Money and Mental Illness: The Effect of Finances on Family Mental Health (Ep. 38)

We talk a lot about the emotional stress and shock of caring for someone with SMI, but what about the financial shock? Is debt an issue? How does your loved one handle money? How do you get services? Do the wealthy have better support? Do families have to go broke to have support, and what is the additional emotional effect of money on the family mental health?

Savannah Price, in the UK, is doing research on this - and today we turn the tables and let her interview us. 

Savannah is building a company to improve the mental and financial resilience of young people with mental health problems by targeting the vicious cycle between money management and poor mental health.

We talk about:

• financial shocks
•  the vicious cycle between poor mental health and dysregulated spending
•  financial literacy
• Family responsibility
• And look at another, international, health system of “care”

About Savannah:

Savannah is originally from South Africa, but moved to the UK for university. She started her career as a geologist before launching an Equestrian competition and sales business in Ireland. She most recently completed her MBA at the University of Oxford and is starting a company in Mental Health.

She has a strong history of mental illness and disability in her family - she has a sister with schizophrenia, another with bipolar and her youngest sister has autism with significant learning disabilities.

Given her lived experience, she is currently doing research into how money and mental health are interrelated, and how having serious mental health problems impacts families financially and emotionally.

Not only do many mental health problems result in financial strain for young people and their families, but ultimately the breakdown of supporting relationships over time. 

To address these problems, we are working to develop personal “relapse signatures” for young people who suffer from dysregulated financial behaviours due to mental health problems such as personality disorders, bipolar, psychosis, depression, anxiety, gambling, substance use disorders and ADHD. 

We do this by overlaying spending patterns with other data you can get from a mobile phone, to track symptoms of poor mental health. 

This then allows us to tailor products and services according to their goals/needs, and improve wellbeing, both financial and otherwise. 

What it can also do, is give their loved ones insight into our users' mental and financial state in real-time, to flag risk and possibly intervene before there is a crisis - all the while advocating for agency and empowerment. Our mission is to blaze the trail for preventative healthcare through behavioural finance.

If anyone wants to learn more or to get involved with the research and product design - they are more than welcome to reach me on sav@price.mba, or my LinkedIn.

Want us to cover a topic? Facebook page @Schizophrenia3Moms

Randye Kaye -Broadcaster, Actress, Voice Talent, Speaker, and Author (“Ben Behind his Voices”, Happier Made Simple)

Miriam Feldman – Artist, Mom, Author “He Came in With It”

Mindy Greiling – member of the Minnesota House of Representatives for twenty years. Activist, Legislator, Author (“Fix What You Can“)

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome to our podcast, Schizophrenia. Three moms in the trenches. From the place where schizophrenia and real life collide. East Coast, West Coast, Middle America. With Miriam Feldman, Mindy Gryling, and Randy Kaye. Welcome to episode 38. I'm very excited. We're gonna flip the tables around or turn the tables around a little bit today. And we're going to be interviewed by a lovely young woman named Savannah, who how did we meet Savannah on LinkedIn? How did we meet?

SPEAKER_00 0:33

It was LinkedIn. I reached out.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

You did. Okay. And then we had a wonderful conversation over Zoom. And Savannah is doing well, well, wait till you hear. She's doing so much, but I'm so excited to have you are in the UK, correct?

SPEAKER_00 0:50

I'm in the UK.

SPEAKER_01 0:52

So it's evening there, and it's morning from Mimi, and it's kind of medium from Indy. And I'm uh at the end of my lunch hour. So we're gonna get an international flavor here today. Today's topic is something that we have touched on this in past episodes, but we haven't spoken at length about the connection between mental illness treatment, mental health, and money. Things like, you know, we talk about the emotional stress of caring for someone with serious mental illness, but we haven't talked about the financial stress and the financial shock, you know, debt. How does your loved one handle or not handle money? How do you get services? Do wealthy people get better support? I know families who have to go broke before they can get support. And this is true in America. And I don't know what's going on in the UK with that. So I was so excited to talk to Savannah, who additionally will bring us the perspective of the daughter of someone with a serious mental illness and the sibling of people who are as well. So I let's get going. Savannah, welcome. I want to introduce you to Miriam Feldman, Mimi over there. Say hi.

SPEAKER_03 2:05

Hi, pleasure to meet you.

SPEAKER_01 2:08

And Mindy. Hi, Savannah.

SPEAKER_02 2:11

Welcome.

SPEAKER_00 2:12

Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 2:13

So let's just start. Tell us a little bit about your story. I mean, I have a bio here. I know you're from South Africa. You moved to the UK for university. You started a career as a geologist. And I'm going to share this because I want to hear your mental health issues. So, an equestrian competition, sales business. You just completed your MBA at Oxford, starting a company in mental health. So that's amazing stuff. Tell us about your lived experience and why you reached out to me and what you'd like to do today.

