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I had a friend who was a big strapping handsome guy, raised in a conservative family attending church as he grew up. He joined the military at eighteen which unfortunately was about the time his mental illness started to take hold. He ended up being thrown out of the military, eventually became homeless except when his actions would get him arrested and committed. His family became afraid of him and would not let him live with them. I would see him on occasion when the State would release him back to wander the streets getting beaten up and crazier by the year. My father threatened to shoot him if he came around again after he broke into our house. I lost track of him after that, but I believe he ended up dead. My point in this is that it is a tragedy when a son or daughter becomes mentally ill. It can be a curse to try and save them and a curse to walk away, at least the mother and father were cursed by their love.

“I had a friend who was a big strapping handsome guy, raised in a conservative family attending church as he grew up. He joined the military at eighteen which unfortunately was about the time his mental illness started to take hold.”

Schizophrenia usually strikes in the late teens, and early 20’s, so this guy fits the mold. My cousin’s husband was a paranoid schizophrenic, and ended up gassing himself while sitting in a turned-on car in my aunt’s garage while they were on vacation, killing himself. It was very sad. When lucid, he was a really nice guy, but the older he got (he made it into his early 40’s) the more his paranoia manifested itself. I was talking to him at a family reunion pig roast at another relative’s horse farm, as he had come over and sat next to me with things on his mind. What was on his mind was that everyone was out to get him in one way or the other, and he was very concerned about it.

That was a pure example of his paranoia, and I tried to reassure him that it wasn’t true, but of course, it didn’t make any real difference, although I did manage to calm him. It wasn’t much longer after that reunion party that he ended up offing himself. Couldn’t fight his demons anymore. I hope someday they can either find a cure for schizophrenia, or find meds that will truly modify the disease so that it is merely a maintenance issue, but that day is not yet.

“He joined the military at eighteen which unfortunately was about the time his mental illness started to take hold”

That sounds about right. The average age for onset of schizophrenia in males is 18. A bit later for women. An insidious disease that takes away any promising future the victim might have had.