Thanks to Bruce for finding this one.

A short essay published in Globe and Mail Life Section by Anne Aspler

Anne Aspler talks of her own experience growing up with a mother living with a diagnosis of schizoprenia –

She tells of the hidden stresses, fears,  the pressures placed on a family and its heavy weight placed on human lives by our undertsanding of the condition as scary, permanent, life limiting – of  heritability statistics and deeply implied meanings about what kind of life to expect.

Then how working as a doctor in psych department at St Michael’s hospital realised how so much of what we label “mental illness” is merely difficult behaviour that we either don’t understand or don’t want to deal with ; how we judge that behaviour to be one side or the other of a line -normal/not normal; and that it is we who have chosen where to draw that line .

And she tells of how she struggles with that as a human being.

She also tells of the kindness she and her mother recieved from professionals they encountered and how she is thankful for what she has learned from being challenged by her experience.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health/health-facts-and-arguments/blessings-from-schizophrenia-believe-me-they-exist/article2283789/

Related articles

• A Doctor Who’s Thankful for Mom with Schizophrenia (psychcentral.com)