An Anonymous Prayer for a Loved One with SMI

This post was provided by a reader of the blog. They asked me to post it, to help raise awareness about the reality of Severe/Serious Mental Illness (SMI) within families. Please know you are not alone, and that there are resources out there for you and your loved ones facing these battles. For more resources, see katierdale.com/resources/. 

My dad is an amazing man, to deal with my mom.

Some of you may not know, but she has struggled for the last 7 years with bipolar paranoid schizophrenia. Every day my dad wakes up or comes home from work, he never knows what will happen with my mom that day.

It could be a normal day, it could be a day where she is in psychosis, it could be her paranoia, or she could be angry and violent.

I tell you this today because we are tired of hiding.

We are tired of being silent.

My mom is mentally ill. She is mentally sick, it’s hard, it’s painful, it’s not easy.

As I have been to counseling and therapy over the last several years to deal and cope with these issues and manage my own personal mental health, I want to encourage you to seek counseling and therapy if you are struggling with mental health or if your family member is.

I know your pain. I know you have questions, and I know you want answers.

As I look back on my childhood and certain situations I had as a child, I realize my mom always struggled with mental illness, no one knew around her, not even her family.

She hid it very well for decades. There was a stigma of mental illness back then and even now still, we still don’t know exactly why people have these mental issues, but we do know it can be a traumatic childhood event, it could be sexual abuse early in life or genetics that could be the catalyst behind mental illness.

My mom is a fraction of the person she once was. She has no emotion. She talks to herself and to others who are not there. She at times does not recognize her own children.

She believes she has been shot and was dead. She believes many other things that don’t make sense.

She refuses treatment and medication. She calls 911 and the police frequently.

She locks my dad out of his house for days at a time.

We are here for my dad. We help him and are there for him.

You can’t control an insane person, but you can control how you respond to them and their caregiver.

God, please help my mom. God, please help my dad.

-An Anonymous Son