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Help with living situation and putting support in place post hospital to break the cycle?

Felicity1New Contributor23 Oct 2020, 5:58 pm AEDT

Help with living situation and putting support in place post hospital to break the cycle?

Hi! My adult brother is currently in IPU recovering from another physchotic episode. It's his 6th hospitalisation in as many years but has had undiagnosed complex mental health issues (along with marijuana smoking) since childhood.

We don't know for sure what combination of mental health issues he has, but he is very fearful, paranoid and anxious that someone, people, family are out to get him and has been taking antipsychotic medication (not well and on and off) for years. He has very low self esteem and self worth but when he is well is intelligent, interesting and a nice guy.

He lives on his own in a family owned apartment with his main suppprt network (me and my dad) living an hour away.

I am desperately trying to formulate a plan and some good options for when he comes out of hospital - likely next week. How can we break the cycle and keep him well?

He will have CAT team and then we are hoping for a case manager which we've not been offered before. But what else can we do that's different this time? I worry that living on his own is not the best option but cannot see any alternatives. I'd love any ideas or help with this please. I know we need to break the cycle, I just don't know how we do that whilst ensuring he feels like he has purpose and can find some enjoyment in life.

I'm very willing to help him and support him but cannot put him before myself and my immediate family. Any ideas or suggestions on things we can suggest and try would be very warmly welcomed.

what has worked for others in similar situations?

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In response to: Help with living situation and putting support in place post hospital to break the cycle?

meh1New Contributor04 Nov 2020, 12:01 pm AEDT

Re: Help with living situation and putting support in place post hospital to break the cycle?

Hello Felicity1

I have and am experiencing similar with my adult daughter who has drug addiction and other mental health issues.

The local CAT team have given up, as have DHS and all the other gov organisations that are supposed to provide treatment her illness. After trying for about 5 years I have also concluded that the clinical approach of temporary forced treatment and continuing withdrawls from the prescribed meds - due to her unwillingness and inability to take them is probably doing more harm than good. The only viable options that I can see are long term forced treatment or something non clinical and more human.

Since the system is unable to provide long term forced treatment, it really only leaves us with trying to formulate a human centric approach that encourages her to make steps towards a better life. So this is what we are trying to do.

Luckily she has NDIS funding and Im her nominee. I also recently moved this to self managed.

Our plan is to focus on getting her to build engagement with healthy people and improve the basics of her living such as regular meals, a clean apartment, and hopefully get her doing some planned shopping and then later engage with community based clinical supports.

Our first step has been to focus on the engagment and meals. Through NDIS we have employed a person to visit her every day, provide a coffee and say hello. The idea is that if she can build a relationship with this friend, then the friend can introduce more active/interventionist support people. This person also gives us a brief report everyday and helps manage any rental issues. NDIS has also enabled us to get preprepared meals delivered. Our next steps will be for the friend to introduce a cleaner (We feel that removing chaos around her may help with the chaos inside) and then someone more active in organising supports such as medical appointments, organising bank accounts etc. We are planning to seperate these two roles as we see engagement and trust as critical for everything and dont want to jeopordise her relationship witht the friend.

Im not sure how successfull this plan will be and it only started a few weeks ago. However, I can say that having a self managed NDIS plan is critical as it allows us to implement the plan and evolve it as needed. It has given us an alternate to the clinical options which have failed. If this was available when she first become ill, things may have turned out very different.

I would love to know if you have come up with any ideas or a plan that you can share.

Steve

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