Caregiver Isolation.

As a caregiver, who do you talk to about what you're going through and living?

Who could understand? 

A favorite example of mine that I use to illustrate this loneliness follows:   

'If someone broke their foot in August and then broke it again in December you'd feel bad, offer to drive the kids around, cook...anything.  Yet, if someone has a depressive episode in August and another in December they become invisible.  No one knows what to say and they're afraid of the unknown. So they avoid them or the topic, yet are quick to use the term 'crazy' to describe them.'  

Sadly that is stigma, you learn to isolate.  

Fact: 1:4 Americans are caregivers of someone with a mental illness and 1:4 Americans are diagnosed each year with a mental illness.  Movies like 'The Shining' did tremendous damage to our loved ones and prevented so many from reaching out for help. That genre of movie really isolates all suffers of mental illness and scared the public. The percentage of people with acute psychosis, like the Shining character is so small,  less than 1% of the population, it's statistically insignificant.

Stigma is real and it is propagated by the media and my Hollywood to the detriment of the very people around us who need our compassion the most.

My measure of my life is this:  How I treat those who can't help themselves.  

In fact that is my measure for all.