I don't normally post links to news items, but this article just needed to be commented on. It is about a mother who was a fulltime caregiver for her autistic son, and how she begged and pleaded with every branch of the government for some support or help of any form and was denied.

As someone who has been through a similar experience, being a fulltime unpaid caregiver for two or three mentally ill patients for seventeen years now, I can really empathize with her. I had hospital staff ordering me to drop out of school to look after my parents, and not one of them caring about what they were dumping on me. I had staff promise to provide a carehome for my father "no later than April (1999)"  and then eight years later tell me that he was still on the waitlist and that I just needed to be patient. We applied for home support repeatedly, and it just never happened. There were promises to get my developmentally disabled brother the care and treatment he requires, but the hospital never followed through on it. There was an incident where my father told hospital staff that he had a handgun and planned to shoot my mother and I, and they still didn't lock him up. 

After sharing my own nightmares of the last seventeen years online, I have met so many other people who have similar horror stories. It seems like the hospital managers are cutting costs by using involuntary labour from family members in lieu of trained professionals. And it is destroying lives.

It is long past time for governments to start recognizing the horrible nightmares of being a caregiver and get serious about providing real support!