SPEAKER_00 2:46

Yeah, great. Thank you so much. That was a great intro. Um, so in terms of my background, as you said, it's actually a stepmother who has mental um mental health problems. She's bipolar. And my three of my three eldest stepsisters, um, or my half-sisters, one has schizophrenia, um, and another has bipolar. And my younger sister, who's a full sister, she's severely autistic with a whole host of learning disabilities. Um, what's quite interesting about how I grew up is my eldest siblings are a lot older than me. So the youngest, the smallest age gap is 18 years. So I was born into a time where a lot of these mental health issues um were showing up. So their first presentation, which meant for quite a chaotic upbringing. And my youngest sister is five years younger than me. So just as I was sort of finding my feet, um I had a sister who I was expecting and who my parents were expecting to be my partner in crime. Um, and it never really worked out. But I guess there's been a long time of my life trying to distance myself from my family. And in the last couple of years, it's really hit home to me that I don't want the distance and I've reconnected. I think my geology career and my um leaving South Africa to go to the UK was very much about trying to find my feet as an independent person from my family. And now I'm just trying to find my way back. And that way back really is around, you know, starting this company in mental health and doing as much research as I possibly can around the impacts of mental health on family finance and how relationships break down over time. So that's that's a bit about me and what I'm doing.

SPEAKER_01 4:35

Wow, there's there's so much there. So, what would you like to know from us? We're open books and we've written books, but we're also open books.

SPEAKER_00 4:45

I guess um, just to start off with is you know, just knowing from the three of you how having a son with a severe mental illness has impacted you and your family financially as a starting point. Just yeah, in terms of financial shocks, in terms of debt, in terms of you know different financial behaviors and you know how how that has impacted not only you know money in the bank, but how it's impacted your relationships.

SPEAKER_02 5:11

Well, for me, um, you know, I grew up in a very modest family. My father did uh manual labor. He was not a union member, so he didn't get paid all that well for that. My mother went to work when I was in fifth grade when he um temporarily was out of work. So I think of the family I grew up in as really being stretched if we were dealing with my son Jim back then. Um, I am in a better situation um with our family and my husband and some inheritances and so forth. So I feel fortunate to be able to um deal with things like nowhere else will take him. So we bought him a condo, but then uh that didn't work out. He got into crisis. So we finally had to sell it after paying rent on it for a while without him in it, and uh lost $20,000 in the deal, you know. So for us, we absorb that. And but you know, my family back when I was growing up couldn't have done that. So it's a serious thing to have a person with serious mental illness.

SPEAKER_00 6:23

Yeah. Thank you. Does anybody else want to?

SPEAKER_03 6:28

Yeah, you know, for me, I I'm uh an artist, and so and so is my husband. So our finances have never been um conventional. And I I had my own business, and um, so it's always been sort of catch as catch can. We were able to get my son into the system on disability quite early because I luckily got some very good advice from somebody. So we were always had the medication and those things covered, which can be a big deal. But um, I know that we're the exception to the rule. You know, it hasn't impacted us greatly financially. It certainly cost us tens of thousands of dollars over the years, if not hundreds, but it, you know, it hasn't impacted us in that way. The only thing the one important moment for me was there was a point where I started looking at and finding really wonderful places to put Nick, that I know now if I'd been able to do that early on, he would have had a different trajectory. There would have been a different outcome in terms of his illness for sure. And those places were so unattainable financially, you know, things that would be, you know, even if I sold my house and used all that money, it would only keep him in for a few months anyway. So there, you know, so there was a it was Sophie's choice. It was the rest of my family and my other children or Nick with no guarantees. And I think having to make those kind of choices is just wrong. You know, there need to be good facilities that they can go to that are available to a normal person, not just really the ultra-rich.

SPEAKER_00 8:15

Yeah, I think I actually quite identify with that in terms of I think there's a lot of similarities between South Africa, the South African healthcare system and the US healthcare system, in terms of, you know, everything that we pay, it has to be out of pocket and very little is subsidized by the state. And in terms of my background, I think I come from, you know, quite a I'm quite lucky in the sense that we as a family were able to absorb a lot of the financial shocks in terms of, you know, institution, one or two members at given points in time affording housing. Um, I think what's quite interesting to me is as much as it is around like the systems and how you provide systems of support, I think there's something else in money which is so linked on a more personal level with it, finance isn't just finance. Finance is a measure of self-worth, it's a measure of independence, it's a measure of freedom. And what I've always found quite interesting, at least from my personal experience, is how money is a means of control in a way, and it becomes like this mechanism that can be turned on and off as and when the person who's wielding the power can do it. And I've found, I'll give a more tangible example in a minute, but I found this incredibly stressful, not from a financial standpoint, but just from an emotional standpoint. So to kind of give an illustration of that, most recently, um, my sister with bipolar, who also has a host of, well, she's got a gambling addiction and a substance use disorder. And she's sort of been in and out of facilities. Um, if she's staying on her meds, she's kind of on an even keel. But I think, you know, we all know how negative the side effects of medication are. So she's frequently coming off it. And she went through a six-month stint in rehab um early last year and came out of it. And honestly, it was like the best I have ever like seen her. Um, usually I can sort of tell by how her voice, like her vocal patterns, how she's speaking to me on the phone. I kind of have a pretty good sense of where on the levels of extreme she is. And she got her job back, was doing great. And I got a phone call from my dad, um, who, after multiple kind of manic episodes and depressive episodes, he's now controlling her finances. So she's got a card linked to his. And he said to me, you know, Savannah, how how do you think she's doing? Um, I was like, wow, I actually think in the last 10 years, this is probably the best I've ever heard her. I think she's doing great. And he was like, Well, I think we're about to hit a crisis because I've picked up some really erratic patterns in her spending. And I was like, I really don't think you're right. Um, I usually can tell and I trust my gut on this. Um, but needless to say, in 10 days' time, she probably hits the worst rock bottom that I've ever experienced her hitting. Um, so I'm curious in terms of moving away from the family and moving much more into individual behaviors of your sons and kind of the financial behaviors that are linked with mental illness. Is there anything or any patterns that you've picked up there?

