Dating Someone with Schizoaffective Disorder
Hi, all. There doesn't appear to be a section for advice about friends/family of those with mental disorders so I thought I'd start here.
My boyfriend was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder in the last year and has been hospitalized twice in the past 6 months over this. He is working on getting medicated properly, but it's been a lot of trial and error thus far.
Every few months he suffers a bad "episode" and has auditory hallucinations and extreme paranoia. The voices tell him to harm himself and he acted on it prior to his last hospital stay. Thankfully I came home in time and was able to stop him.
Since the last stint in the hospital he's seemed fantastic, but last night had an episode that really concerned me because he was ready to go to the hospital again. He has only been at his current job for 5 months and already had one week-long hospital stay. My concern is that if he deals with every episode by going to the hospital that he's going to lose his job. This would be detrimental to both of us because we live together.
The episodes do pass after several hours so I didn't want him to go to the hospital and end up stuck there for another five days which would seriously risk his job. He got mad at me and said I cared more about his job than I did for his well being, which is not true. I was there to watch him and make sure he didn't do anything to himself so I figured it would be okay if we didn't go.
The reason I am posting is because I really don't know what the correct way to deal with this is. When he's having an episode there isn't anything I can do to make it stop. When things are getting bad and he says he wants to go to the hospital do I do it? He's not in his right mind during the episodes so I question if he really knows what is best for him.
It's scary and I'm at a loss. I do my best to be there for him if he wants to talk about what's going on during the episode. When he's having one I am sure to be with him at ALL times just in case he does decide to act on what the voices tell him. Otherwise...what can I do? I just don't know.
Thanksfully, he managed to get to sleep last night and was perfectly fine. The episode passed and he was thankful that I didn't listen to him about going to the hospital. This is all very confusing and new to me...