My mom is the kindest sweetest person you ever met. She is deeply religous, gentle and does not curse. She is also bi-polar (manic depressive). Her father and two brothers are as well.
Over the years I have seen her battle with her illness and go through many hospitalizations. I have seen her in conditions where she didn't know who I was. At age 78 I have saw her attack a 250lb psyche orderly for no reason. 3 of my sisters also suffer from this disease and I have seen them make decisions and endure suffering as a result thereof that no rational person would accept.
It took me a while but I finally reached two conclusions:
They are not to blame for their illness
They would not make the choices they make but for their illness.
I have a good friend who was medical director for a major psyche facility. One day over lunch I fessed up about my family history and sought his help when my mom was in the grips of a really bad bout of depression. He looked around the restaurant and asked me how many people I thought were there. I estimated 30. He said, statistically 8 of these people suffer from some form of mental illness. He then added if we had 100 people in here, statistically there would be 1 true psychotic. Needless to say. I was shocked. His insight was that as a society we haven't come very far with the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness. Most health plans limit benefits and there is not a compartively large body of research being done over this pervasive illness. Further, these people are still socially demonized for their illness. We don't blame people for having cancer or epilepsy but we still attach some stigma of blame to mental illnesses.
The brain is an incredibly complex organ and medical reserach has a long way to go to help these people. Thankfully, my mom doesn't often remember what happend or what she has done.
All this to say it is a truly sad situation. Given my experience I don't know easy it is to come to a conclusion beyond that.