SPEAKER_01 11:22

Yes, I can. And let me just uh give a brief background so you know our financial situation. So I raised my children mostly as a single parent because their birth father, who was British, he abandoned the family. He had alcoholism and he abandoned the family when they were like three and six. So my son was six at the time. And so, needless to say, there was no child support. And so I was living paycheck to paycheck, and I'm really learning a lot about money right now, and you know, have having the courage to kind of manifest it into my life because my whole life has been like, how can I make do with what I get at goodwill? And you know, so it self-esteem is very much tied into money, and it can be tied into how creative you are when you don't have money. Like there's a certain pride to doing it yourself and so on. So money is a very loaded issue. I will say for me that uh the problems were when my son was on my private insurance, what happened when at the time he had 35 days in a psychiatric hospital and he had run out of days and they would no longer accept him because private insurance wouldn't pay any more than that. That I think has changed to an extent. And here in America, we have Medicare if you have Social Security and if you have disabilities. So it's kind of like national health, but only for a select few, and then there's private, and it gets very complicated. What we have often said at our local uh NAMI chapter in Connecticut is you don't get home, you don't get help till you go broke. And so because we could afford to get a private psychiatrist for a while, we couldn't get him a state psychiatrist. And it wasn't until his fifth hospitalization when we had run out of days, we had run out of charity, because I went to the nuns for charity at some hospital to pay a weekend stay. And that's when suddenly he it kicked into state care, and state care was not the same quality. So money-wise, those were our issues. In terms of my son, there's a concept called frozen in time, which is that when they started getting ill, emotionally, that's kind of where they are. And I do believe that the more time you are in recovery, the more you can rewire your brain and grow up a little bit. But my son's financial decisions have been very adolescent. And I can tell he's doing better when he asks me for advice and follows it. He's currently on a fixed income on social security disability, and he's actually budgeting his money. That is a rare thing. Uh, if he were on the other hand, when the he lived with us for nine years before he went back in the hospital during COVID, and he had worked his way up to full-time employment, got off Social Security and uh couldn't keep money in his pocket, could not keep money in his bank account, even stable on medication. He leased Alexis, he uh maxed, he did just enough to be like a lot of other not very sensibly minded young people in America, maxed out the credit card. He met his bills, but he did not make smart financial decisions. And I think part of that is the illness. So I think a sign of impending cycling down is when the finances fall apart. Right now, stable on medication, he is managing his money well.

SPEAKER_02 15:22

So that's when you have to go through a legal process to get somebody else to manage the money. And for a while, my husband did it, and that just entailed lots of arguments. And I tried to work with Jim before he had the payee, and that entailed lots of arguments. So we just put it over to somebody who could um, you know, hang up the phone if he got belligerent about money that he didn't have that he wanted. Um, but the reason it came to a head was a very shocking thing and emotionally very shocking to us as well. And that was he um had a credit card left over from college, so it had a really high debt limit. They didn't regulate credit cards back in his day in college, and so he had a debt limit in his credit card of $50,000. He had always money managed his money responsibly until he fell in with a very emotionally abusive girlfriend who also had a mental illness and a heavy crack user. So she got Jim into crack, and Jim is a very generous person, he will give anyone a shirt off his back or anything else. So um, when she wanted money for drugs and then in with the drug culture and other friends, Jim was paying for everybody's drugs on his credit card. And um, it took them two or three weeks to spend it all. And then he called up his sister, who's a couple years older and lives, doesn't live here in Minnesota, and asked to borrow money. And she was thinking about it, maybe two or three hundred dollars. And he said, Well, that wouldn't do any good, you know. I need a lot more than that. And she he wanted to borrow, I don't know, 10,000 or something, and that would have all gone for drugs. So we had to work on getting a payee, but my husband also, in addition to having the pay, wanted to pay back these credit cards. So this became a big fracture in our marriage. Roger was didn't his father had a bill collecting business. So Roger was not didn't have good ideas about people who didn't pay their bills as he was growing up. So um he a couple times, not with the $50,000 one, but with other credit cards that Jim had maxed out, he would pay them off. And but then when this $50,000 one came, uh Roger was thinking, well, we'll have to pay that back in installments. And I'm thinking, we're not paying that one back. You know, we're gonna be, he'll just keep draining our bank account. So we had knockdown drag out battles over that discussion. So that was why Jim has a payee. Now he's away from that girlfriend, he's sober, he's doing really well with his new psychiatrist, and um, we're in a whole different place. But that was one of the huge low points of our whole mental health journey. It was yeah, money, money can and that money thing just did us in.

