I wrote a clinical case study previously (see here) and demonstrated under certain conditions it’s not always possible to gain the consent of treatment from the patients yet the family has some other options to help the patient if they want to.

Few days ago I spoke to a husband who all the while has been putting medicine in drinks for his schizophrenic wife. He has been cooking soup, buying Chatime, fresh milk etc at night, just to let his wife who thinks she’s well to take the medicine. (I wonder if married women who are reading this will become suspicious of whether their husbands are putting medicine in their supper drinks?!)

Recently the patient started to refuse to take supper at night. She got angry and asked husband not to let her eat anything at night. She goes out with friends till late night. Once she gets home she just wants to go straight to bed. She said those drinks are making her fat (she’s mostly right).

So husband started to fail giving her med and she started to demonstrate poor sleep, agitation, paranoia…

The husband said he’s really been suffering doing this (putting med in his wife’s drink/food). He said one day when he was dining out with the wife, while the wife was away to the washroom, he poured the liquid medicine into her drink, and guess what? Somebody saw it!! He was very embarrassed as if he was doing something illegal, wrong and sinful (imagine what the public would think about having seen that?).

It’s good to have consent to treatment from the adult patients, much easier for the clinicians and family members for sure, but when the patients think they are fine and completely healthy psychologically, guess it’s the family then, that have to suffer.