@Mez...true but why would someone knowingly marry someone with known mental issues. one shouldn't jeopardize married life because mental issues are serious issues.
Not all mental illnesses are chronic conditions that will be with a person for life and require lifelong care. For example, with proper treatment, a person can recover (yes, recover completely) from PTSD, anxiety, and depression. Also, there is a significant difference between being developmentally challenged (i.e. autism, Down syndrome, mental retardation, etc.) and other mental illnesses. Those are two very different things. People who have mental illnesses are not necessarily developmentally challenged. For instance, someone with PTSD or depression can go to school, work, drive, and manage their own affairs. Of course, this depends on the severity of the illness and whether or not the person is receiving and following treatment but it is definitely not the same as, say, having Down syndrome and requiring life long care.
As far as why someone would knowingly marry someone with a mental illness, it is possible that they aren't aware of it. Mental illness is still extremely taboo in the South Asian community. Many people are either in denial that their child has a mental illness and do not address it and seek treatment or they deliberately hide it. I've heard of cases where families did not disclose that their son or daughter had a mental illness and the spouse only discovered this after getting married.
Schizophrenia is a definite no for me. I know a Indian girl (cousin of a good friend) who got married a guy through a semi-arranged situation. Both guy/girl born/raised in U.S. Met through family (parents knew each other back in India), dated for a few months and then got engaged/married. The girl is a neurologist and the guy surgeon. AFTER the wedding when she started living with him, within months, due to strange/erratic behavior, she finally discovered that he has schizophrenia. His family/him knew about this for years but hid it from everyone. Despite being a surgeon who was fully aware of all the risks/dangers etc. AND with "family support"….the guy was not consistent with his meds. A few weeks after their 1st wedding anniversary, the girl came home from work & found his dead body on their bed. He committed suicide.
Bipolor, PTSD, anxiety/depression etc…..these depend on how severe it is, whether the guy ever needed to be hospitalized due to not being consistent with his meds, can he keep a stable job etc. With bipolar/PTSD, I would want to know what happens when they hit rock bottom to try to see if that behavior could put me and/or my future children in danger. A good friend of mine is a family attorney who had a client with a ex-wife who is bipolar. During her manic episodes, she had a habit of driving SUPER fast erratically b/c in her mind, she would think she's flying through rainbows. Well one day due to her not taking her med, her manic episode hit her when she was picking up her son from school. Long story short….led to a car accident where the son (I think he was around 8 or 9) ended up in the hospital with multiple broken bones, concussion etc….not to mention the mental trauma of being inside the car when the mother went nuts with her driving. And this is what led the husband to divorce her and gain full custody (she only gets supervised visitations now).
While many people live perfectly normal lives with mental illness….its not different than marrying someone with a physical disability. If the illness is known before marriage, one needs to carefully consider how the illness will effect the marriage/future kids etc. With serious illnesses like schizophernia and bipolar disorder, if the person chooses to go off meds for whatever reason…..depending on their symptoms, it can potentially danger the spouse or any children with them. For me personally, this is not a risk worth taking…it's not a life/marriage I would choose voluntarily.
Firstly, since i am a new member on Gupshup forum, I would like to thank everyone for thier kind comments so far and would like to wish them Eid Mubarak for today.
Coming Back to the thread:
Some posters are saying that a marriage could be considerable depending on an individual males situation.
However, but what about the aspirations that a female tends to nurture about her future marriage. A mentally ill person may not be able to fulfill her aspirations.
However, but what about the aspirations that a female tends to nurture about her future marriage. A mentally ill person may not be able to fulfill her aspirations.
I don't think anyone ever fulfills those aspirations completely. Prior to getting married, many people have rather idealistic and fanciful aspirations and expectations about married life which may not be entirely realistic. While marriage is not all monotony and drudgery, it definitely isn't all sugary romance as is implied by Hollywood and Bollywood either, so expectations will have to be adjusted anyway, regardless of who you marry.
As to how marrying a mentally ill person would impact married life, it depends on the following:
- What is the specific mental illness?
- Is the illness something acute and treatable or is it a chronic, lifelong condition?
