Category Archives: Mental Health – Child

Mental health articles relating to a condition your child might have can be found here.

Back in the Hospital – was – The Dilemma – What to do with David

Bamboozler.This has been something of a roller coaster week. I was in Indianapolis for the National Disability Rights Network annual conference.  Some fantastic networking opportunities.  A lot of great information, fabulous food and weather.

At home, David was busy doing what David does.

At the top of the list?

He forged a check.

He was charged with unruly behaviors and taken to safe bed.  So now I need to determine what further charges should be contemplated.

Do I press charges for forging a check on my account?

Today, I brought him home from the safe bed. For the most part he has been good.  I have allowed him zero freedoms.  I hate doing that, but he needs to know that actions have consequences.

To quote him, “safe bed is a worse place than here, and they let me go outside. So how come I can’t go outside.”

then he says “can I just go back to the psych ward, I don’t want to live here any more. There is nothing fun to do.”

He says that he wants to tell us what is right.  His way is right.  What he says is the right way to do things.  My banning “Call of Duty” is wrong.  Someone needs to play the game and since no one else was, then he should be able to do so.  Banning facebook access was wrong, because since he created his latest account, he has gotten 66 friends in 3 days.  Banning Internet access is wrong.  (David has threatened to kill someone via facebook, which is why we don’t allow him to use it.)  He also told me that he has been using Internet on the i-pad he is sometimes allowed to use.  Guess we need to make some changes.  He knows that isn’t allowed, but thinks that the rule is wrong since it isn’t the way he wants things to be.

I should note, shortly after I started this post, David’s behaviors escalated.  I ended up taking him to the mental health unit in the city.  He told me “if you like, I can stab you with a knife.”  or something like that.  I am a little tired, it is nearly 230 in the morning, it has been a long day.

The staff on the unit greeted him by name.  He left some clothes behind when he was there last, so we don’t need to bring him clothing.  How sad is it that the mental health unit knows him well enough that they don’t require me to complete his psycho-social history form?  How sad is it that he will be discharged in 4 days.  David was discharged from safe bed at 2:30.  12 hours later he is in the hospital under mental health care.

I am afraid that one day, we will become statistics in a book that no one ever wants to be a statistic in.  Pray that we get the help he needs soon.

Stormy Lake Weather

David, a moment of calm in a chaotic mind.

David, a moment of calm in a chaotic mind.

We had a storm on the lake this week.  Tornado warnings, severe thunderstorm watch, that kind of thing.

I don’t know if it is the weather, the fact that I am at a conference, or what, but David has been in full form. A storm of a different kind.

Facebook.  If you are on the friends’ list of anyone in the family, he likely sent you a facebook request.  David is not allowed technology/Internet access.  David has a history of threatening to kill people via facebook.  Typically he does this via hacking into accounts of his siblings.  Please let us know if he says anything to you.

Wednesday.

David left his established area.  He went outside of the boundaries established for him.  When mom got home from looking for him with the intention of calling the police and reporting him as a run away he was home.  Later, a local store owner called to report that David had purchased some items and wrote a check for them.  (In our community it is not unusual for parents to send a child to the store with a check)  David purchased a battery for a lawn mower and a spark plug.  He claimed that he purchased these items for a friend.  But couldn’t name the friend.  Couldn’t say where the friend lived.

How do we know it was David that wrote the check and made the purchase?  David is the only African-American in our community.

In our community, we are close knit.  I get reports from people all over town regarding his actions.  People marvel at the level of energy that he displays.  I heard reports many times this week with people reaching out to me.  David was in our part of town, David was over there, David was at Cenex…  And so on.

Yet when asked about it, he always denies these things.  Those people are lying.

Yesterday was a horrid day.  I won’t get into the ins and outs of all that was horrid about it for our family, let’s just say that it ended well all the way around.

David is in safe bed until Saturday.  I regret that my wife had to deal with him without having me there to help.

This… This… This stuff that has been happening, with escalating behaviors on David’s behalf, could have all been prevented.  How?  He should have never been discharged from the treatment facility.  I fear for the safety of my family.

Fear can be a terrible thing.  Please pray for my family.

Wrap Around Services Explained

Wrap around services means we work with social services and the different agencies in our region. since we are between two major cities in our state, we go one direction for some services, and the other direction for the rest. It gets very confusing trying to get all of the different agencies to communicate with each other.
 
I’ll build a glossary of terms, in the coming weeks.
 
As a parent of a kid with mental illness, I sometimes take for granted that everyone knows what I am talking about. I imagine that it is like listening to a race car driver talk about turns, wedges and drifts, he may know what he is talking about, and his team knows what he means but no one else does.  That is an assumption on my part that I will work to correct.
 
The reason that wrap around services is not the correct answer in our son’s case is because it isn’t working. each of the therapists, psychiatrists and social workers except for the ones at this facility, all agree that he sees no benefit from these services. The rest of the family does, as we are all dealing with PTSD – Post Traumatic Stress – at some level. As a result of the aggressive and sometimes violent nature of his mental illness.