Mental Illness Fellowship Northern Territory

Hi

It seems that  your are having a tough time with your family. I never got the chance to try and involve my family in my journey  with schizophrenia.

I had family abuse so its not the same as your situation, I did try and explain it to them when I was about 20 or just before.

They were scared of people with mental illness after initially not believing that anyone in the family could have a MI.

Seeing both my parents were abusive to me as a child I thought that this was a bit rich as they clearly had MI issues themselves.

My flatmate is paranoid schizophrenic and he had his mental health team speak to his parents and sister about it.

Whist it did not make them more sympathetic to his situation it did give them some realisation about what he was going through and encouraged a level of acceptance from them.

I think trying to deal with alone is difficult because so many parents have prejudice views of MI generally and are pretty well set in their views about their children, whether real or not.