SPEAKER_01 18:29

Yeah, money can pull a family apart. You asked about emotions, it can totally fracture marriages, it can fracture relationships, it can pull a family apart. I will add that I had to, while my son was in this last hospital stay, I had to uh take it upon myself to declare him bankrupt because he just, you know, it wasn't necessarily his fault except for immaturity, but but until his social security came through, he had to ask me every month for the money to budget. And it drove a wedge between us because no nearly 40-year-old boy man wants to ask his mother for money and he really had no choice. Now that he has actual money just going into his account, and yes, my name is on the account too, so I can see what happens, but our relationship is so much better because he's not asking me for money, and emotionally that's a huge difference. There's a certain pride in having your own money however you get it, and a certain embarrassment, which can lead to a definite wedge when you don't.

SPEAKER_02 19:40

Uh beauties of this podcast is we're all in different states. So Randy's in Connecticut, um, Mimi's in Washington state, and I'm in Minnesota. So this bankruptcy idea, I thought Jim would have to declare bankruptcy, but we found out that if you're on SNAP food stamps, uh then if you qualify for that, debtors can't come after you. Credit card companies can't touch you if you are that poor. So you have to declare bankruptcy.

SPEAKER_01 20:12

Mimi, anything? Um answering your question, Savannah.

SPEAKER_03 20:16

Yes, very, very well.

SPEAKER_01 20:17

Thank you. Go ahead, Mimi.

SPEAKER_03 20:19

Yeah, our um our situation again is different. Uh, you know, uh, Randy mentioned the stuck in time thing, and we very much are, you know, Nick's 36, but from the very beginning of this, you know, he got sick in his late teens. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia at about 20. But I've managed everything from day one. So he never evolved out of that. So he's 36 years old, and he still basically is stuck in this place where he only has the money that I give him, and he accepts that paradigm for his reality. Now he does talk often about how he wants to do his latest thing now is he wants to start playing the stock market. And um no.

SPEAKER_02 21:06

And oh no, at least it's not drugs.

SPEAKER_03 21:09

Yeah, I don't excuse me while I laugh. And it's like I I always have to, yeah, you know, I have to fight to to make my peace with these things because on the one hand, it's a really good sign that he's even aware of a stock market and wanting it. He said, Mom, I want to have a future, I want to buy a house, I want to do this, I want to do that. And we had set a goal for him that if when he reached this goal, I would buy him a guitar, which is something he really wants. And now he came to me and he said, I don't want the guitar, I want you to give me the money and I want to start investing. And so what we're gonna do is we're gonna set something up with his dad, and he's gonna work with his dad and do it with this minimal amount of money. But um, you know, we just control it. I'm the payee, I control it. He's he has a caregiver who comes to give him his meds and he gets his daily money. It's just we've never evolved past that. Hopefully we can and will one day, but right. Right now, it's just like one more thing to deal with. And um, I don't see any upside of starting that at this point. It's not something that we asked for very often.

SPEAKER_00 22:13

I think it's the points you raise about um Randy, the frozen in time, and also the piece around you know, investing in stocks. And I've been very interested in this concept of financial literacy and financial education. And one of the things that I'm curious about is do you feel that financial literacy has a role to play in terms of how people with schizophrenia manage their finances or how people, you know, with other severe mental illnesses manage their finances? Or do you think the financial disorganization or kind of erratic behaviors are truly a symptom of the illness rather than being something that can be managed effectively?

SPEAKER_02 22:50

I think they can easily manage their finances with some education. I think from our son, it's the drug use that puts him off the rails and spending all this money. But when he's um sober and his meds are working like right now, he's very responsible, spends what he has no more, pays all his bills. He's very diligent about that. And he was before he met this uh girlfriend as well. So I have great faith. We also have something in the United States called able accounts, and that allows it's a better something life and better. Anyway, it's a it's a way that people with serious mental illness who are on benefits and can only have $2,000 in the bank. And if they earn more than that, they lose their benefits, they can instead save up to $10,000. And the goal of that is so they can do what they would do like any of the rest of us, save money for a trip, save money for a down payment on a car. And once they have a car, it doesn't count against their benefits, but they got to get that down payment or ditto for or a house. So I have great faith. Um, if they have the chance, to um have them do as do very well.

