A 30 year old married woman came to me for therapy and advice. Betty (not her real name) thought her mother's behavior was bizarre. After a few sessions of psychotherapy, Betty's mother was admitted to a psychiatric hospital with a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia.

As a working mother of a 20 month old child, Betty was scared that she, too, was either paranoid schizophrenic or harmed in some way by her mother's mental illness.

The goal of therapy was to help Betty understand how her mother's mental illness may have affected her own thoughts and feelings. A second goal was to ease her concerns about her own mental status. Betty was remarkably confused, but not schizophrenic.

I provided Betty with information about schizophrenic symptoms, age of onset, the nature of a thought disorder and the problems that families of schizophrenics can develop.

I told Betty a "Success Story Of A Previous Client."

"I had a client a few years ago. Unlike you, he was a man. I'll call him Joe, although that's not his real name. Joe's mother had what was believed to be paranoid schizophrenia, but also had manic-depressive features. (Betty's mother had manic features.) Joe told me a story that may be of interest to you.

"The story Joe related was that his mother once asked him to vacuum the living room carpet. Joe did the job and when he had finished, she looked down at the carpet and said, 'You didn't vacuum the carpet!' Joe argued that he had done the job, but mother insisted that he hadn't. She pointed to two specks of lint on the carpet, barely perceivable to the average person. (I pointed to a similar speck of lint on the carpet.)

"Joe's mother said, 'If you had vacuumed, those spots of lint wouldn't be there.' Joe argued that he had simply missed those spots or that the vacuum wasn't capable of getting them.

" 'No,' said mother. 'You didn't vacuum.'

"Now this example of denial and countless other episodes like itgrowing up with a mentally ill person can be a terrible thingmade Joe confused as to what was real and what was not real. Some of the things his mother said were strange and he knew something was wrong.

"But mentally ill or not, she was still his mother and the supreme authority. Her perceptions conflicted with his. Joe was angry, sad and confused. He wasn't sure if he had vacuumed or not.

"As I worked with Joe over a period of many months, he stopped taking the medication that his family doctor had prescribed. He still had some problems, mostly with anger and sadness. But through our work together, he became more trusting of his perceptions, and his judgment improved. He learned to talk more openly about his feelings and he got a promotion at work.

"Joe learned that much of his confusion was derived from trying to reconcile his own perceptions with the denial of his perceptions by his schizophrenic mother. And most important, he learned that he was neither stupid nor crazy."

The effects Joe's mother had on him paralleled the effects Betty's mother had on her. The message of the story is clear. Growing up with a schizophrenic mother can make a person confused about what is real. It can make them depressed, angry and sad. Betty and Joe didn't have thought disorders, they had mood disorders. The story I told to Betty clarified the distinction and began her process of healing.