My Brother: A 30 year old Schizophrenic off Medicine




DOUG'S STORY

"He may have to get worse before he gets better," Doug's psychiatrist told my mother. If or when he breaks down completely and lands in an institution, only then will we be able to force medicine into his body, medicine that may have the power to bring back the person we lost 10 years ago.

 

And hopefully once he starts taking drugs, he'll recognize he needs them and continue to take them on his own. I imagine it will feel like coming down off a 10 year acid trip.

 

But my brother has already lost a full decade of his life. Doug is in no position to make rational decisions about his own health care, and there should be some recourse other than acute crisis to allow for intervention.

 

I believe that another factor in assessing involuntary commitment should be the need for treatment. Doug may not be an immediate danger to himself or others, but he is clearly ill and highly unpredictable. I believe - and the statistics tend to support this - that at some point he will try to hurt himself or someone else. He needs medication now.

 

What makes it more depressing is the knowledge that, as with so many illnesses, the chances of recovery from schizophrenia improve with early, aggressive treatment. We missed that chance with Doug. Maybe things would have been different if we had been able to intervene when he first got sick.

 

Some - the same civil libertarians with whom I normally side - would call this a victory, that a person has some right to be insane. I call it cruel and an enormous waste of human potential




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