Best selling author Pete Earley reposted a recent New Yorker article written by a woman who lost her brother to homeless and then to suicide. It’s a familiar (and very sad) story that echoes the heartache that families encounter trying to figure out how to help our relatives and coming up short most of the time. I followed Pete over to his Facebook page and left the following comment:

Rossa Forbes What if, rather than kicking his son out of the house because he wouldn’t take his medication (and therefore precipating his long spiral into homeless and death) the father in this article had taken a different tack by siding with his son? Yes, Taking His Side by researching what the medications do, how efficacious they are, and finding out why people don’t like to take these drugs. Then, he could have said, “I understand the way you feel, and let’s try some alternatives first, of your choosing. I don’t like these medications, either, but at the very least, if, in the end, you agree to take a single medication, I will make sure that it is at the lowest dose possible. I will become your ally, not your adversary.” The author has got it right when she complains about the fact that educating ourselves doesn’t necessarily result in better outcomes: “In our family, we did all of this, and more—we took classes, consulted experts, conferred with lawyers, and met with people with schizophrenia who had rebuilt their lives. But applying what we learned was rarely simple. Though our efforts often helped us enormously, they did not, in the end, do much for Tom. I wonder, still, what could have saved him.” Had her brother an ally in a close relative who was willing to work with him (as difficult as these things are), much of the misery he was in could have been avoided. I say this as a mother of a young man with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, whom we kept at home probably far too long for his own good, and it was a strain, to say the least, but at least we knew where he was and we could work at building better communication skills and becoming allies. Rossa Forbes, author, The Scenic Route: A Way through Madness