It's strange, isn't it? In the 80's (I believe I was young then) the mental health units, "asylums", etc were closed and people believed they were doing those with mental health issues a favour. They were getting to live in society like "normal" people.
For some, that is a wonderful thing. Others need somewhere like those places. They desperately need them. Some of their families desperately need them. My neighbours across the road are a nice family. The parents are older, probably late seventies now. They have a daughter who lives with them. She's in her mid forties.
When we moved in about 14 years ago, I assumed the daughter was just shy and kept to herself. We learned during covid that she is schizophrenic and was on medication. The woman worked and went about every day life like everyone else before covid. At some point during the covid time a doctor of her's told her she could stop taking her medicine "because she didn't need it anymore." We have a friend who's a nurse that works with psychiatric patients and she said that is 100% the opposite thing a doctor should have done.
The woman had her parents at wits end. She would break all the light fixtures and mirrors in the home because she was being spied upon through them. She'd take her car or the parents' car out at and go who knows where. The police would be around every week or so to take her in because she'd threaten to kill her parents. She'd be away for a few days on a psychiatric hold. Her mum and dad could get some sleep. But she'd return a few days later.
Her mum said the courts would not force her back on to her medication because she is an adult and can decide if she wants to take it. I was very worried about her parents that they would die from exhaustion or worry or God forbid their daughter would do something to them thinking they were against her.
Luckily, at some point in the last 18 months she's started back on her medication again. She's working, and seems to be the nice, shy woman i knew previously.
