The Caregiver's Voice: Living With a Relative Who Has Schizophrenia

This account is shared anonymously to protect the family involved. Some details have been changed.

It was the start of the pandemic. My business had closed, so I moved back to my uncle's home. He had become my guardian after my mother died in 2014, a role he took on as the eldest son in the family.

I already knew that one of my older cousins had a serious mental condition. Until then, the only help he had received was prayer and cleansing from spiritualists. His immediate family believed he had lost his sanity as punishment for disrespecting his father and stepmother. Years had passed, and he was still unwell.

From what I saw, he spent long periods alone. He was slow in speech and movement and could take hours over simple tasks. He sometimes went weeks without grooming. His speech was hard to follow, and his thinking jumped from one idea to another. At night he was restless and paced through the house until morning, yet he did not seem tired from the lack of sleep.

He repeated certain routines. Before each meal he would walk a fixed circular path between the kitchen and the sitting room. Even when cooking only for himself, he insisted on using exactly seven onions, seven tomatoes, seven cloves of garlic, and seven sprigs of coriander. He believed he was the son of God and spoke about himself in the third person. He read only the first chapter of Colossians and left the Bible open at that chapter in different places around the house. He said God was instructing him, and that if he disobeyed, the voice would become violent.

As the eldest son, he was meant to manage the household money, but his illness made this difficult. The voice he described would tell him to punish people, including his father, for disobedience. He prayed loudly each night to drive away what he called the spirit of disobedience.

An unregistered nurse came occasionally to give him an injection when symptoms became severe. My cousin never agreed to the treatment and disliked the strong side effects. At first the medication seemed to help, but over time it stopped easing his symptoms. When I asked the nurse what he was treating, he said bipolar disorder, although we had never seen manic or hypomanic episodes. My cousin's birth mother has schizophrenia and had shown similar symptoms before she left the family.

Different relatives understood his condition differently. Two older siblings who paid for his care believed he had depression. One of them, a devout Christian, believed the condition was spiritual because of the disturbing beliefs and voices. They also tended to accept his accusations, including claims that the rest of us wanted to take the house.

What this story shows

It took two years to persuade the family to take him to a qualified psychiatrist. By then he was tired of what he saw as forced treatment. The symptoms described here, including long-standing social withdrawal, disorganised speech, and hearing voices, are more consistent with a psychotic illness such as schizophrenia than with the diagnoses the family had been given. This is not a diagnosis of any real person. It is an account of how easily serious mental illness can be misunderstood when assessment and treatment are delayed.

Today he has asked everyone to leave the house. Only the youngest sibling, a university student, stays with him during holidays, and sometimes goes without food or is locked out. His neighbours now notice his distress, and the family watches from a distance as his health declines.

Schizophrenia is a treatable condition. Early assessment, consistent treatment with the involvement of the person, and support for families are associated with better outcomes. Where spiritual and family support sit alongside professional care rather than replacing it, people are more likely to get help in time.