I apologize in advance for the possible rudeness of this, but you know what? Listening to self absorbed people trash the mentally ill for being mentally ill upsets ME. Learn to suck it up and be a little bit brave. She's your FAMILY!!!!! Her life upsets her too, you selfish jerk. My grandmother, WHO REALLY IS SCHIZOPHRENIC, it was the diagnosis and i'm not disagreeing with it on the basis of one college class in intro psych or whatever makes you think the drs. are wrong, my grandmother is still my family and i can still "stand" to be around her and talk to her (maybe only because I'M CRAZY too, I bet that's what you're thinking). my family never cut her off, even when she really WAS upsetting and doing things that got her arrested. Nor do we consider her situation to be a source of hilarity. If your cousin had cancer and it upset you too much to associate with her everyone would hate you. But just because it’s Crazy you can get away with shit like that. It’s not something someone’s doing just to piss you off. That’s totally sickening and what makes it worse is that the world is totally full of people like you, who cut off all contact with people because people with bipolar or whatever "upset them." I can tell you right now that if anyone had ever been there for me or even bothered to make a real attempt at understanding in all these awful years, maybe I wouldn’t have, you know, kept trying to kill myself. But instead the world is just full of people like you. "EWWW! Crazy! I bet it's contagious! Get the hell away from me!" Being crazy doesn't drive people away; it's the cowards like you who run when situations get tough. I guess this is probably too upsetting for you to condescend to read, but I just thought I'd let you know. Of course, since I'm crazy none of my opinions matter. Go on with your merry life. Maybe someday you can be happy 'cause they'll change the laws so they can lock anyone up for being crazy as soon as it starts upsetting you. Or maybe someday something great will happen, and people will start seeing attitudes like yours for what they are--plain, ignorant, hateful bigotry.