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Only a few weeks after my eleventh birthday my Dad began to ignore me. He changed from a loving, attentive father who couldn't spend enough time with me to a distant person who stopped being a part of our family's life. My Dad used to take me to the park everyday, sometimes even in the coldest winter months, to play baseball with me. Now my Dad ignored everyone in the family. He isolated himself in his bedroom. Mom said, "Your Dad is sad. Be patient. He loves you very much."

My Dad had a smile as broad and warm as any I've ever known. He liked funny jokes, and he laughed, and loved to make us laugh. But that was before Dad became sad. Then he talked only late at night in his room. It happened almost every night, and the talk became louder and louder until the noise would wake everyone in our home.

Dad had a medical disease I would later learn. He had a disease with a long sounding name I could not pronounce at the time—schizophrenia. Dad spent several months in a hospital where Mom said children were simply not allowed to visit. He was in a state mental hospital.

Dad was in a hospital many miles away until I was fourteen, and then one day my Mom told us Dad had died. I wouldn't learn until I was twenty that my Dad had committed suicide. He hanged himself in the hospital. The doctors said he heard voices in his head that told him to do it. My Dad was a "paranoid schizophrenic."

Now I am 39 years old with five children of my own. All of them are in good health except my oldest, Eric, Jr. Like my father, he has schizophrenia. Unlike in my father's day, however, we know so much more about schizophrenia today. Eric just started on Risperdal; one of the new medications for schizophrenia which has helped others. He isn't locked away in a hospital, but lives in an apartment with a roommate and is working part-time in a retail store.

Things could easily be different, even today. Public awareness hasn't come very far. It is a good thing science and medicine do not depend on the general public consciousness, or lack of it. Too many still believe schizophrenia is caused by poor parenting or weak will power, instead of brain dysfunction.

Once the son and now the father, I cannot let what happened to my father happen to my son. Today I have a choice.