August 19th, 2009 
admin Psychosis can lead to death at your own hands. I have seen it firsthand.
Talking about psychosis the other day made me remember a portion of my early childhood. My grandparents owned a rent house that was right next door to their house. There was a man named Bobby who lived in the rent house for many years. He was mentally ill and my grandparents took care of him and helped him take care of things because his own family would not. He was a very sweet man and I can remember playing catch with him in the side yard. Every time my grandmother cooked, she sent Bobby a plate.
Bobby went to a center for the mentally disabled during the day time. The center picked him up each morning before 8 AM and dropped him off in the afternoon. My grandfather tried to help him remember his medication and tried to keep an eye on how he was doing so he could alert the center if he thought he needed help.
I remember my grandfather repairing holes in the floor and the wall. I don’t think anyone knew he had a pistol but he shot the entire living room up, including his television. He told my grandfather that the devil was in the television and was trying to get him. He was gone a few weeks after that and I believe my grandfather took his firearm while he was away.
He did very well for a while but eventually he stumbled again. His mother lived in another county. He got up in the middle of the night and, completely nude, drove away in his car. He went to a city park in the area where his mother lived and tied an extension cord around his neck and jumped from the top of the slide. The extension cord was pulled free when his weight snapped at the bottom. He fell to the ground but passed out and laid on the ground for some time. It began to rain and he was found lying in a puddle, still completely nude. Again, he was gone for a few weeks.
Over the course of a few years, this happened several times. My grandfather watched him as closely as he could and often took him with him when he went to run errands so Bobby could take care of things while he kept a close watch on him. Bobby was part of our family, partly because his family had abandoned him and partly because he had been with us for so long. I don’t remember exactly how long he lived in the rent house but I know it was at least four or five years.
When Bobby was sick, he would not go to the center during the day. He had told my grandfather that he wasn’t feeling well so no one thought anything of him missing the first day or even the second day. When he was sick, he stayed to himself in the house.
On the third morning, the person driving the van that took him to the center knocked on my grandfather’s door. He was concerned because Bobby had already missed two days and he couldn’t get him to the door. My grandfather went out and knocked on the front door a few times. He didn’t hear any movement inside so he began banging on the door thinking that Bobby was asleep. After five or ten minutes, he got the key to the house and opened the door. He walked in and found him hanging from the opening to the attic. My grandfather was devastated. The house sat empty for quite some time and a few years later my grandfather redid the ceiling to remove the access panel to the attic.
Bobby battled with mental illness for years. Treatment was limited in the seventies and he had recurring episodes for so long that I believe he thought he would never escape it. It was his only way out and we will never know how bad it was.
When I wrote about my own experience with psychosis the other day, I thought of him and it was the first time in my life that I realized that he suffered from psychosis. I have never spoken about my own experience with this with any of the older family members (aunts and uncles) because I was afraid of how they would react. I now remember how all of them treated Bobby. They were kind to him and took care of him, showing genuine concern and compassion.
I ask you, if people could be so compassionate about something they did not fully understand several decades ago, why can’t people be more understanding now when so much more is known about mental illness? It baffles me. So many years ago, a mentally ill man came into our lives and my family took him in as one of their own and cared for him the best that they could when they had no idea what he had and no clue of what it was like. Today, many are pushed to the side and humiliated because of their conditions. Why? If complete strangers could care for a man who desperately needed help so long ago then why must people degrade mental illness now? I will never understand.
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