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.

How we are seen as parents

I am regularly told, how inspirational I am as a parent. How my wife and I are such good people for what we are going through in regards to David and his care. For fighting for him and his rights to care. Quite honestly, there are times when we feel, let me correct that, when I feel that I am failing as a parent. There are no magic answers when raising a child with severe mental illness.  You just do the best you can with the information that you are given, demand answers when needed, and bulldog for your child the rest of the time. David didn’t ask to be born the way he is.  Someone else made that decision every time they made the decision to use drugs while pregnant with him. We use medicine to help David be stable enough to learn self-control.  Are we successful?  Yes and

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treatment sabotage???

David has a number of diagnoses.  As I have discussed here before.  One of them is bipolar disorder.  It seems that when David went to the second facility in July for his med wash, no one thought to put him back on a med to help with the bipolar disorder. No wonder my son is manic.  And these people are professionals? I don’t proclaim to be a medical person.  I only know what I know about these disorders after years of having to deal with medical professionals on David’s behalf.   To me, it is a huge disservice to determine that the facility can’t adequately care for our son, especially when they aren’t adequately treating his mental illnesses.   Meds aren’t a cure.  They are meant to augment the other treatment options and methods that are in use.   Related articles   Do You Understand the Bipolar Spectrum? (psychcentral.com) Being

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PRTF Update and sadness

First, let me start by defining PRTF for our readers. Psychiatric Residential Treatment Facility.  (PRTF) David is a resident at a PRTF about an hour north of our house.  Today, we received notice that his stay there is coming to an end. The reasons that we were given: Hyperactivity is getting worse. Aggressive behaviors are increasing. Concerns: Behaviors are decreasing beyond what we can manage here. the psychologist says testing shows mental health needs are increasing.   Reality levels are decreasing. Needs a residence with decreased stimulation. David is not benefiting from being at the facility. At this point, there are no facilities that we know of that can take our 12 year old boy. =========== To say that we are heartbroken is an understatement.  We are also very frustrated.  They are licensed by the state to care for kids like David.  Yet we are at this point. The nearest facility

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