- How severe is the illness? Is it relatively mild or does it prevent the person from functioning?
- Is the person receiving treatment? Are they following through with the treatment?
- Is the non-mentally ill spouse capable and willing to deal with any issues that may arise from the spouses mental illness? Do they know what they're getting into?
Schizophrenia is a definite no for me. I know a Indian girl (cousin of a good friend) who got married a guy through a semi-arranged situation. Both guy/girl born/raised in U.S. Met through family (parents knew each other back in India), dated for a few months and then got engaged/married. The girl is a neurologist and the guy surgeon. AFTER the wedding when she started living with him, within months, due to strange/erratic behavior, she finally discovered that he has schizophrenia. His family/him knew about this for years but hid it from everyone. Despite being a surgeon who was fully aware of all the risks/dangers etc. AND with "family support"….the guy was not consistent with his meds. A few weeks after their 1st wedding anniversary, the girl came home from work & found his dead body on their bed. He committed suicide.
Bipolor, PTSD, anxiety/depression etc…..these depend on how severe it is, whether the guy ever needed to be hospitalized due to not being consistent with his meds, can he keep a stable job etc. With bipolar/PTSD, I would want to know what happens when they hit rock bottom to try to see if that behavior could put me and/or my future children in danger. A good friend of mine is a family attorney who had a client with a ex-wife who is bipolar. During her manic episodes, she had a habit of driving SUPER fast erratically b/c in her mind, she would think she's flying through rainbows. Well one day due to her not taking her med, her manic episode hit her when she was picking up her son from school. Long story short….led to a car accident where the son (I think he was around 8 or 9) ended up in the hospital with multiple broken bones, concussion etc….not to mention the mental trauma of being inside the car when the mother went nuts with her driving. And this is what led the husband to divorce her and gain full custody (she only gets supervised visitations now).
While many people live perfectly normal lives with mental illness….its not different than marrying someone with a physical disability. If the illness is known before marriage, one needs to carefully consider how the illness will effect the marriage/future kids etc. With serious illnesses like schizophernia and bipolar disorder, if the person chooses to go off meds for whatever reason…..depending on their symptoms, it can potentially danger the spouse or any children with them. For me personally, this is not a risk worth taking…it's not a life/marriage I would choose voluntarily.
I agree with this. I had a friend who was very close to me who started acting very erratically all of a sudden. The drs couldn't figure out if she was bipolar/schizophrenic/etc but dealing with her behavior was frightening, hurtful (she would say really horrible things when she was feeling down or out of it) and emotionally exhausting/taxing. It got to the point where I couldn't emotionally handle dealing with her problems and her noncompliance; it was constantly worrying me. That was a friend; I think I couldn't handle it in a marriage. I have a lot of respect for people that do because I don't see myself being able to handle it. I've heard/seen cases of people hurting their loved ones because of whatever they were going through at the time. Depression would be emotionally exhuasting to deal with but that might be tolerable; I would be more concerned with what the person was capable of doing WHILE they were depressed. Are they compliant with medication? What are their lowest lows. I was always scared my friend was going to hurt me or herself when she had one of her episodes. It was one of the scariest things ever and I can't imaging feeling like that with my husband. It would be devastating.
I've seen many patients with Schizophrenia and Manic episodes of Bipolar patients during my days of rotations in the Psych ward and it's not something that most people can handle themselves. Most of these patients when going through a manic episode need to be restrained and most of the time they do have issues with taking medication on time and there is always a risk of suicide and threat to others. Schizophrenia also has closely related disorders which are equally disturbing to some. It's just that these are serious disorders that unfortunately only get worse with time. Most individuals who I've come across personally don't end up getting married, and these disorders also do run in families - so marrying someone with such a serious condition does run a very high likelihood that it will get passed to future generations.
These conditions would pose a serious risk to the partner because it can be very hard to predict when they lose control of their temper/frame of mind and they can be very dangerous. I don't think personally I could marry someone with these disorders and put my future kids at risk for living a life like this. I've seen it in families where people have tried to make it work and so far, I've seen really horrible things happen. Most end up committing suicide or passing it along to their kids or grandkids who show signs at an earlier age with much worse signs.