WHITE: MY MOTHER, A SCHIZOPHRENIC, IS SLIPPING THROUGH THE CRACKS
Five years ago, during the pandemic, we received two liberating diagnoses. My biological mother, Bonnie, is a schizophrenic, and I have PTSD from being raised by an undiagnosed — but very presenting — schizophrenic.
Mental-healthwise, the 1990s were a different time. Institutions were over-utilized, while interventions including psychotherapy and talking to your family physician about mental health were under-utilized. This meant that Bonnie, despite being the sibling of an institutionalized bipolar sister and a homeless schizophrenic brother, and displaying many symptoms of a mental condition herself, somehow fell through cracks of assessment.
Bonnie lost physical custody of us around 1990. My father allowed 50-per-cent visitation, which I followed until age 14 when I was legally able to decide to stop. When I was growing up, my dad and stepmom repeatedly told us that Bonnie “was doing her best,” to which I internally shuddered. From forgetting to feed us or bathe us, to corporal punishments and emotional abuse, I have few loving memories or feelings she did “her best” from our 14 years together.
Over the years, the schizophrenia ran its course and every family member she had pulled back to protect themselves. Until five years ago, when we received her diagnosis, then mine, and I began trauma therapy, devoting the next few years of lockdown to heal my inner child. Now, alone, I am Bonnie’s only advocate.
Since then, she has been placed on countless medical holds, which inevitably restart the cyclical pattern of untreated schizophrenia: medical intervention occurs following an “episode”; she is injected with antipsychotics; continues believing she doesn’t need long-term treatment; is released with a prescription of oral medications she doesn’t believe she needs; then slowly devolves and becomes less organized until she’s inevitably arrested or placed back on a medical hold a few months later.
This winter, I received a phone call from a health-care team, notifying me that Bonnie was refusing treatment and they were concerned about wounds on her legs. Following several attempts to reason with Bonnie, I petitioned for yet another medical hold, whereby she was picked up by the police and brought to a local hospital for another psychiatric evaluation, and to be treated for what was now a cellulitis infection in both legs. As a schizophrenic, she is unable to understand that doctors were trying to save her legs, and instead thought they were trying to poison her. By refusing treatment and being incapable of caring for the wounds herself, she allowed the infection in her legs to persist, has not been able to walk for 13 weeks — and counting — and might eventually end up needing one, or both, legs amputated.
Once more, the medical system notified me that from a psychiatric perspective, our options are “limited.” Despite acknowledging she is not caring for herself, is a risk to herself and the community, and isn’t fully capable of understanding the impact of the decisions she makes, Bonnie has been released.
Barriers to treatment
The truth, however, is that while they are limited, our options aren’t null. Programs such as those at the Royal Ottawa exist for people like Bonnie who cannot care for themselves and need support beyond what family can provide. At minimum is the option for a community treatment order: a tool designed to enforce medical support for people in our community who are incapable of appreciating they require it. Under the Mental Health Act, it would stipulate that Bonnie is a person with serious mental illness and requires supervised treatment and care in the community, and she would be required to receive a monthly injection of a prescribed antipsychotic. Bonnie’s current barriers to a viable treatment plan continue to be how overwhelmed our mental health-care system is, and her lack of a family doctor to make the recommendation that she is medically incapable of caring for herself.
Admittedly, the consequences of deeming someone incapable of caring for themselves are not to be taken lightly; however, neither are the alternatives. At best, she dies alone, somewhere, following another cyclical pattern of disorganization. At worst, someone else dies, Bonnie is arrested, and then she dies alone incarcerated.
It took me decades to accept that she did, in fact, do her best as a mother. It has taken me five short years to accept that our health-care system failed her in the ’90s and continues to fail her and thousands of Ontarians with complex mental-health issues. Without viable treatment options appearing to be accessible or available to Bonnie, I can’t help but wonder: has a schizophrenia diagnosis been reduced to a revolving door of treating immediate symptoms but not the disease? Surely that cannot be the answer.
Jennifer White lives in Ottawa, works in public affairs and is currently working on her first book regarding her experience with schizophrenia. Bonnie’s name has been changed to safeguard her identity.
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2025-06-09T08:36:07Z