Question:
I would really appreciate some help. My husband's sister has been diagnosed
with schizophrenia for 20 years, his uncle spent most of his life in an
institution suffering from schizophrenia. My husband has an anti-social
personality and is verbally abusive to me and I am very upset that my son (who
is in his late teens) is showing severe symptoms of mental disorder. Please
give me some advice as I find all this impossible to handle any more?
Answer:
I think it is generally accepted that most mental illness of this type are
genetic and thus carry the very real risk of being passed onto the next and
subsequent generation. For bi-polar disorder I read somewhere that the
probability is something like 1 in 5. Certainly in most cases a mentally ill person will have close family members
with similar illnesses. This is true in my case, where one of my sisters is
currently in a psychiatric hospital (she is 21 and has been an inpatient for
11 weeks) and one of my brothers shows many of the signs of my illness,
although he has never admitted to having a problem and he has not seen a
doctor.
I think most people agree that there is some genetic component to sz, but it is
not completely genetic. Here are some statistics on the probability of a child eventually contracting sz
based on some relative who has the disease:
Parent: 4.4%
Childen of two sz parents: 37%
Uncles & aunts: 2%
Siblings: 8%
Statistics like these are not necessarily highly reliable.
Keep in mind that the incidence with no family history of sz is still 1% or 1.5%.
In the case of identical twins (who are genetically identical), if one twin
contracts sz, the odds are about 40% or 50% that the other will too. This means,
of course, that there is SOMETHING ELSE that accounts for the other 50%. Everyone
agrees, but no one has proven what that is.
There was a genetics guru who posted a couple times here a few months ago who
argued that sz was the result of some infection, & these genetic results were the
result of an inherited susceptability to this infection. He said that polio, which
has been proven to be caused by infection, has similar inheritance statistics.
You might find that NAMI offers some support to you. NAMI is a volunteer
organization of mainly relatives of people with serious mental disorders. They
have local chapters in most places. www.nami.org.
SZ is seen in many of my relatives, some mild and others severe, my dad
being like a child all of his life and manic as well as my mother, but
many behavior patterns were learned rather than inherited, since things
changed a great deal after spending a few years in the military where the
whole way of life changed and disipline being what was most needful to
learn which was never taught in childhood or practiced, things going
downhill again after military service when I again chose a bad way to go
in not being responsible for my actions and wreckless which only led to
the psycho ward and I did that to myself which would not have happened if
I had retained the same level of dicipline in my life and thinking, can
not blame the parents of grandparents for that. I have an older brother (have to be careful here) who is a scientist at
Lawrance Livermore, I am the Neandrathal of the family while he came out
almost opposite and more balanced between the ears, he was tame and I was
wild, thinking that the company we kept had a lot to do with that,
thinking I am the only one of the old wild bunch that did not end up in
prison while the people my brother grew up with are all professional
people, attorneys, shrinks, doctors and successful business people as
well as my brothers wife who is the VP of Mills College for women.
Moral values play a big part in the choices we make in life, but all we
have now is now and where we go from here.
My daughter chose to stick it out in a disfunctional family of her own
but sure need people who choose not to be losers and support each other,
people who endure the toughest of things and win, going one day at a
time, too late to regret what we were or things we wish we had done to
avoid being where we are, need the heart of a warrior who is balance with
the kind of love that endures hard times and why people need people who
have these qualities.
There is a genetic component to schizophrenia but it is less than that for
affective disorders like bipolar. Where did you find this info? It seems to me important, and I'd be
grateful for a lead on sources. Go look in WWW.SCHIZOPHRENIA.COM There is a lot of good information there,
including the answer to your question, and links to other sites. Your husband's anti-social personality and violent temper may be a subclinical
form of mental illness (that is, not severe enough to warrant a diagnostic label)
due largely to some form of chemical imbalance in the brain. Sometimes, no
amount of counselling or advice can change them because of the underlying chemical
imbalance (the exact nature of which we don't know). Discuss his condition with a
psychiatrist. Sometimes a small dose of medication (such as risperidone 0.5mg or
olanzepine 2.5mg) can do much to alleviate the suffering of people like your
husband. Once his temper is under control, there will be peace in the household
and your son's condition may improve at the same time. A vicious cycle is
converted into a virtuous cycle.
