and unfriendly in it's own way. My sister preferred to visit my father more often, but I was confused by their relationship. My father witnessed abuse and walked away from it to save himself, yet he left my sister and I in that environment he escaped from. I felt uncomfortable to be around someone who didn't try to, or at least, didn't appear to want to be around me except for brief visits once or twice a year. I felt out of place, as if I was a trouble or bother to him.