Friends, Family & Carers Forum

[Former-Member]

@Littletink_

I hope I have linked this ok - here are some practical tips from another post.


https://saneforums.org/t5/Looking-after-ourselves/Carers-Hints-and-tips-to-Success/td-p/153442/page/...

[Littletink_]

Hi everyone @Former-Member @Shaz51 @Mazarita
I hope you are all doing well. Having a tough time at the moment. My partners dad is having a significant impact on my partners mental health. He keeps telling her that she doesn't need to be on meds and to get off them and that they are doing more harm than good. His view on mental illness is basically that it isn't real and doesn't exist. He puts so much pressure on her and says things like "what are you going to do about your mental health?" Why don't you have a job yet? She got off the phone in tears last night. I hate seeing her like this it's awful. And it's so hard for her having such an unsupportive parent. The way he treats her and talks to her about her mental illness makes me so angry and it really messes things up for her. It makes her worse. She told me this morning that she wanted to die. I don't know what to do about it . I told her that she needs to cut him off because he is not good for her and has a really bad impact on her mental health and not to believe he things he says but I told her it is her decision. It's just really not good for her. Any advice on how to deal with this? I just want to give him a piece of my mind he was horrible to her last night he is so cold

[Former-Member]

Hi @Littletink_

First of all can I recomment that you join in the discussion on Topic Tuesday tomorrow night that might be helpful to you - "Caring for the woman in your life"  

"Expressed emotion" is the technical name for unhealthy responses to mental illness and can take a number of forms.  Some of it happens out of misunderstanding, other times it is out of fear.  Sometimes these responses are valid, sometimes not but finding healthy ways to express them is vital.  It is important to realise that expressed emotion from a parent or a partner does not mean that the patient is not loved.   

From what you have written it seems that father-in-law (FIL) might be a bit conflicted if he is asking Ms L-T what she is doing about her mental health and then asking her about work or critising the need for meds;  lack or information and/or misinformation can be the root cause.

How is your relationship with the in-laws (or as I like to call them the out-laws)?  My first instinct is to see if there is some psycheducation available - if your partner is amenable - this might be a session with her case worker or psychologist/ It is important to note and reassure your partner that this can be a general session and specifics of your partners case do not need to be discussed, this of course should be made clear to the person convening the session. Wellways or other MI support services might also be able to provide this - family education has been well documented to decrease expressed emotiion, to improve outcomes for a patient and to reduce rates of relapse.  

A parent is always a parent and the fact that dad still is in touch means that he probably does care.  Finding a happy medium as to giving the outlaws just a little information so that they do not feel excluded can be a hard one, but I have found that giving Mr Darcys family just a little bit of info was helpful, I have not yet given them his diagnosis as it has not long been confirmed but will probably let them know that he has a diagnosis which is now stable but requires life long medication and that there is a chance he could relapse but less likely with appropriate meds. 

It can be difficult to warm to outlaws in any event, but even harder when the things they say are unhelpful - one of my brother in laws was like this, but I had to realise it was his way of dealing with it and I too have had unhealthy responses at times and learning healthy coping mechanisms really helped me. I ended up sending the whole family some information about what not to say after an attempt.  Keeping our own feelings at bay and seeing if there is merit in what they say can be helpful - you said your FIL has raised concerns known about the meds - asking him about his observations, letting him know that you are hearing him, noting them along with your own can be quite helpful for the treating team.

Having the outlaws as allies in the process can be helpful - the brother that said the things that upset me - along with another, travelled interstate to pick up Mr Darcy and bring him home to yet another state after he went awol (in what was likely undiagnosed psychotic depression).  Mr Darcy's family is quite dyscunctional and we are the only ones who keep in touch with all of his brothers on a regular basis.

Hope this helps.