SPEAKER_03 24:04

I think it's possible, but I think also we need to be honest in terms of your question about financial literacy. I mean, you know, Nick grew up going to really good schools and he understood, you know, finances and all that, but I mean, this is an illness that attacks reason and diminishes reason, diminishes um cognition. And so I I don't know that you can teach somebody out or educate somebody out of the effects of this. You know, I think if somebody's doing well and has the financial literacy, yes. But I think all the financial literacy in the world is not going to offset schizophrenia.

SPEAKER_01 24:47

I would agree and add a little addendum to that from our experience. I think there's two things at play there. One is what we'll call, for lack of a better word, maturity. And there's air quotes, you can see them on YouTube, but you can't see them in the podcast. There's maturity, which to me means awareness that you need to learn and willingness to learn. And that goes up and down with where you are in your recovery, whether you're in treatment, so forth. It also has to do with your age a bit. Then there's education. So I will say for my son, there was a time when he was totally not willing to even accept any education because I know everything, I know everything, you know, and that that is adolescence, but it's also magnified to an exponential degree by the illness, especially untreated. So that in treatment and with some maturity, which I think can come with uh length of treatment, consistency of treatment. In our case, there was a time when my son said, Mom, can you teach me about credit cards and help me get one that makes sense? And I'm all about that. Then he when he didn't feel so confident and mature enough to ask for mommy's advice, he went ahead and co-signed a lease for a coworker because he thought it just was a character reference. And I had to use my conservator status to get him out of that. And he was grateful. And then even though we had worked really hard to find him a used car and it was paid off, he went behind our back and started leasing cars because they were cooler. So it but he did meet the bills. So and I will say that this bankruptcy hit him at a time where here in Connecticut, you can't just declare bankruptcy, you have to take a class online about bankruptcy, and then to finish it, you have to take a class on debt management. So he was very in a place where he was very receptive to that education, be it because he's in his late 30s or because he had knew he had screwed up, whatever it was. That debt management class was awesome. And he asked me to kind of sit behind him when he as he did it, and he learned a lot. And he said, I'm supposed to save 10% of my income. I didn't know that. If I want to open my restaurant someday, I better start saving. So here you have a pipe dream and you have something that education taught him. And I see his bank account and he is managing it. So I the education did help, but without being receptive to education, it's in one ear, out the other, or worse, causing another fight.

SPEAKER_02 27:47

And I think age that you mentioned is a big factor because Jim, um Savannah is 44. So he's got a lot more years on him than Mimi's Nick. So don't give up hope, Mimi.

SPEAKER_03 27:59

Listen, I don't have a problem with the way it is right now. You know, it's um it's under control. He understands this is the money he gets, this is what he can do. I'm just hoping that uh, you know, him moving out of this sort of teenage phase of finances would indicate improvement and and you know, healing. Um it's actually much more manageable right now than it might have been, you know. Um, but it would be an indication of him doing better and wanting more if we could move out of it. This is true.

SPEAKER_01 28:40

Boundaries are our friends. My son does have when he when he got hospitalized this last time, I took it upon myself, as we all do, to clean his room because that's what moms can do.

SPEAKER_02 28:53

So his room We've all done a lot of cleaning of rooms cleaning when they're gone.

SPEAKER_01 28:58

We're like, okay, mom mode. But I found camping equipment down there and he's never camped. I found a bowling ball, which I knew he had bought because he bowled for about a month and then stopped. He's in he probably has $2,000 worth of pool equipment, you know, cues, and he says, because he he tells me he's really good at pools. So he, you know, he just had to accumulate things and buy things. Uh so that I I think was symptomatic. All right, anyway, you have more questions, I'm sure, Savannah.

SPEAKER_00 29:30

No, it's it's really interesting. Um, especially the kind of the buying things and the hoarding. And I think the thing with spending is is what I found anyway from my research, which isn't by any means, I'm not an expert, but it's around like a displacement and a dopamine hit that you get the same dopamine hit that you get from buying something online or from buying something in a store, as much as you would do from doing something else, um, you know, whether that's drugs, whether, yeah, I don't know anything else, but um it's equally followed by the same sense of guilt. And this is something that leads into kind of that vicious cycle of money and mental health. It's the kind of the need to replace something or fill something. You fill it momentarily with buying something, which gives you this serotonin and dopamine hit, which is followed by the guilt, which leads you to want to comfort spend and to constantly sort of fill in that void. And I think, you know, that what I find really interesting about finances in particular is the fact that it's not specific to any illness. It's kind of so universal and so across the board. Um, what I do actually, what I am curious about is your take on financial victimization, because I read somewhere that um 80% of transaction fees and penalty fees are paid paid by the 20% who don't have the means and the 20% who are mentally and financially vulnerable. So at an institutional level, I've been quite outraged about the general lack of understanding and acknowledgement about people who are vulnerable and how much they are being victimized.

