I count myself as incredibly lucky that my Zoloft has helped me as much as it has. My doctor and I decided it was time to up the dosage recently to 150mg a day. I dread the day when it hits 200mg and then the roulette of finding another one that *might* work almost 1/1000th as good starts again. It took me half of my life to find the one that seems to be helping. I'd hate to start that trial and error thing again. I just hope that I don't reach the 200mg limit any time soon. I truly dread those feelings coming back while we try to find something else that will help. Too bad it has a tendency to not work as good as time goes on, for some of us, at least.
Mental illness is not only hard on family members. It is hard on the person suffering too. That is often forgotten because people who are mentally ill are often seen as a burden or a major problem on the family by so many family members. What they don't realize is that suffering like that day in and day out takes its toll on the person suffering PLUS they have to feel bad because the family seems to see them as a problem. That adds to it more than people can possibly imagine.
That has been my situation until recently when a panic attack led to a heart attack. Some members of my family seem to be more understanding now since that happened, best of all, my mother. I needed that more than she realized. Of course, my stepfather is still pulling his "get over it" attitude, but I don't expect someone like him to ever be able to grasp what it is really like. He is the type of person who cannot even stand to be in the same room when people are discussing who is gay in Hollywood. He literally did that one day when my mother's dog groomer was talking about who is gay in Hollywood. After Rock Hudson was mentioned, he literally got up, took his plate and left the room. He's THAT homophobic and bigoted.
I guess the family members who are trying to help now and not be so "pull yourself up by your bootstraps and snap out of it" realize I'm really suffering whereas before they were still trying to tell me to just "get over it." You don't just get over it. That is not how that awful group of diseases that make up mental illness works. They are relentless and they do not let up. They have to constantly be fought by the one suffering and by the family. To me, mental illness should be considered against the right to pursue happiness and should be studied, researched, and fought as hard as any "physical" disease or "war on" (fill in the blank).
Then there are families who try as hard as they can to help and it still doesn't work. So much of mental health treatment is a trial and error, hit or miss, guesswork situation with medications. Therapies are all over the place. What works for one person will not work for other people.
I feel so bad for what your friend has to go through and what you friend's sons had to go through. Mental illness is such a painful experience and suicide leaves such emptiness behind for loved ones. There are certainly no easy or even consistent solutions to the problems. Mental illness has been stigmatized and ignored for so long by those in power that I don't see that changing any time soon. In the future, I think people will look back at us and scratch their heads at our actions for ignoring it and not putting it higher up on the list of important things to try to find cures and better treatments for.
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