- by Joanna Baldwin

I cannot in good conscience remain silent. Just when you think people are listening and becoming more aware of the devastating effects of psychosis and severe mental illness; a rare, very rare occurrence happens and the world thoroughly disgusts you with totally uneducated responses.

Any parent of a person who experiences psychosis, hallucinations, voices, irrational thoughts and paranoia cringes with fear and genuine worry of being attacked when these things happen.

Imagine if you will a parent who's been struggling to find treatment that works and the heartbreak of not being able to find anything to stop mania episodes that lead to violent outbursts and inconsolable irrational thoughts.

Imagine this parent fighting to get proper treatments in a system that largely ignores family input. Even worse not being able to convince their ill son/daughter that they even have illness; knowing that the sufferer can not perceive their illness and knowing that person is on their own struggling in isolation, in silence and in fear.

Imagine if you will the people struggling with this day in day out, year after year. There are good days and there are bad days. And these families can tell you how terrifying the bad days can be when emergency departments release a person in crisis without admission or too soon after admission.

We know the reliance on stable families is so important as part of successful outcomes in the treatment of mental illness. But now imagine, two of those family members who were part of that stability network being ripped away in a tragic motor vehicle accident. One sibling dead, the other surviving family member in a coma for a year and a half.

The demands of the caregiver to the mentally ill person are now divided with the hospitalized person, all the while grieving a horrible loss. I can imagine the sudden loss of guidance and support of siblings to the person who was ill, the grieving, and depression, and how triggering that would be to a person prone to manic psychosis. All the while they are trying to prove how "fine" they are while undergoing this and trying not to relapse into hospital admissible episodes.

Add onto this a system that all to often turns away mentally ill people in crisis because of lack of beds or specialized health care professionals.

We families who struggle with mental illness don't have imagine how hard it is to cope and remain stable facing this devastating brain disease. We know the heartbreak of medication changes that don't yield effective treatment, the lack of safe housing for unemployable ill family members, the effects of unsuccessful self treatment options that lead to addictions and lack of support networks that really help. Too many family are battling this, left behind by the system that is supposed to be helping.

The story, the latest of the Toronto shooter who lost his battle with psychosis and did the unthinkable is heartbreaking and thoroughly disturbing to both people struggling with mental illness and the families of those who don't.

But the even more disturbing part is the so-called normal people who use tragedies like this to both target the living family with blame and to push political agenda and hate-driven opinions. Those that minimize the impact of mental illness and the validity of diagnosis. "He was quiet" they said, " he never showed signs of illness" neighbours said. "He must be a terrorist because of his national heritage and pretending" they are saying right now. These comments are an affront to any family struggling to help a child with severe psychosis related mental illness.

My condolences to this Toronto family for losing their child in such a horrific way when still reeling from the loss of their other children, and struggling with the surviving family member in a coma. While their son's reasoning for his act are still unknown, please don't blame the family for something none of them could control that is a known degenerative brain disease. Something that devastates many families worldwide.

Find some compassion in your hearts for the family. Push for adequate mental health supports. Don't further hate's agenda please.