My husband had some manner of psychotic break about three weeks ago. He had one in college, decades ago, after his dad died suddenly and he went on an alcoholic binge. He was committed for a couple of weeks and diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Did not like Thorazine and had not had a psychotic break since.

But, what he presents as his major issue is alcoholism - and we have been through so much because of it. He stopped a year ago. After his recent psychotic break, I wonder if the alcohol has been self-treatment for his mental illness.

Anyway, he blames me because he was involuntarily committed after his psychotic break. I did everything I knew how to do to be supportive to him, yet every once in a while he will complain and I feel this distance between us that’s foreign and painful. I wonder if it’s the risperdal he is on, since we are rarely intimate anymore, and he used to want to make love a few times a week (we have only been married a year).

He is angry, saying that I should have taken him to a better ER when he first had stroke-like symptoms (I went to the closest, where urgent care had called ahead so they would take him right away) and he thinks there was probably a better mental health facility he should have been able to go to when he was committed, since everyone in his ward was low-income or homeless. Meanwhile, although he was treated well, he cannot help but believe that if I had done things differently, he’d been better off.

Maybe he’s right. It’s just that I am so exhausted and traumatized from witnessing his mental decline and I hurt when he says things like that. I’m powerless over his mental health. And I am raw and I want to just blow up when those words slip from his mouth. But, it didn’t end well the couple of times I pushed back angrily. Most recently, I just apologized for not doing enough, to which he responded amicably.

He lost his job last Spring under traumatic circumstances, never addressed it therapeutically, and then found out his former employer was blackballing him. After not sleeping for three days, he finally reached out to his psychiatrist, who gave him Xanax, and briefly spoke to a talk therapist who shut down the session suddenly when she realized insurance wouldn’t cover it. He was further triggered to process these raw emotions, but without therapeutic support, by well-meaning friends with opinions.

He kept going downhill. Talking to himself turned into religious revelations and then an inability to hold conversations. We both worried he was having a stroke and went to urgent care, which sent us to the ER. The hospital ran a number of tests and a MRI, over the two days, and said nothing was wrong medically.

A social worker examined him and told me he should probably be committed. He refused, plus he was able to hold conversations again and was calm. She said she would recommend outpatient treatment on his discharge form. She didn’t, but I took him home planning to take him into outpatient treatment the next day.

He was talkative, but calm until the middle of the night: he got up as I was sleeping, hallucinating, scribbling things, making wild social media posts and cackling. A friend saw them, called, and woke me up. My husband heard me talking to her about calling 911; in a moment of clarity, he dialed it himself and handed me his phone. He sat down on the porch, waiting quietly for the police to come.

The officer who dispatch had called phoned me and suggested that I take my husband directly to a treatment center myself, to avoid embarrassing him in front of the neighbors. As I called around trying to find one, my husband grew increasing volatile and I made him come inside. He started running around the house, shouting religious revelations and hallucinating. I called 911 again. A whole contingent of officers and paramedics came. My husband was beside himself screaming at them.

I had since heard that another local hospital might have better mental health services than the previous one, but the paramedics insisted upon going to a closer one. My husband said later that I should have pushed harder. He even said his ex-wife would have been more aggressive. I got angry when he said that and he said he didn’t mean it.

We found out later that none of the local hospitals have psych wards. They’re too overwhelmed with physical trauma cases. Patients wait in the ER until a social worker comes and makes an assessment in order to get any treatment, and it would be at one of the local mental health treatment facilities.

My husband had to lay on a stretcher for almost 24 hours, waiting for an assessment. He escalated so bad, before the antipsychotic kicked in, that he was getting up repeatedly. Eventually, he hit an officer who was trying to get him to calm down and they strapped him down. The social worker finally showed up and began making arrangements to go to court to involuntarily commit him. I tried to see where he’d be, etc. but the location was out of my hands.

Finally, the next morning, he was almost his normal self, due to the drugs. It felt like a miracle. But, he was committed anyways, stayed for 72 hours. Whenever we talked on the phone, he pretended to be the model husband who could not wait to see me but, instead, the person who got in our car at discharge was screaming at me for putting him there, blaming me for sharing too much with his daughter (a nurse), and otherwise being hostile.

The more he hears the story, the less he blames me. And, over the past few weeks maybe the meds are helping him to be more calm. But, I don’t feel his love as I did before. I don’t know what is chemical and what is resentment. I fear that we’ll never return to the passion we had for each other, that he’ll never look at me with the same level of love and care again. I will always be the wife who betrayed him, possibly. And, as late as yesterday, he was blaming me for the ER where he ended up. I cannot see the light at the end of the tunnel.