The Spirits

So, I have this client for my internship. I went to his home with another clinician to do an assessment with the family. The family moved to America (and of all places to Idaho) from China. They hold strongly to the Chinese culture and belief system. Their house is immaculately clean and their English is excellent. Very nice family.


Their son is clearly schizophrenic. The whole time we are talking to his mother he is engaging the voices and visual hallucinations. He is nodding and talking to something and started saying things like "That was the old me. This is the new me!" "They made me a God!" Clearly the kid has issues. He is 13 by the way! He has threatened harm to self and others and struggles seeing reality.

Well, the mother refuses to allow her child to take medication. She says "He just has spirits! If his grandmother was alive then she could get rid of the spirits but I can’t do it good." She then went into this speech of how she is going to keep him home and home school him so she can monitor his diet and sleep better because with good sleep and food the spirits will go away!

Now, don’t get me wrong. I am all about maintaining culture and belief, however, this poor boy has no social functioning or sense of awareness because he has schizophrenia! Not to mention there is a child protection case open on him because his parents tried to get the spirits out by beating him. So, what do I do?

After an hour long discussion and gathering information on the family we finally came to the conclusion that we will try everything possible and if nothing works then we can discuss medication. He will be receiving a PSR worker, counseling and an in home counselor. The only time he is in reality is when I discuss his Yugi Oh cards with him. Tough one, huh?