I know that you don’t make the laws, but gosh sometimes it seems crazy that the law comes before compassionate support for one’s family.
Could Biggirl get him to sign a legal document when he is lucid agreeing to this “assault”?
I don’t know what part of the city you’re in or whether your own health insurance has a “preferred hospital”, but I would suggest going to either your insurance co’s preferred hospital or a public NYC hospital and getting an appointment with a social worker. The quality of help you receive from such sources can range from useless or even counterproductive up to “tireless and courageous advocate with wonderful contacts and great insights”, so while I would refrain from simply turning the matter over to such personnel, I think it’s definitely worth the appointment.
HRA also has social workers who may be of help. I tend to think there are more clinkers in the bag and fewer diamonds (working at HRA can be depressing and/or infuriating for client-oriented or excellence-driven people, so it tends to be a concentrator of mediocrities), but there are still some exceptional ones in the system, and they have really good resources for those who know how to work it.
If your immediate family or your uncle himself, either one, are “of” an organized religion, religious institutions may also have networks of the social-work variety, and if you seek out a contact person for pragmatic-type solution help, I’d think they’d be worth a try. Also, religious-based hospital organizations, as the intersection of hospital and religious institution.
I am on a mailing list of C/X/S (jargon meaning consumer/ex-inmate/survivor of psychiatric system) which tends to overlap with people providing mutual support to each other, but unless your uncle is at the point of seeking out that kind of thing I’m not sure we’d be of much help. On the other hand, sounds like he was part of some kind of mutual-support network when he was living in the tents, or am I misconstruing? Anyway, if you want me to, I’ll post an inquiry to my C/S/X mailing list and forward or summarize any replies
Does he have his lucid moments at times from one day to the next, or is it more like “he has his lucid years and this isn’t one of them”?
Regarding rsa’s query, you could get your uncle to sign a “living will”, a health care proxy, or a springing power of attorney, any of which could indicate that it is his wish that he receive certain treatments in the event that he is unable to give (or withhold) consent due to being mentally incapacitated later, but none of these documents would take away his right to change his mind and say otherwise later if he is still legally competent to do so. (You can’t say on Tuesday that anything you might say on Wednesday is not to count, no matter what).
You can set down some ground rules for his behavior. His condition may explain misbehaviors but they don’t excuse them, and to some (unknown) extent he has some capacity for moderating his behavior to please you or to get along or to avoid unwanted consequences of his actions. (It may be a factor that drives him to seek out a solution, for instance).
I’m sorry I seem so unsympathetic. It can be so hard when you care about someone and about their well-being, but just find them to be more than you can cope with personally. I wish I was better able to offer a raft of viable and sensible solutions. Unfortunately, our political movement’s origins have more to do with the gross inadequacies and detrimental effect of common psychiatric-system treatment, and about our civil right to refuse these. (There are, in fact, people who say to us “Well if you’re saying forced treatment is not right, what do you propose that we do instead? What about these inconvenient people who are making our lives hell?” Sadly, we can only say that the fact that we have no easy solution does not mean that it is therefore permissible to force someone else’s destrucive non-solution upon us against our will). Ultimately I think it comes down to “You usually can’t help people, even people that you love, who don’t perceive themselves as people who need help”.
That’s the thing though. When he is really with us, he knows he needs help. He went to Soc Sec when he first arrived (about a week and a half ago) with my cousin and had his check sent to my cousin because he knows he can’t handle his own money. He told us about the clinic he went to when he lived here more than 10 years ago. He told us his doctor’s name (the doctor remembers my uncle. When we called, my uncle was given an open appointment. They are waiting for him. )
He’s been hit hard. He just found out his sister and his mother died. He’s uprooted himself from a life that he found comfortable and plunked himself in the middle of this big city. He arrived without his medication. Two days after he got here, he had-- I don’t know what to call it exactly-- a psycotic break.
Thankfully he has stopped screaming at and threatening everybody he sees. He has now gone into a closet. He’s in the closet when my cousin goes to check on him before he heads out to work. He was in the closet the last two times I checked. My cousin reports that he was in the closet when he looked in on him on his way home from work. I think he feels safer there. This also seems to be a way for him to “behave himself”.
A question for you Ahunter. If a person expresses a wish, while rational, for medication (My uncle did this. He was very specific about which meds he will and will not take) but refuses to take himself to the clinic when the time comes because “that bitch doesn’t like Puerto Ricans. I know because she smokes.” (We don’t know what bitch he’s talking about, by the way. He hasn’t been to the clinic for more than 10 years.)
When the option of long lasting injections is given, how is that a bad thing? No one is going to force the injection on him, but you seem to be saying that this would somehow violate his right to chose whether or not to take medication. Or am I misunderstanding you?
If you can get him close to the long-lasting injection when he is in a mindstate to take it, then it’s his choice to take it. I don’t think that’s at all a bad thing! Some hospitals and services such as Visiting Nurse Services will even be willing to send a public health nurse to him rather than vice versa, to bring him his next long-lasting injection before the old one wears off.
If he was doing better out west, then ship him back there and see if he can get back to his routine. There should be no reason for him to stay in your area while you are settling the estate.