When this man got really depressed with suicidal thoughts, the sister took him in to live with her family in her living room, looking after him, bringing him for treatment, and giving him all kind of support and warmth.

The sister has a son and a daughter. Initially they are all very helpful towards this uncle, especially the daughter, buying him everything he had asked for, and bringing him around for tours.

Over the past few months the man has got much better, and maintained well with medication. He has some savings from his past business work and EPF. The sister has been planning to send him back to hometown where their eldest sister has a house for him to stay in and spend his life. Afterall it’s not so convenient to stay in her house’s living room with her husband and children.

However, the patient used all kind of excuses to delay the date to go back to hometown. He doesn’t want to go back.

One day, the sister saw some receipts falling out from the patient’s trousers. She went through them, and saw that the patient has been travelling to casino, almost every day, and those were the receipts of him changing gambling chips with cash, some RM500-RM1,000 which made up a total of over 10,000 ringgits worth of money spent in the casino in just the past 2 weeks. It appears that the patient has been going to gamble once he has got better with treatment and medication.

She knows her brother has a long history of gambling before he got depressed. But she didn’t know the brother has been doing that behind her back recently, while lying to her saying that he was following his friends to do sales in different states. She was disappointed and felt betrayed, with all those supports she and the family have provided him with, this is what he has brought himself back to.

Just when the sister was thinking to confront the patient, she came to know from her nephew that the patient was keeping a knife with him.

She surely doesn’t want anyone in the family to be hurt, but she is then stuck in the dilemma of how to persuade the brother to go back to hometown without confronting him. She doesn’t regret to have offered help and provided a place for her brother, because she believes that’s how family should be like, but now, she doesn’t know what to do…

Sometimes we see a lot of family who give up on those mentally ill patients (especially longstanding ones), and because we weren’t them, we couldn’t speak for them, we also couldn’t call them selfish. However, when we have those supportive and caring family members, it doesn’t mean they can then wish for reciprocal favour.

What would you do if it were you?