The really sad thing is they aren't cracks - they're chasms and they will absolutely swallow up anyone whose family isn't willing to drop everything and become the safety net for a precarious individual that generally lacks the agency to keep themselves from harm. In order for the outside world to even get involved, the afflicted person has to present a direct and immediate threat to themselves or others... and that gets you a 48 hour hold and often medication. Then they're sane again and released on their own recognizance and if they aren't willing to continue medication, they're crazy again. Meanwhile the social stigma is so great that nobody mentions it, nobody talks about it, and even healthcare workers are scared of legit diagnoses. I have a friend. His ex-wife hears voices. She thought she was married to Kurt Cobain. She drove her two kids out into the desert and left them there. But her medical reports say "mental illness, otherwise unspecified" because if they wrote "schizophrenia" down she'd never work again. Period. The only reason we're reading this story is that the afflicted in this case was a high school football star in a state that worships high school football. If he couldn't run with a ball no one - NO ONE - would give a fuck.
A close family member developed severe schizophrenia when he was a teen and no one in his large family noticed or did anything about it. It culminated in him murdering someone else in my family. There were fucks given but almost none of them good. A courageous attorney got him through an insanity plea so he did his time in the state hospital for criminally insane youth. The guards and wardens were sadists, regularly beating the boys. Many kids were given shock treatments, burning away bits and pieces of their humanity. I believe that rape was pretty common in those wards. When he got out the cops that were left seething that he he got out on a technicality spent the next few decades trying to set him up for another fall. The guy was already paranoid about the government (one of the main planks of his disease, the other plank being Jesus) and on again off again cop harassment pushed him to the edge of reason a few times. For decades after the crime when he would make friends, find a new hangout, get a new church someone would come and tell his new relations about his past. I'm certain this happened on some occasions but others are suspected schizophrenic delusions. I'm pretty sure it was members of law enforcement. He's managed to live a very small life. He minds his own business, doesn't drink in public, engage in any illegal activities, kept many solitary hobbies. I think most of the family has forgiven him but who knows shit is complicated. He had over a year of front page infamy as his case worked his way through the courts. Lots of people who didn't know him had strong words for him decades after the whole thing went down, they had fucks to give. It's an enormous thing in my family, which almost never gets talked about, I can probably count the number of times it's been spoken about in my presence by those that were there at the time on one hand.
Dated a girl whose aunt was schizophrenic. The schizophrenic's grandfather and brother were psychoanalysts. Poor girl got a fair amount of non-disinterested-party talk therapy. She never did anything violent - well, nothing to more than the canary - but she was pretty sick. She found a dude - also schizophrenic - and they definitely had a safety net... but it was a pretty bleak existence. I mean, we'd have them over for events and social occasions and stuff. But Kathy would still suspect that her sister was trying to steal Garth, and Garth still thought I was an ancient Egyptian god. DSHS estimates that 1/3rd of all homeless people are schizophrenic.
This is also part of life. In a way your right, people have no fucks to give. Now that I'm away, have a business and a sane life and family I have almost no fucks to give. I want to be as far away from it as I possibly can. Becoming a father filled me with fear. There might be something would be wrong with my child. Part of it is the normal stuff, she might come out shy a limb or what not. The real fear was that she would carry the taint of my families insanity and were not out of the woods yet. The two generations before me were pretty fucked. Three suicides, a familial murder, unquantifiable amounts of substance abuse and depression. Lots of mental illness induced familial terrorism. But my life now is so normal and stable. I don't live in fear or worry. I do worry, it's hard wired when you spend your youth looking over your shoulder for the next off the rocker insane blow up. Each day goes on mostly like the one before it. People have reasonable expectations and reasonable reactions to my successes and failures. The wife and I have probably only had five drag out yelling arguments in our over decade together. It's all so much calmer and predictable, I hope I never have to worry about that other life we don't talk about ever again.
I know your fear. I put off having a kid for decades because I didn't want to perpetrate my genetics on anyone. I got two suicides, substance abuse and three involuntary commitments in amongst all the bipolar. My dilemma is that either (A) my parents were so impossibly shitty that they fucked up with easy kids or (B) I really was a total pain in the ass. Neither position makes me feel warm'n'fuzzy. You know, though, that if your kids ran into trouble you'd move heaven and earth to help them. You'd far rather that they lead normal productive lives but if they can't, you'll be there for them.
Just read this yesterday http://mimesislaw.com/fault-lines/chris-craig-an-unusual-litmus-test-for-sympathy-or-terror/12929 Story about another gifted football player loosing his mind.