Category Archives: Mental Health

Articles relating to mental health are in this category. Typically they will fall into one of two categories. Yours, or your child’s. Yes, your mental health is important.

Happy One Year Placement Anniversary David

Ironically, the day after we receive notice of denial of coverage of services for our son, is the anniversary of his placement at the current facility.  It has been one year since we placed David in a facility 500 miles from home. Today, I am struggling with the stress of not knowing where we are at with my youngest son’s mental health treatment.  The denial of continued care is weighing heavily on my mind, and it will be Tuesday before I can file any appeals. He deserves better than this from the system that is responsible in part for his care.  When we adopted him, he was ordered by the court to have complete state sponsored medical coverage until he turns 18.  This is Medicaid. It isn’t safe for anyone for him to come home.  Even the staff that works with him day to day has said that.  A month

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a new year, more medicaid frustration

So what else is new?  right? Received this notice from the facility where our son resides. I am sure you will be receiving a hard copy in the mail, but I wanted to notify you that as of 1/10/2015, David’s  Medicaid has denied coverage for residential care and we were notified of this yesterday. (See attached letter) Facility is currently in the process of appealing this decision. I will keep you notified of the results of the appeal process which will be submitted early next week.     They enclosed a copy of the notice that they received from the determination company that is under contract to our state Medicaid. The rationale for this decision is:  David is a 13 year old boy who is diagnosed with Bipolar disorder and pervasive development disorder.  He was in a residential setting in North Dakota for over a year and transferred to the

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Generalizations, how they don’t help

We have this saying in the Autism community.  “If you have seen a child with Autism, you have seen A child with Autism.” You have seen one child.  Why one? Because no two kids are exactly alike, including twins. So why would it be any different for an adopted child? David is adopted.  David has, among other things, Reactive Attachment Disorder. I am adopted, I can see similarities in my behaviors as a child to David, just not as severe. I know of a couple of other people, both children and adults, who are adopted.  You know what?  Unless you know that they are adopted, you can’t tell. It isn’t like they have this tattoo on their arm, like a bar code or something that says “adopted”. Why do I bring this up? If you have seen one child that is adopted, one person that is adopted, you have see

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