Marriage and mental illness

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V Fox

    Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal
    |January 5, 2002
    PubMed

    I have not read anything regarding persons who marry while living with serious, persistent mental illness. I married in the 1960s when persistent mental illness was considered a "nervous breakdown" and not an ongoing disease. With this article, I want to educate and explore thought in other persons who might share the same problems I experienced. I want to give a voice to the isolation I felt while married, coping with my illness. I felt so different from other married women with my closeted illness. I have two beautiful daughters who suffered a tragedy in their young lives when I became ill, yet our love seems to have survived and our relationship each day grows. With this article I want to give a voice to one marriage and mental illness. I want someone who reads this to say, "Yes, I feel like that; I know I'm not alone."

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