Letter
Dear Sir,
So much is said and written these days suggesting that mental patients are better cared for within the family that I feel I should state the view of one with long personal experience of this matter.
My brother of 57 has been a schizophrenic over the past 38 years. He enjoyed a good education and a stable and happy home, but became ill in his late teens and has never done a job. He was intelligent, courteous, and sensitive in his best moments, but domineering and aggressive when unwell.
As the only sister, 5 years younger, I can remember, even now, the bitter unhappiness of being a teenager in a house dominated by mental illness. In those days my parents tried their utmost to look after my brother at home until the situation became utterly impossible and he had to spend some time in hospital.
Then came the weekly visits to the hospital and his weekends at home; how I dreaded these. In hospital my brother was co-operative and amenable; at home the domineering and aggressive moods returned. My young life was caught up in this web; friends could not visit and all family social life ceased. Mental illness is such that it holds the home in its grip and makes ordinary social life difficult, if not impossible.
My parents devoted their lives to him; having him home ‘on their own responsibility’ as it was then called, whenever possible and keeping him until the situation became impossible. This went on through the years and I saw my dearly loved parents growing old and weary with the strain and the financial burden growing increasingly difficult.
On the death of my father at the age of 72 this burden was shared between my mother in her separate home and my husband and me in our home. My mother died 13 years later at the age of 84. The anxieties do not lessen, my husband now makes the weekly visit and my brother comes to stay with us for a weekend every month; some pleasant, but others with the old aggressiveness, but every one a weekend in which he commands the centre of attention to the exclusion of any other social activity.
My brother is a ‘formal patient’, but if his category were changed he would be out of hospital instantly, not because he is unhappy. He would demand that we should have him permanently; a weekend once a month is tension, but living with us would mean the ruination of our home.
He would drift away, unable to fend for himself, with nowhere to go, whereas, at the moment, he is fairly happy, with a secure base in hospital, which he needs, food and warmth, and with interests and folk around who can cope and understand. He can go out to the local town and to art galleries and museums in London.
He is better mentally when he is in hospital than when he visited my parents for long stays, when he would deteriorate noticeably after the first few days.
I can give nothing but praise and grateful thanks to the consultant and staff in charge of the large hospital where my brother is in care.
I have seen amazing changes which have taken place over the 38 years; closed wards disappearing, patients moving freely about hospital and grounds and to the local town. I know there are splendid results from drugs and other treatments which have, unfortunately, come too late to benefit my brother.
I would plead with those whose business it is, to think again before they release mental patients freely from mental hospitals when they are not fully recovered, with nowhere to go, no job to follow and no means of support. They drift away to become down-and-outs, not because they want to, but because they are unable to cope with life.
There is so much I could say from experience, of the sadness, difficulties, and yes, despair of being a member of a home since the age of 15, dominated by and geared to having a mentally sick member. The mental health authorities will do untold damage to the community if they persist in saying that patients should be cared for in their homes.
(Name and address withheld on request.) Ed.
The withholding of the identity of this writer is not because she is reluctant for it to be known that she has a mentally ill brother, but because she is anxious not to jeopardise her relationship with him should he read this magazine.
We would normally be reluctant to publish letters from relatives unless they are prepared to sign what they write - although, obviously, there must be exceptions and special situations which make anonymity important.
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