Disruption of a family member’s treatment for mental illness and subsequent worsening of psychiatric symptoms can have harsh financial, physical and emotional consequences for families. This is the result of an international survey of caregivers of individuals with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and schizoaffective disorder. Preston J. Garrison, the secretary general and chief executive officer, World Federation of Mental Health states parents, siblings, spouses, and children connected with the mental illness patients are seriously affected. Many caregivers have experienced the chaos of their loved ones relapse and the relief that comes with stabilization.
Mental illness creates enormous social and economic costs. Depression, for example, affects some 500 million people in the world and results in more time lost to disability than such chronic diseases as diabetes mellitus and arthritis. Estimating the economic cost of mental illness is complex because there are direct costs (actual medical expenditures), indirect costs (the cost to individuals and society due to reduced or lost productivity, for example), and support costs (time lost to care of family members with mental illnesses). One study estimated that in 1985 the economic costs of mental illness in the United States totaled $103.7 billion. Of this, treatment and support costs totaled $42.5 billion, which represented 11.5 percent of the total cost of care for all illnesses.
Schizophrenia, severe mental illness characterized by a variety of symptoms, including loss of contact with reality, bizarre behavior, disorganized thinking and speech, decreased emotional expressiveness, and social withdrawal. Usually only some of these symptoms occur in any one person. The term schizophrenia comes from Greek words meaning "split mind." However, contrary to common belief, schizophrenia does not refer to a person with a split personality or multiple personality. (For a description of a mental illness in which a person has multiple personalities, seeDissociative Identity Disorder.) To observers, schizophrenia may seem like madness or insanity.
Several other psychiatric disorders are closely related to schizophrenia. In schizoaffective disorder, a person shows symptoms of schizophrenia combined with either mania or severe depression. Schizophreniform disorder refers to an illness in which a person experiences schizophrenic symptoms for more than one month but fewer than six months. In schizotypal personality disorder, a person engages in odd thinking, speech, and behavior, but usually does not lose contact with reality (seePersonality Disorders). Sometimes mental health professionals refer to these disorders together as schizophrenia-spectrum disorders.
Bipolar Disorder is a mental illness in which a person’s mood alternates between extreme mania and depression. Bipolar disorder is also called manic-depressive illness. When manic, people with bipolar disorder feel intensely elated, self-important, energetic, and irritable. When depressed, they experience painful sadness, negative thinking, and indifference to things that used to bring them happiness.