My wife has Schizophrenia

About 3 months ago my wife developed Schizophrenia and since than she has wanted a divorce and our 2 children are in foster care. We have been married for 17 years. She has told her doctors not to tell me anything about what's going on with her medically and they wouldn't due to HIPPA laws. She becomes very mentally abusive and sometimes starts breaking things. She has been to a local mental health facility and stayed there for a week. We live in Oregon. I really miss my children, but I know they are better off where they are. She doesn't love me anymore and this is really difficult for me. She was my best friend. I don't have enough money to get my own place, but I have to resprespher wishes and I took another job that will allow me to move out. I have not known what to do in 3 months and she will not let me help her or tell me anything. I am sorry for your situation and know how hard it is.

Hi Cord,

Sorry to hear your situation. It has been sometime since I last posted on here. I understand how difficult it can be. After many experiments with different medications and therapy I think we have found a balance that works. My wife now works and hasn't relapsed for a couple of years. It's still a challenge but it's manageable.

I guess I would say to you to hang in there. It might take years for your wife to find a treatment that works - as it has with mine. Lastly, take the time to look after yourself as well. Seek the help of others to get you through. Your health is equally as important.

Take care.

DEar @bre78 @Cord @kristin @Alessandra1992 @Dadcaringalone @Bunniekins Me too @bre78 me too @bre78

It took years and years and restraining orders and police wanding past my home calling moi a drama queen (how dare they) to get the proper support. I am hoping to get the NDIS stuff filed out this week too.Before the journey,my husband was a professional self medicating down the spiral to black oblivian.He is now not any self medicating, a horrendous list of jailterm sentences that he didnt deserve but yeah,25 % his fault but 75% the PSych hospital fault.

It's really really difficult

Thank you for reaching out. This has been the hardest 3 months in my life. It helps knowing someone else knows how hard this can be.

I’ve reread my messages : they seem pretty garbled and unreadable.

Sorry about that @Cord. I used to think that the only time a hospital with social workers and case workers and Psychiatrists would give US carers support was when there was a life threatening situation.

The most important thing for you and me, for all of us here is to get support for us.

The journey is for sure not over. But how WE decide how to live our lives is what matters.

Now in Australia. It is 100 percent illegal for the hospital workers not to listen to the loved ones / family members so how can you resolve that ? Can you get an advocate ? Is that here a person that you can access from your general doctor ? ( would they know of someone ?) or maybe the community Pastor ? In my years of being with my husband ( only 😎 we have joined the community church to get extra support. What about family and friends ?

Do do you have a friend that you can visit and say : “these are my problems ...... I have appointment with ..........this is what I want for an outcome .......... can you come with me to keep my needs to what I want to achieve ??

One of my biggest problems is medical staff can't tell you anything about a patient unless the patient signs a paper to release information. It's called HIPPAA and they take it very seriously. So they can't tellnme anything.

@Cord

Here a short 15 min talk gives 4 good strategies to help when MI enters family

https://youtu.be/NRO0-JXuFMY

This is an American support group that could be helpful

https://freshhope.us/find-a-group/

I will tag you in some links about schizophrenia.

Sorry for the long post...

On May 26, 2018, I married the perfect woman. She was smart, funny, had great taste in movies and books, and loved me with all of her heart. 3 1/2 months later, after smoking pot for the 7th? 5th? night in a row, she told me she had found her soulmate, and it wasn’t me. I don’t think she had, or ever will have, a clear understanding of how much that hurt me.

It was P**, a friend of hers from 25 years earlier, from her first semester at college. She had dropped out after that semester, and had not spoken with him since then. She had recently gotten on Facebook, and he had waved at her in messenger. She called him, and video chatted for several hours. He was still playing guitar and singing in different bands, and had a infant baby daughter.

A month later, I asked her if things with P** were flirty or romantic, and she immediately told me no. That night, at a campsite with several friends, she stated that P** was her third best friend. I blurted out that I didn’t understand – how could someone you have not seen for 25 years, and only have been talking to for the past month and a half, be one of your three best friends? She went ballistic. She told me that it was my insecurities that had broken our relationship, that I was just afraid she was going to have sex with P**, and that I was trying to own her and control her. She also accused me of going onto her Facebook page to see her texts with him (didn’t happen).

