RAZD writes:
It's not that simple.
Nothing ever is. Sorry to hear about your brother. My mom was a psychologist, she specialized in autistic chldren learning, but it made me aware of the precarious nature of the brain. She now (85) has early onset Alzheimers, mostly just memory loss at this point.
And I'm sorry to hear about your mother. I experienced a radical "loss of self" years ago due to an endocrine disease that profoundly changed my energy, intelligence, personality, physique; neither one's apprehension of the world nor of one's self has quite the same solidity after a few molecules' difference obliterates both.
I didn't seriously think that you failed to understand the complexity of the situation faced by the mentally ill and their families; I did want to make it an explicit part of the discussion.