A lot of the stigma surrounding mental illness, particularly paranoid schizophrenia, is founded on a reaction of fear when someone either learns you are a mental health consumer or sees you behaving abnormally when you are in crisis.
Many people ignore or are unaware of how terrifying the symptoms of a severe mental illness or brain disorder can be. The distress others fear needs to be met with kindness and practical actions.
Focussing on paranoid schizophrenia, during a psychotic break, the mental health consumer loses touch with reality and cannot reconcile what their senses perceive and what is going on in their mind. This conundrum is frightening. They may then try to match their sensory data to a new reality that makes sense of the data to them but doesn’t correspond to objective reality. The characters Jodie and her daughter Sarah both experience this scary process.
If the mental health consumer is living a paranoid episode, they are often convinced the world is conspiring against them, working towards eliminating them entirely. This feeling is terrifying.
If the mental health consumer has to cope as well with others being afraid of them, this only amplifies the terror they are already experiencing. Most mental health consumers, even in crisis, are entirely harmless, and being kind to them will have better results than appealing to law enforcement to lock them up and lawyers to issue a restraining order.
Unless there is an honest, direct threat to you, please meet someone in a mental health crisis with kindness. Try to be practical. For example, help them contact their local NAMI (National Alliance On Mental Illness) group. Try to keep them calm while you help locate their family or someone who knows them well. Above all, don’t meet their distress with a fearful rejection when you have no solid and proven foundation for your fears.