Mental illness and family

To your knowledge, does any mental illness run in your family? If so, have you ever been paranoid about being afflicted by it yourself?

To answer the question myself, I have an uncle who is a paranoid schizophrenic; but even though it's said to be heredity, he's the only one I know of in the family who suffers from it.

Yes. My family drives me crazy. I think my mother's brother may have been what is presently diagnosed as bi-polar but I haven't had any contact with him in decades. Worrying about mental illness isn't anything I lose sleep over. I'm more concerned with pancreatic cancer.

Nope. We crazy, but not in the medical sense.

My grandmother, she was never examined for it and never diagnosed, but we're convinced she's Eve, Three Faces, nice Grandma, the helpless baby, and the mean bitch who gives mom 10x more work.

Nystyle709 wrote:Nope. We crazy, but not in the medical sense.

Chris wrote:To your knowledge, does any mental illness run in your family? If so, have you ever been paranoid about being afflicted by it yourself?

To answer the question myself, I have an uncle who is a paranoid schizophrenic; but even though it's said to be heredity, he's the only one I know of in the family who suffers from it.

I also have an uncle and a sister who were -- they both committed suicide when they were still young in my eyes

My family is nuts but never had any clinical mental illness run in the family.

Not necessarily a "mental illness" my daughter is autistic. It can sure seem like one sometimes, especially in the last month or so. It's not something you develop later in life so nothing I have to worry about personally.

CeCe wrote:Not necessarily a "mental illness" my daughter is autistic. It can sure seem like one sometimes, especially in the last month or so. It's not something you develop later in life so nothing I have to worry about personally.

but is it genetic? IF you chose to have more children, is there a higher percentage that the children would have it than not? Would that percentage make you reconsider having future children?


in my uncles case of schizo. he started hearing voices about 10yrs after vietnam. then got paranoid and talking in word salad. He took a lot of drugs back then. My sis was also a drug addict, and she became increasingly worse over the years.... got the same symptoms my uncle had. My nephews are all fine, so I dont think it carried down, but I have no children-- but if i planned to, i would prepare my self for the odds.

wants2laugh wrote:

but is it genetic? IF you chose to have more children, is there a higher percentage that the children would have it than not? Would that percentage make you reconsider having future children?


in my uncles case of schizo. he started hearing voices about 10yrs after vietnam. then got paranoid and talking in word salad. He took a lot of drugs back then. My sis was also a drug addict, and she became increasingly worse over the years.... got the same symptoms my uncle had. My nephews are all fine, so I dont think it carried down, but I have no children-- but if i planned to, i would prepare my self for the odds.

I did encounter a woman online a few years ago who had 5 kids. ALL autistic to various levels. The spectrum is interesting. A child be be diagnosed but have it be barely noticeable. They go to school, hold down a job & live on their own with no issues. Then there's the other side of it where they will need constant care & medication all their life. People tried to blame it on vaccines a while back because of thimerosol. But autism existed long before that. So there's probably a genetic link but as far as I know there's no way to prenatally diagnose the potential.

CeCe wrote:Not necessarily a "mental illness" my daughter is autistic. It can sure seem like one sometimes, especially in the last month or so. It's not something you develop later in life so nothing I have to worry about personally.

I'm sorry to hear that CeCe. Is she severely autistic?

Alan Smithee wrote:

I'm sorry to hear that CeCe. Is she severely autistic?

Thanks Alan yeah pretty much. She will always need care. She could never be left alone even for a few minutes. She's been fairly manageable for a while until the last couple months where I've had to video her behavior to stay out of jail. She's put massive bruises on herself. Got a psych appointment tomorrow. I imagine we'll be in for another med change. Nothing works for long.

You're serious about video taping her?! Damn. I wish there was something I could say to make it all better

Alan Smithee wrote:You're serious about video taping her?! Damn. I wish there was something I could say to make it all better

I appreciate that yes I had to. No one who isn't really familiar with autistic rages would believe someone would self inflict those kinds of bruises.