mother help: how is it possible that I have a mother who has bipolar psychosis and hears voices and a sister with severe (aggressive) schizophrenia. - Help.com

It’s easy to be in denial because with both of those it is just a label to group a constellation of symptoms. It’s not like there’s an obvious virus or physical cause of those things. Which is to say, it may be proper and convenient to think of them as bipolar and schizophrenic but it’s just as true to say that they are your mom and sister who have specific personalities and habits and ways of acting.

That’s one reason why you could be in denial. Society as a whole has had a problem trying to accurately diagnoses these conditions over the millennia, from crazy “special” tribal people, demon-possession theories, to lunatic asylums where they lock up the good the bad and the ugly, etc. It is really complicated historically.

One advantage of the current psychiatric labeling is you can find social resources like enlightening education for you or medical treatments for them.

I have a mother and sister with borderline personality disorder and another sister who is schizophrenic… so, according to my experiences… it’s quite possible. Both sides of my family have a very long history of mental illness and, in my family’s case, crazy loved to bread with crazy. But every once in a while there would be someone of the exact opposite temperaments… but from all account thses were usually relationships in which the other was easily manipulated.

It could be a genetic coherence.
See this scientific article: http://udig.nimh.nih.gov/pubs/Bigos_C…