Reddit reviews I Am Not Sick I Don't Need Help: How to Help Someone with Mental Illness Accept Treatment

Not a doctor nor a psychiatrist, but I've had to deal with mental illness in my family. The inability to recognize clinically evident symptoms is called anosognosia and treating for it is difficult and unintuitive.

I want to mention a book for OP and any others dealing with potential anosognosia in their life:

I Am Not Sick, I Don't Need Help by Xavier Amador--written by a psychiatrist whose brother developed schizophrenia. He gives excellent advice to those wanting to advocate on behalf of family with no insight into their illness.

Read "I'm not sick and I don't need help" by Xavier Amador. It really helped me learn to deal with a similar situation.
http://www.amazon.com/Not-Sick-Dont-Need-Help/dp/0967718929

Learn as much as you can about OCD, and do you best to retain your roll as a loved one.


Bibliotherapy is helpful. So read up, as much for yourself as them.

Here's a great book that touches on some forms of OCD.

I've found this structure of communication during severe episode of OCD helpful:

LEAP: Listen, Empathize, Agree, Partner.

Reflective listening is key. Hear out your friend/family member completely, genuinely, and act like a reporter who is trying to learn all you can without judgement about what they live with. "It sounds like you don't want to live life like this, and you want things to change".

Empathize with the emotional difficulty of their disorder, and don't force your onions of treatment (i.e. you need to check into rehab, you need to be with a therapist, etc.). "It must be tough to feel unhealthy all the time, like you could be better".

Agree on things often to build trust. "I too want you to have a higher quality life."

Partner to work towards a solution. "I would love to help you get help, and we can find someone together. I'm just here for you to get through this"

This is a great book on the subject.

Not a doctor, just a husband with a loved one with a mental illness.

If he's taking the meds.

The best book I've seen for friends/family of folks with mental illnesses is called I Am Not Sick; I Don't Need Help. Your friend likely has little insight into his own illness, and you may or may not be the person to be helping him. It can give you some advice for supporting him and trying to have more "normal" interactions with him.

I am so sorry you are going through this. I highly recommend you read the book I'm Not Sick, I Don't Need Help by Dr. Amador. His brother had SAD. Excellent book. I also suggest getting involved in NAMI if you are lucky enough to have a chapter in your area. You are in for a hard lonely battle. Be sure to take care of yourself first, then your partner (if you are lucky enough to have one). Only with those two pieces in place can you hope to take care of your son. Feel free to PM if you have questions. I wish you the best.

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If you haven't already read Xavier Amadour's I'm Not Sick and I Don't Need Help yet, I would highly recommend it. I wish you the best of luck. It's a very long journey to the mythic place called "recovery".

Get this guys book. Seriously.

You know, that's the second book in the last two hours that someone has recommended that I'd like to read but can't afford. Is there some kind of book bit torrent I can find these at? The other one is this.

I’ve heard good things about this book and it’s usually recommended by professionals.

I Am Not Sick I Don't Need Help: How to Help Someone with Mental Illness Accept Treatment By Xavier Amador https://www.amazon.com/Not-Sick-Dont-Need-Help/dp/0967718929

Hope it helps.

I have a book suggestion for you called "I'm Not Sick, I Don't Need Help" It's written for families of loved ones suffering from mental health issues and it's about how to convince them to eventually seek help. Good luck!

> I am focusing on these cases because the calls for improving mental health is cited as some kind of fix to this situation.

You're picking out specific cases and asking to solve those, when it's being cited as a way to improve the situation as a whole. If you're looking for a solution that prevents 100% of all spree killings ever, I think you're right, no practical solution exists -- very few problems of this scale are ever truly fixed, such that they can never happen again. Smallpox is the only example that comes to mind.

> How could an overhaul of mental health identify spree killers who are not already identified as having mental health issues?

Even if it didn't, I think my comment above applies -- some spree killers were identified as having mental health issues.

Increased awareness and decreased stigma could help identify people who have mental issues before they become killers.

> If you do find someone at risk for violence what then? What can you do with that information?

Depends on the level of risk, of course, but consider one of your examples: James Holmes was almost involuntarily committed. Had he been committed, he would've been held for treatment until he was much less likely to be a danger to himself or others. If he never met the criteria for release, that's sad, but that means he'd be held in an environment where he physically can't commit a spree killing.

But there are plenty of other scenarios -- you could have someone who isn't yet a danger, but may become so if they don't get help. Right now, people often don't seek help, because of the stigma -- even after the fact, Ted Kaczynski refused to make an insanity plea. There's a very good book about how difficult it can be to convince a loved one that there's even something wrong. (I can tell you from personal experience that it can be incredibly difficult -- often the illness itself will interfere with the very kind of insight the person would need to realize they're sick. We don't need to be piling societal judgement on top of that!)

And even when people seek help, therapy is expensive. And even when they can afford the therapy, even if they can afford the drugs, and even if they'll cooperate with all these things, and even if it then works perfectly and they end up graduating from the medication to being truly normal, they often won't tell anyone for fear of being seen as weird, despite how surprisingly common this is.

Fix that, and you might prevent more people from becoming dangers in the first place, or at least ensure that more people end up being detected and committed before they can kill anyone.

You could accuse me of picking out specific examples with Holmes and Kaczynski, but I only need an existence proof -- maybe this only works for Holmes, and wouldn't have helped Lanza, I don't know. My only claim here is that a) this would probably reduce the number of spree killings (but not eliminate it), and b) even if it didn't, it would improve things for the better, so we should do it anyway.