When Mental Illness Come Knocking At Your Door

Calling people crazy in my family is like saying pass the peas please. It is an epithet used to describe a drunken uncle, the auntie with a bad attitude and the cousin who has to smoke a blunt before family event. We call each other crazy so much that it has lost its meaning. However we have two people in our family that suffer from real mental illnesses and we choose to remain silent and call them crazy under our breath. One of my Aunts has suffered from severe paranoia since I was a little kid. I would ask my Mama why Auntie La always says people are out to get the family and insist that we never talk about her or our family to anyone because it could be harm to all of us. My Mama would take a deep puff off her Kool 100’s and say ……girl you know your Auntie elevator don’t go all the way to top, don’t pay her no attention.

For years my family ignored that my Aunt and her extreme paranoia … almost dismissing it like it was a simple cold. But, we all now just because you ignore a problem it does not go away, in many cases the problem manifest itself into another problem, which is exactly what has happened in my family. One day Auntie La daughter (my cousin) Kaye showed up to my house looking frighten to death. She had been driving for two days straight from Arizona to Missouri she was convinced someone was after her and she was scared to death. After she calmed down enough to get a good sleep I asked her to tell me what happened. She told me she lost her job and suffered many indignities because certain people were trying to destroy her and her reputation. Kaye insisted that I watch what I talk about on the telephone and be careful when I am alone because these people would probably be tapping her family member’s phones and following us around. Honestly I just laughed it off and told her she could stay as long as she needed to.

As she began to tell other family members the story she told me they laughed as well and thought nothing more about it. Well that was over six years ago and cousin Kaye is now suffering from what we believe is schizophrenia and bipolar disorders. My cousin has lost over 10 jobs, 4 apartments, 3 cars, her dignity and pride. She hears voices, feels like needles are sticking her all over her body and feels tormented all day and night. Most of my family has accepted the fact that my cousin needs psychiatric help but others still refuse to believe that she is on the verge of a mental break down. I spoke with Aunt La to ask her to help me get her daughter some help; she told me “ain’t nothing wrong with Kaye, she my daughter I should know.” Given the fact that she suffers from paranoia it is very unlikely that she would see that her daughter has a mental illness. My cousin is living with me again because she lost her apartment and job and the other night she slept with a pot on her head to keep the needles from sticking her in the head. She cries a lot because she hears voices that demean her and tell her that her life will never get better, she told me she feels like the voices want her to commit suicide but she won’t do it.


I spoke with my Uncle and he started to get an injunction to have her committed. Her mother and my other aunts went into a raged filled fit and threaten to get an attorney to block him from having her committed. It really pitted family against family, but I watch my cousin suffer daily from this illness. She doesn’t want to stay with her mother for reasons I do not know, she says she only feel halfway calm with me. But I don’t know what do? I am going to try one last effort to get my cousin to help but I feel like I am running out of options. I don’t want my cousin to hurt herself or anyone else.

My question is why do black people seem to deny metal illness? Why do we look at these sort of things as