SPEAKER_02 31:05

So I'm I'm just I didn't care a bit about the credit card companies because when Jim is busy maxing out all these cards, some of which my husband paid back, and then the 50,000 one that we didn't, they kept sending him credit cards and then he would have all these late fees and everything else. And I got to the point where I thought, you know what? If they're gonna send him knowing how they have to know how vulnerable he is, they are not stupid. They look at financial records, and each card they sent him got smaller and smaller. The last ones were like for $25, but they were still hoping he would spend that. And then they would, so they were preying upon him, and I um I'm not surprised by your statistics. And I think there came a point where I just thought, I don't really care. He spends their money, he's not gonna have to pay it back because he's on food stamps, and that protects him.

SPEAKER_03 32:00

Is there any way you can tell them not to send that, you know? You know, Nick, um, there was a year where he kept getting uh summonses to be on juries, jury summons. And you know, I kept calling, calling, and finally I called and I said, you know, I explained the situation. And I said, you know, he's never gonna be on a jury. And um the woman said, Oh, you need to call the office of permanent excuses. And I thought she was joking. The office of what? The office of permanent excuses, and I'm like, this sounds interesting. Give me that. That is interesting. So I call this office, and the woman literally answers the phone, Office of Permanent Excuses, and I'm like, oh man, where's this been my whole life? And oh my gosh, what was going on, and she categorized Nick and it was all fine, and he's never gotten a jury summon since. And right before I hung up, she said, Is there anything else I can help you with? And I'm like, hmm, can you help with other people? And she didn't quite get it, but I thought it was amusing. But I mean, I wonder if there's a way to do something financially where you can say, Don't send this person credit cards. You know, there should be some sort of a measure that you can take because I mean you can get in a lot of trouble about it.

SPEAKER_01 33:21

I will say the minute we file for bankruptcy, the offers came in fast and furious. And luckily, my son is very happy just using his debit card, not a credit card. As long as he can do it on Amazon, he's fine. And this way, uh, but you know, he must get two, seven or eight a week. You're pre-approved for a credit card.

SPEAKER_02 33:48

So, Randy, when you said he got offers after filing for bankruptcy, were they like to consolidate his debt with them or what kind of offers?

SPEAKER_01 33:56

No, you know, you're pre-approved for this credit card. Oh, for dark sake. Oh yeah, oh yeah. It's it's uh, you know, and with of course, before I declared bankruptcy, I paid off his Amazon. You know, and that's the thing, there's the burden on the family. He had a college fund only because of an inheritance from my parents. And that got spent on a troubled teen program in Idaho. And I'm not saying it was money not well spent, it gets spent on whatever care you can, because if you can afford it, then they expect the family to pay for it, even though that money could have gone for other things or maybe a down payment on a condo or something. But um, yeah, so yes, there is victimization. I will say emotional, not just credit card companies, but people, they're very vulnerable. I don't know about your sisters, Savannah, or you know, your stepmom, but people know uh an easy mark when they see it. And like your sons, you know, mine is generous. He loves to help people. It's part of his self-esteem to help people. I remember his fifth hospitalization, and he there wasn't a lot of room. It was a state hospital, you know. But I brought him some shirts from Goodwill. He gave three of them away.

SPEAKER_02 35:13

Right.

SPEAKER_01 35:13

Because he wanted other people to have them. And that kind-heartedness, my daughter's biggest fear for her brother is that someone will take advantage of him financially.

SPEAKER_02 35:25

Yeah. For us, it's a real fear, it happened. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 35:30

We have about 10 minutes left. So I want to make sure, Savannah, you're getting to ask all the questions you want to ask.

SPEAKER_00 35:35

No, this has been great. I think we've we've answered most of them, but I there's a few more comments that I'd really like to make. It's, you know, talking about, you know, asking about can are there not any controls that you can put in place to, you know, stops people from receiving credit cards or offers and that. And what I found really interesting is that loan defaults are built into financial models. So the credit agencies don't care actually how much debt you're taking on or your ability to repay or not, because they're making most of their profits off the people who can. And what often happens is they just sell the debtor's book, and then you get chased by these um, you know, these these credit agencies who are just basically looking for debt. And if they get one person to repay the loan, then they're happy because that's a 300% profit essentially on what they're doing. So, in terms of that, I think there needs to be a real shift in awareness just around vulnerable people. And I think we live in such a you know mindless consumerism age and a subscription age, and it's just the intangibility of money and how easy it is to actually get access to loan and to credit is, you know, I think the awareness piece is important. And I'm just thinking of an example from somebody else that I spoke to, and I won't mention any names, but um, she had a parent with schizophrenia, and her mom would go into a store and just say, I'm gonna buy everything on that wall. And it would be shoes of all sizes, and she'd come home and she'd be like, Oh my goodness. And and what actually happened in that family is one of the children um took control of the finances and was the very much the bad cop. And she was there to sort of pick up the pieces. And when she went to take the returns to to the small, small companies who knew the family, they're just you know shrug their shoulders and be like, oh, sorry, we're a small business, um, we we won't do any returns, um, you know, come back again. And I think I think it's that lack of care and lack of awareness that that is really troubling, especially given the light of how you know we're kind of living in a mental health pandemic and and these are serious issues. Um that was that was just the one, like the one comment I wanted to make. And the other, I guess my my last question just on this topic is you know, how easy it is you're being chased down, you know, offering credit cards and that. And I'm just curious about the rise in e-commerce and how fast it is to transact online and how easy it is now. It's like, you know, it is completely intangible. And I wonder if that is impacting behaviors as much as anything else. And and I don't know if you've seen any of that with with your sons or with the people you've spoken to.