Darcy

[Shaz51]

Hello @Littletink_ 

Topic Tuesday tomorrow night that might be helpful to you - "Caring for the woman in your life"  

also one of my mr shaz diagnoses is  that he has inherited depression which is passed down and he has had all his life

His grandparents kept their`s depression  very quiet and developed a attitude " just keep going "

His mother has it and his Dad too , they adopted the attitude too but they added another one that you don`t talk about -- you just get over it and keep busy

Mr shaz has three sisters who are all on meds  and he has 4 children who have different degrees of depression and anxiety

For me as a wife , I get the statements from my MIL like " I thought you could fix him ", It has taken a long time for him to talk about it , and it is hard when no one else in the family listens to him

[NikNik]

Hi @Littletink_

I thought I would quickly share the link to tonight's Topic Tuesday that @Former-Member & @Shaz51 mentioned.

You can find it here - it kicks off at 7pm AEST and is hosted by our resident psychologist, Suzanne.

Hopefully you're able to make it!

Nik

[Mazarita]

Hi @Littletink_, sorry to know you and your partner are going through tough times with her father's response to her illness. It is really hard when parents are unsupportive in this way, though probably fairly common. One thing is that parents sometimes go into a degree of denial about mental illness in their children. Who wants to think their daughter might have mental illness? So they can then try to suggest ways that they think might just get their children to 'snap out of it'. Of course we know this doesn't work, and can just make things a whole lot worse.

I thought I'd share with you though that I did actually cut off my parents for about seven years much earlier in my life. I couldn't cope with the added burden their presence in my life added to my poor mental health, which at that time included suicidal thoughts and feelings. It felt at that time like it was me or them. I chose to try to survive myself. The long term outcome of this was helpful in some ways, but it's worth knowing that breaking contact with parents is really a traumatic thing to do all round. We have a primal connection to parents. When I was out of contact with mine, it was as though I was mourning for their death. It wan't a simple fix to my mental health issues, in some ways added to them. But we have been able to reconnect after that time and have a better relationship than it was then.

I guess why I'm telling you this is just to let you know that being out of contact with a parent may not be the best answer to your partner's problems. Better would be to understand some of the reasons why it may be the case and try to 'rise above' the interference it seems to present. @Former-Member had some great thoughts along these lines.

Wishing you and your partner well.

[Littletink_]

Hi @Former-Member,

Yes I see what you mean. Maybe he doesn't understand the illness but it's also like he doesn't want to or won't accept it. I have only been with my partner for a year so I haven't met her dad yet. She doesn't see him often only via phone calls and skype.
Her parents divorced a long time ago when her mother got sick with Bipolar Disorder Type too, unfortunately she has inherited it from her mother. But yeah he basically left her because of that that's what I've been told. So he didn't treat her mother well back then either and left her with no support. He is very anti mental illness - doesn't believe it is a real thing, he doesn't even believe that my partner is sick. He puts all of these silly ideas in her head and she becomes very emotional and confused and angry and feels worthless. She has tried to talk to him about her illness and has told him that she needs to be on the medication to function and do life at her best but he just doesn't seem to get it or understand and is so horrible about it. Her family is quite dysfunctional too. And I just don't know how to deal with it at the moment. Mainly her father. Every time she gets off the phone with him she spirals into a deep mess and is distraught. I have suggested maybe minimising contact with him and or not discussing her mental health with him because it never ends well. Even though he is her dad and she needs the support from him he doesn't give her the support she needs.

[Littletink_]

Thank you for sharing that with me @Shaz51.
It can be very hard to know how to deal with it. My grandmother was very much like that also when I became sick with anxiety and depression. She kept telling me "to get on with it" and was putting pressure on me all the time to get a job or do this or do that. She did eventually come around but it was hard on my for a while and made me feel worse.

[Littletink_]

Hi @Mazarita thank you for sharing that with me 🙂

I do understand what you are saying. Maybe it wouldn't be best if she cuts total contact but at least minimises contact or talk of her mental illness with him because it just becomes too stressful for her. It's like she doesn't measure up to his standards and it makes her feel very worthless. He has a very strange view on MI. I find it hard to get my head around. I do understand that not everyone has the same views and finds it hard to understand MI but he is very horrible about it it just makes things hard.

[Littletink_]

Thanks @Former-Member @Shaz51 and @NikNik for linking me to that Topic Tuesdays thing by the way too. It was very helpful. And so very much appreciated. I hope you are all doing well.