When I was seven years old my mother was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and was hospitalized off and on for the next several years. Living with her illness profoundly affected my life as a child, and as an adult. I tried to research the effects of this experience on children when I entered college in the late 1960s, but found almost nothing in the literature. 

Although she was always emotionally aloof, my mother was very intelligent and creative, and had a good sense of humor when I was young. Schizophrenia claimed her life a few late years later, and, like a vice grip, it never let go. My mothers wildly fluctuating moods, bizarre behaviors, and inappropriate appearance were the constant focus in our middle class home. She refused to take her prescription medication, Thorzine, because she had decided that all the doctors in the world were in on “the plot” against her.   
When I was eight my older sister, my only sibling, married and left home.

When I was 10 my father left home after he was awakened in the middle of the night, as he later told me, by my mother standing over him with scissors pointed at his chest.
After that, I lived along with my mother and her active, non-medicated psychosis for the next five years. Each time she become ranting and raving and public about people around us being in on “the plot”, I, not knowing what else to do, would lead her out of the store, or off the street, or away from my school, and take her home, trying to soothe her, usually unsuccessful, as we walked. She was tortured by schizophrenia, and I, by proximity, was tortured by it also. At home I constantly monitored television and radio programs for topics that might set her off, but I had, at best, only a minuscule amount of control over her moods or internal voices.  My father took her to court several times during those years to gain custody of me, but my mother could hold it together long enough to convince the judge that she was competent to care for me.

Relief came for us at the end of those five years when she admitted herself into the State hospital in Iowa. I went to live with my father in Atlanta, and my mother remained hospitalized for eight years. After many years of healing work, I have worked my way through most of the profound emotional shock and grief of having lived with her illness but still gravel with the residual effects of that experience, particularly in times of stress.

In the early 1980s I begin studying to become a psychotherapist. 15 years after my initial research into the experience of growing up with a parent with severe mental illness, I try again, and again I found almost nothing.
I read with great interest the literature about children of parents with alcoholism. I assume that literature on other psychologically disturbed parents would be forthcoming, but it was not.

I did, however, talk with many people over the years who had Also grown up with a parent with schizophrenia, including social acquaintances and my Psychotherapy clients. I also organize and facilitated a Support group for adult children of mentally ill mothers, which was well attended. I eventually decided to use this topic for my own dissertation research in Saybrook institute PhD in psychology program, which I completed in 1994. In 1996 I meant doors Parker Roberts, who had done research on a similar topic. We collaborated our labors, and the result is the book “growing up with a schizophrenic mother”.

 My contribution to the book Springs from several sources: first, the support group just mentioned; second, my PhD dissertation research; third, former clients and acquaintances over the years who had mothers with schizophrenia; and forth, my own personal experiences with my mother.

Margaret J. Brown is the author of, and daughter behind, the book Growing Up With a Schizophrenic Mother.  She consults with Daughters to Daughters, and is grateful that her book is a part of this project.  "My book is the book I always wanted to read on the subject of adult children of schizophrenic mothers.  It didn't exist, so I wrote it.  I hope it will continue to serve as a resource in the growing body of knowledge about this population."  Margaret is semi-retired and living in Atlanta.