SPEAKER_02 38:09

Definitely. When Jim once had to spend down, you know, in order to qualify for benefits, you have to spend down if you have too much money. He had like 2,000 too much money because he hadn't been on SSDI. He was working full time and then he got really sick and had to spend down. He did that online in no time flat. He bought tons of things like black olives that were dried from Israel or something that we had for 20 years and finally threw away. You know, they weren't useful things, but boy, could he do it. And it was easy.

SPEAKER_01 38:45

Yeah, the convenience of online is, you know, yeah. When when any when when there's any trigger, you know, if you're if you're addicted to Oreos and you've got Oreos in the cabinet, look out. If there you have to go to the supermarket to get it, it it's going to be different. And I think I and this is no research that I've done, but I think absolutely you don't have to get in a car and go to the store and buy all the shoes on the wall. You can just open your computer and it comes to your doorstep. I do think that that has made a difference.

SPEAKER_00 39:16

Yeah. And I think it's equally interesting how easy it is to have to buy things and have them sent, but the reverse logistics are an absolute nightmare as well. So it makes it even more difficult to kind of recoup some of the costs if you want to return things, because yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:31

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 39:31

I have to say, my grandmother, my grandmother, so this was a long time ago. My mother always thought she had bipolar disorder, but she wasn't diagnosed. I my other grandmother had schizophrenia, and she was diagnosed. But the one that they thought uh she ordered all her things, not through e-commerce, but through catalogs, Sears catalogs. And my grandfather had to return things. She ordered a piano, she didn't play the piano, etc.

SPEAKER_01 39:57

Returning a piano has got to be really dumb.

SPEAKER_02 40:00

No, they kept that and later other kids played it. But uh there's always been ways to shop if you if you have an illness. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:10

I have um before we close in about five minutes, the last question I'm gonna want to ask you are any tips and learnings that you have that you might be able to share with with our listeners. But the question I want to ask you before that is how are you doing? You've got a lot on your plate. You've got a lot on your plate. And and just like, how is what's it like to be you right now?

SPEAKER_00 40:35

It's a good question, and it's something I try not to think about too much. But um I think honestly, making the decision to get back in touch with my family and making the decision to really educate myself about some of the challenges have really helped me to separate the person from the illness and you know, my siblings from their illnesses, and being able to ask them questions and understand and know that actually it's not just my family who's experiencing this, or it's not just my sisters who are making me feel this way, and actually understanding that there's a whole host of people out there who have are in similar situations or worse, or similar situations or better. And I think the best thing that I've done about with this research is by opening up, because it's something that I've never, you know, I'm never ever one to sort of hold up my hand and say, this is what my family is, this is how we cope financially. And by me being vulnerable and and just sharing my story with people, I've been shocked by how many people are in similar positions and who just want to help and help, you know, just share what they know and what helps them, or share like their struggles. And and I think what I found is because money and mental health are both incredibly stigmatized topics and nobody really talks about them. But just seeing the desperation to just be open and honest and share some of the burdens with just anyone who can listen has been on both sides, I think, incredibly helpful. Um, I think understanding money isn't, and I, you know, I hate I'm someone who hates talking about money and I seem to talk about it all the time now. But um, the understanding that it's a mechanism and also having this insight that it's a means to an end, but equally it's something that you can do something about. It's not something that is, you know, out there where medicine is going to take 17 years plus to kind of catch up with, or we haven't advanced in what, like 50 years. But there's something in the financial space where there's actual practical things that can be done to help. And it's those practical things that can remove a burden which acts as an additional external stressor. So, you know, I really am of the mind like it's not going to solve all the problems, but it's going to remove some of the strain if we can get something right.

SPEAKER_01 42:48

Okay. So, what would be the tips that we would leave our listeners with from any of us?

SPEAKER_02 43:01

Communication. I would say learn about representative pay ease if you're new to mental illness. Learn about um the fact that these credit card companies really don't care and they make money even if they're sending credit cards and that there's nothing you can do. You have to figure out what you can do and what can't you do. And then you cannot bang your head against the wall quite so much.

SPEAKER_01 43:25

I think set boundaries with your loved one or loved ones and tell them what your boundaries are, what you are and are not willing to cover, what you are and are not willing to do, and uh stick to them if you can. Speak to other families in that situation.

