I normally don't talk about my history of mental illness on the internet because of prejudice and because everything you say stays here forever (I don't want random aquantances I know IRL reading up on my personal life w/o my consent because I posted it online), but figured this thread is worth bringing it up.
I am in my mid 30s, from ages 17 to 21 I had schizophrenia. Full blown, meaning I couldn't work or go to school or really do anything. The symptoms started around age 17, went into remission at age 21, and have been in remission since. I spent that time suffering from delusions of grandeur and delusions of reference (no auditory hallucinations or paranoid delusions though). I have gone the last 15ish years w/o any symptoms. In that time after I recovered I graduated from college, got a middle class job and have a fairly non-eventful middle class life.
One of the first things you need to understand is that schizophrenia is not always permanent. According to studies like these listed below, by middle age about 3/5 of people are totally symptom free. I've seen other studies where the same thing is found, about 40-70% that develop the disease when they are young (teens and early 20s) are not on any medication by their 40s because they have no symptoms. The media portrays the disease as permanent, but for many of us it is more of an unpleasant phase we look back on with regret and shame like the people in the 80s who wore leg warmers.
http://www.power2u.org/evidence.html
When I got sick, I got sick in a small town where people dealt with mental illness by pretending it didn't exist. So despite my erratic, embarrassing, sometimes illegal behavior I got no competent medical help (no psychotherapy, no medications, etc). People didn't understand how to deal with mental illness so they either thought I was lazy or made token gestures of concern then washed their hands of me. Honestly, that is more traumatic than the schizophrenia looking back. I have more social traumas from dealing with unenlightened people than I do from the illness itself. Sitting alone in your bedroom hearing secret messages from god on the radio sucks, but it doens't suck as bad as getting knocked around by the cops because you did something embarassing and didn't know it; or having your dad make disgusted groans whenever he sees you; or being a teenager who is humiliated in front of all his friends and teachers (I developed the disease when I was in high school).
This is going to be a long post, but I want to give you some advice for what to do while your brother is sick, and what to do if/when he recovers his faculties.
For one thing one of hte most evil symptoms of the disease is you lose your ability to realize you are sick. When I was mentally ill if you showed me someone else who was a shizophrenic I could say 'that guy is mentally ill', but I couldn't say it about myself. Some psychotherapist did a study at a mental hospital once where he asked 3 schizophrenics to talk to each other in a mental hospital. They all thought they were jesus, and they all came to the conclusion that the other 2 were insane but they themselves were sane. So you lose your ability to know you are sick, but you can still recognize other people are sick.
WHich is important to know, because when people recommend things like therapy and medication you respond with 'what for, I'm not sick'. For me I think if people had recommended therapy because I was under stress I would've taken it better. Had people said 'you are under a lot of stress, why not talk about how stressed and confused you are' instead of saying 'you are sick, see a doctor' I might have taken them up. But like I said, I grew up in a very bad environment for these issues.
If/when your brother gets better (more a question of when than if) he is probably going to have a lot of problems due to his illness. Schizophrenia really makes you doubt yourself, because it affects who you are as a person. Your philosophy, your self image, your religious beliefs, etc are all affected by the disease. It can be very confusing to try to rebuild those things when you recover from the illness. For me that took a lot of time and I am still working on it. I personally compared it more to being in a cult or being kidnapped. You are still physically present, but your mind has been taken somewhere else. If you injure your arm that sucks but you as a person are still intact. Even diseases like anxiety suck but they don't affect you as a person as much as something like schizophrenia.
For me I've had to spend a lot of time in therapy to deal with the PTSD, shame, abandonment issues and depression/anxiety that came from my schizohprenia. That is something I will have to deal with my whole life. So keep in mind your brother may have a lot of problems for years even if his schizophrenia goes away. Having your mind and identity changed w/o your consent by an illness is something that changes you on a deep level. It can feel like I was kidnapped at times, ripped away from everythign I knew and loved and I had no control. When I was 16 I was a normal teenager who was excited about his first car and thinking about a girl I liked. When I was 17 I was getting secret messages on the radio from god telling me how to prepare for the final battle with the antichrist in europe. How is a kid supposed to talk about that? How do you tell someone those things when you are just a teenager? The fact that your brother seems to have a responsible, caring network hopefully means he will avoid some of the pitfalls that people like me fell into. I would hope. Also read up on the symptoms of schizophrenia. The delusions can be pretty common. Many have religious delusions, delusions of gradeur, delusions of reference (thinking tv shows or songs are giving you secret messages), paranoid delusions, etc. If you learn about these things you can educate yourself and hopefully make it easier to communicate with your brother who may be too confused to know how to talk about what is happening to him. Anyway, that is about it. I could probably write a book on it, but this is what I came up with. Best of luck to you, and I wish more people had supportive people when they got sick.