((((((LIXY))))))
I know a lot of my patients families suffer
at least as much from their illness as my patients do.... and it's not unknown for a family member to also become a patient of ours! One of the things a lot of people don't realise is that with Mental Illness, there are as many "varieties" of schizophrenia, for example, as there are sufferers; although the illness tends to follow a generalised sort of "pattern", different people have different types and/or content to their hallucinations, which depends to a large extent on their
OWN personal past. It's this, predominantly, among all the symptoms of the ilness that can make it so hard to treat.
As a nurse, my job is to help my patients deal with their illness, by working out strategies to minimise the effects of the illness on their day-to-day lives (and those of their families) monitor the effect of medication on them (both the efficacious benefits AND any side-effects) and encourage acceptance of the illness by the families..... this last one is often the hardest and most frustrating part of my job!
Of course, it's not just psychoses we deal with; the whole gamut of Mental Illness is in our remit, which is what keeps me in love with my job, despite the crap pay and reams & reams of paperwork!
Thanks for sharing such a personal part of yourself with me (us) Lixy...... I often think, and have said here before, talking about this sort of thing is
MUCH harder than posting naked pictures of yourself!!
DM