Fighting for Answers | Category Archives: Mental Health | Page 59Mental Health Archives - Page 59 of 133

a visit with David, in the end a success

Mom and I went to visit David tonight. We gave ourselves an hour. It takes an hour to get to the residence, and an hour to get home. On a school night, we left the other kids at home. We were excited to see him. He is out of the psych ward and back at the residential facility. Since David doesn’t call, and things have been hectic with the other kids, it has been a good month since Mom has seen him. We do call there, but he is usually doing activity when we call. And then he forgets to return the call. Within 5 minutes of arrival David decided he was done. He wanted to go outside and play. Tried to compromise and when that didn’t work, he got mean. He pushed every button he could until he got mom so upset she was in tears. I tried to

Update on David.

David is finally admitting that he tried to harm himself. It took some prompting, and he acts like it is no big deal. He said that he didn’t mean to scare anyone when he wrapped the shoestrings around his throat. He thinks that they are letting him go back to the residential facility tomorrow, but we haven’t heard anything about it. All the same. In other news, we are going to get an advocate involved to see if we can get an aide in the classroom just for David. That coupled with the changes in his meds, and we hope to get him to stay in the classroom. A second IEP meeting has been scheduled because we disagreed with the first one. Initially, mom and I were under the impression that the school could determine when he was sent elsewhere for placement. With the aide of the clinical and residential

Explaining mental illness to the siblings.

How do you explain mental illness to a child with Autism? Are you blunt in your explanations? Should it be explained? In our family, we have a child with severe mental illness. He is currently in the hospital. At home we have his siblings, how do we explain to the siblings the depth of the their brother’s illness? Or do we just not talk about it? In our house, everyone knows that David has needs that can’t be cared for at home. They understand that life at home is better without the constant stress of having David here. They understand lots of things, such as they don’t have to barricade themselves in their rooms. They can leave their stuff unhidden because David isn’t here to steal anything. They know that the animals are healthy because David isn’t here to poison them. Yet. They miss David.