Changes to cure situation

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-09-2004
Changes to cure situation
17
Sat, 10-09-2004 - 1:23pm
About 6 years ago my brother married a woman who insisted she was not mentally ill but everyone else told us she was, even her doctor, but no one would say what her symptoms might be.

She is British and we are in the US so to get her into the country we had to agree to enrol her in a mental health institution which would assist getting her medical insurance within the US. She has been under their care ever since, but they have just made the discovery that it was all a medical notes mix up, chinese whispers, gueses etc, and she isn't mentally ill and never has been.

They have asked her to leave, which means she has not met her conditions of immigration and has been deported.

She did visit as a tourist last month and we were terrible to her. I can't really explain, but the whole family felt we needed to verbally attack her and put her in her place (as a mental health patient). Partly this was due to guilt, but mostly it was because we have been told by her therapists to encourage her to believe she is mentally ill as that is part of her treatment - to make her accept and believe she is mentally ill. OK, we now know that is not appropriate, but we have been doing it believeing it teh right thing to do for 6 years now, so now when we meet her, if she does anything which implies she is not accepting being mentally ill we feel a surge of anger and scowl and our frustration builds. We can't avoid it because we have alraedy done it before we are consciously aware we are doing it.

It does not help that now she has entered a niche where all her friends are mentally ill and all her conversation is about therapy. Yhis makes it very hard for us to change because she hasn't. What am I saying! She wasn't mentally ill, so what change should she make to make us feel different about her? See what I mean, the way we think about her is already programmed into us!

There are too many of us to change how we view her now. We never did observe any syptoms, so the absence of symptoms doesn't help us change. Also blood is thicker than water so when this leads to a clash the family naturally side together against her and re-inforce their bad feelings about her. I can't change my whole family, but the good news is she has agreed she will change, agreed to go to any therapy or whatever and change herself.

Please could you suggest any changes we could ask her to make to solve this problem?


Pages

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-04-2003
Sat, 10-09-2004 - 1:55pm
She shouldn't make changes for you or your family, but for herself. The rest of you should work on you. How miserable for her.


Carrie

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-09-2004
Sat, 10-09-2004 - 2:35pm
Unfortuanetly that would not work. Luckily she is sensible enough to know that many of the family are unwilling to attempt to change the way they respond to her because they simply have other priorities or don't even think whather they are being fair or not. Habit is habit and that is how they have always responded. They have always thought of it as being her problem not theirs in the past, so why change. They don't even all know that it turned out she wasn't mentally ill. We only all meet together at very rare occasions and it's hardly the sort of thing you discuss at such get tegethers. Most probably still think they are assisting her treatment by showing disapproval non agreement that she is mentally ill.

They certainly would not accept the stance that it had suddenly swapped and become them that all has the problem, every one of them, and her not.

That is why she is agreeing to change to sort it out because else it is her who suffers.

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-04-2003
Sun, 10-10-2004 - 1:59am
I've been thinking about this all day.... while I'm not sure this would work, because she would have to be very strong... it requires a different way of thinking, every time someone says something negative she would have to ignore them, or have a standard reply - 'Please don't treat me like I'm mentally ill, because I'm not.' If their comments continue, she could say 'as long as you continue to speak to me this way, I have nothing to say to you.'

After 6 yrs of this kind of treatment, it's going to be hard to break the pattern.


Carrie

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-09-2004
Sun, 10-10-2004 - 5:44am
Thanks, I think that you are right that some form of boundary setting is the way forward, but might need to think up some other way of setting boundaries.

The problem is that with 6 years of observing no symptoms, and with therapists going on about the importance of making sure she accepts she is mentally ill, I think that in most people's minds the symptom of her illness is DENYING SHE IS MENTLLY ILL.

Last visit there was an incident when we had a dinner party. Someone suggested that she shouldn't overdo the excitement and perhaps she should go for a lie down. She replied that in the UK she is the manager of the IT department of a large government organisation with lots of responsibility and respect, but that in the states she is being treated like there is something subnormal about her. She was firmly gripped by two of the family and removed to her room for the rest of the evening. Later my aunt commented to Nick (my brother), "I see she is getting worse - Is there nothing the doctors can do?".

Can you think of any other way she could set the needed boundaries without inflaming the family. Being sent to her room all the time won't solve it.

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-04-2003
Sun, 10-10-2004 - 1:09pm
::She was firmly gripped by two of the family and removed to her room for the rest of the evening. Later my aunt commented to Nick (my brother), "I see she is getting worse - Is there nothing the doctors can do?".

And Nick let it happen? She has no support. If I were her, I'd avoid family functions. Is there a way a doctor can tell the family that she's not mentally ill?


Carrie

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-09-2004
Sun, 10-10-2004 - 5:10pm
Yes, Nick is a mummy's boy and would never disagree with a family member like that in case he upset darling mummy. Getting her doctor to say anything is difficult as she is now in England most of the time so her doctor is in the UK.

I am in contact with her doctor, who is very obliging and feels very sorry for her. Nick won't even contact him - probably he thinks it's just "not done", or maybe he is scared her doctor might have something to say to him for letting it reach this stage - who knows.

The question really is what method she could use to establish the necessary boundaries.

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-04-2003
Mon, 10-11-2004 - 5:27pm
Counseling could teach her those boundaries. There is also a book called, The Last Word on the Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense by Susan Elgin that talks about different communication techniques.


Carrie

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-26-2004
Mon, 10-11-2004 - 5:44pm
From what I see here this woman has been dropped into a nest of mentally ill vipers. Your family is sick and owes this poor woman apologys. If you cannot do this then she should never come near such stupid people again. You should all be ashamed of yourselves and you deserve to be treated the same as you have treated her. This is more then a habit. This is the definition of mob mentality.
iVillage Member
Registered: 10-09-2004
Mon, 10-11-2004 - 6:06pm
That sounds promising. I shall get a copy and check it out. If it's as promising as it sounds I'll give it to her for her Birthday which is coming up this month.
iVillage Member
Registered: 10-09-2004
Mon, 10-11-2004 - 6:17pm
It only seems that way Mokrie, because you have no idea of how this situation came into being, how it evolved and the extent to which we, (and initially her doctor even, and her employer) were mislead by an A&E consultant who later resigned his job in a fit of hysteria, crying on TV and claiming he had been picked on. In fact the reason he thought he was discriminated against was that he was the most manipulative employee the hospital had ever employed. He then sued the hospital for early retirment on the grounds he had, he claimed, suffered a nervous breakdown as a result of his employers (which he made sure got an extensive press coverage) before emigrating to somewhere near India. My sister-in-law was one of the victims of his mental health problem by means of "labelling".

It is infortunate but this forum is an inappropriate place to post a full blow by blow account of the last six years.

Pages