SPEAKER_03 43:45

Get them the best period. Very important.

SPEAKER_00 43:50

I think patience as well. I think I come back to the financial literacy piece where it's like very, very small steps in the right direction can have a very, very big impact with. Compounding. So I think the financial literacy and also educating yourself on safer means of borrowing or being able to offer solutions around borrowing or around finances that don't, that aren't risky options, because there are many out there. And I think the last bit of advice as well is if you have the opportunity to speak to your banks, there are spending controls and spending limits that they can put in before a crisis um hits. And I think I'm quite excited about how the space is moving now in terms of starting to, you know, find the link between money and mental health. And I think there'll be a lot more products coming out with a lot more empathy around people's individual financial situations. So that's my hope. But I think other than that, it's just patience. Um and and yeah, patience and kindness to yourselves and to your family. Um, but I think the boundaries in communication are equally important.

SPEAKER_01 44:59

So important. Mimi's hand is up. And then I just want to mention about conservatorship. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_03 45:03

Yeah, I thought it was something that I was going to implement with Nick, and then it was last minute, he decided you didn't want to do it. But I thought it is something that people could use. You know, they have these credit card, I see them on TV for kids, where the kid does his chores and he gets credit on the credit card um to earn money and it's controlled by the parents. I forget there's a few different um companies that do this. And that's what I was going to do with Nick actually, is um get him one of those credit cards because it's set up for children, but it's set up to teach you financial literacy. You know, it's something that could be applied to somebody in situations really.

SPEAKER_00 45:47

Yeah, and just and on that, the the kind of you know, the the, I guess, family-friendly fintech and the cards and the co-monitoring or carers cards. There's a few carers cards as well, which are you know quite advanced in terms of flexibility, but as well as setting controls. Um, there's three things that actually work incredibly well, just in terms of financial behaviors, and that's having accountability. So someone who you check in with before you make purchases, or just having an accountability to you know, somebody you set up for yourself or a friend or family, whatever that is, a distraction and creating time. So if there's a way of putting in place measures that say, okay, I really want to have this purchase, but I'm just gonna go and play a game for five minutes and then come back to it and decide. Um time, so you know, increasing the amount of time between spending. So something that I've been trying to use and have been recommending people use is put everything that you want to buy in a week in a shopping basket that isn't isn't essentials, and at the end of the week, review that list. And if you want to buy everything on the list, buy it all. But if there's some things on that list that you don't want to buy, then take them off. Um, and I think a lot of people who are using that find it really effective. Um, but yeah, so that's you kind of jogged my brain. I was like, yes, actually. A bunch of things that I think is quite effective.

SPEAKER_01 47:07

So those are awesome for any of us. You don't have to have a mental health issue to be addicted to shopping. So those are things that are really helpful. I've sometimes going through a store, I'll go, ah, I want that. If I still want it tomorrow, I'll come back. And nine times out of ten, I don't. I will recommend, if any of you are wondering about conservatorship, that we do have an episode on that. And it doesn't necessarily mean the Britney Spears, oh my God, I'm going to take over life and tell you what to eat for breakfast. Conservatorship of a state can simply be you do have a say in how you can help your loved one manage their finances. It varies from state to state, but definitely take a look into that. I know for my son, every once in a while he goes, Why do I need a conservator? And I'm like, Have I ever interfered with anything you don't want? I'm a safety net. And right now he, you know, he sees it as just the safety net that it is. And he's grateful for it. Uh recently, we just had something this week where they thought he made a lot of money that he didn't make. And when I called the employer, it turns out one of their employees had put the wrong social security number. Her social security number had a seven, where my son's had a one. And if I hadn't been conservator, I couldn't have taken care of that. So while we're here, we can help them legally if we have the right. So take a listen to the conservatorship episode if you're curious about that, or the one with Judge Lisa. She had a lot to say as well. And you can just check our episodes. Savannah, and the any last words. Otherwise, I'm just gonna thank you so much. And please tell us, keep in touch with us, tell us how your research is progressing and what you're learning, and if you have any questions, or you need three moms to talk to. We're right here.

SPEAKER_00 48:53

Absolutely. Thank you so much. This has been really wonderful.

SPEAKER_02 48:58

Thank you very much. You had a lot of wisdom for us as well, and I appreciate that.

SPEAKER_00 49:03

I hope so. I'm just an amateur researcher.

SPEAKER_01 49:08

You know, you're, you know, we each have daughters, so we, you know, our mothers' hearts go out to you, but I'm just so admiring of how of what the turning point you made for yourself, the decision you made to embrace your family as it is and do what you can. So, from all of us in the US to you in the UK, thank you again. It's been a pleasure. Hey, thanks for joining us for this episode of Schizophrenia Three Moms in the Trenches with Randy Kay, Mindy Gryling, and Miriam Feldman. To get in touch with us or to learn more about our books, please visit our websites at Miriamfeldman.com, mindygryling.com, or randyk.com.