Basically, by me asking if there were anything romantic with P**, it highlighted to her that I didn’t trust her the way she trusted me, and that obviously I wasn’t the person I had represented myself as - that I’m a narcissist. She wanted a divorce. She never wanted to get married in the first place. I forced her into this marriage. If we were going to stay together, I needed to accept an “open marriage” and be willing to share her (because I don’t own her, she can do whatever she wishes, and there are no consequences). And we need to have twin beds. I’m not going to do that.

My wife had gone through rehab the first summer we were together; she had been drinking and smoking pot since high school, and realized it had gotten out of control. Since then, over a year, she had avoided both pot and alcohol. She had been taking several prescription drugs, including sertr., Zol., Nal. and Wellb. since rehab, but had missed several days in a row a few times. Whenever she missed taking her prescriptions she ran the risk of becoming erratic in her actions; I felt like she was looking for meaning in her life. Another item of note is her increased pot usage - for an entire year she abstained, and she was stable. Once she began using again, manic episodes...

About 18 years ago, at 25, she had a “divine encounter,” where God spoke to her; he told her that this was her final reincarnation, that the man she was with at the time wasn’t for her, but that she would meet someone that would be hers.

She has gone to Buddhist temples to learn meditation, psychics for direction in her life, and believes that reincarnation is 100% real, and that this is her final life, unless she decides to destroy and remake the universe.

She began smoking pot even more heavily, and believed she could travel – in Astral form – to other alternate universes. She can touch lives in those universes, and she was connected psychically with every living thing in this universe as well.

One night, while high, she pulled down the attic stairs and went up. 20 minutes later she called me up to rip the vent out of the wall, wanting to board it up. She figured out the next day that “closing doors is a metaphor.” A different night, she woke me up telling me that she was dying, her heart was failing. The next morning she told me she had died in hundreds of alternate universes that night.

On Sunday, September 30, we went to her mother’s house to help work in the yard. Her mother made us lunch to thank us, and she began telling her mother that she was “touched by the divine.” She been talking about leaders who inspired people such as Christ, Mohammed, and Buddha, and then said, “and now me.”

I don’t experience the things she does. I believe she honestly feels she does, but have come to strongly believe she has a mental illness. I don’t know if this is schizophrenia or bipolar, but her personality over the past two months has shifted. I don’t want to control her, I don’t want to own her; what I want is for her to NOT make life decisions when in an altered state! She has not been consistent in her medication. She was on a heavy regimen of antidepressants for the past year, and basically quit cold turkey - she has been inconsistently taking them for the past (at least) two months.

I brought up to her that her mother may believe she’s bipolar, based on her claims of being “divinely touched,” and she asked me if I thought she was bipolar; I told her I wasn’t sure. If I tell her i think she is, does she shut me off, not consider anything I try to do to help? Does she freeze me out? Does she think I’m trying to medicate her to shut off her “abilities”? Or does she accept that I may have a clearer picture, unbiased, of what’s going on with her?

She told me she had considered suicide. Very strongly considered. The only thing that stopped her for years was her son; now that I was in the picture, she didn’t have to worry about him, because I would take care of him. He would still go to be with his father sometimes, but would stay with me, in her house, and live there forever. She told me she had planned it out, As recently as two months ago.

She’s passed out of that feeling now, according to her. She now believes she will never take her own life.

On our way to her mother‘s house to look up a new TV, she and I talked about the possibility that she is schizophrenic. She believes it is possible, and we touched on the incident almost 20 years ago. She believes she can control herself through meditation and prayer, and eventually stop all medications.

She says if I ever think she’s losing control, she will see a doctor to prescribe medication for her because she trusts me; in the meantime, I’m still giving her most of the meds she was taking before, albeit at lower doses. She will be out within the next two months.

Where do I go from here?

Hi @Broken51

Welcome to the Forum and thanks for sharing your story.

That is a huge load you are carrying. I hope you are finding time for yourself, taking time out and looking after your self care. One of the things you can control is doing things that help you to cope and looking after yourself as best you can.

I hope that you will find the forums to be a supportive place for exploring all these issues. Just a tip, if you are replying to someone or wanting to notify or touch base with someone, place an @ before their username, as in @Broken51

All the best

Joe The Lion