Category Archives: Health

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The Story of Doubting Dad

Dear Why Not Fathers, I know this dad.  He has a son who suffers from mental illness.  Really, the whole family suffers with the mental illness of the child.  No one person in the family is immune to the tragedy that is mental illness. He and his family are literally doing everything that they can to help their son. Yet, he continually doubts himself, thinking that he isn’t doing every thing that he can. He spends his days looking for other ways to help his son. To help the rest of the family. I keep telling him that he is doing every thing possible.  Yet the doubt still exists. How do I convince him that he is really doing every thing that he can for his family?  That the fault in the system is not his to take blame for? No amount of money can help this situation, other than

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Did you really just ask me that???

Interesting conversation with the social worker where David is in care. The solution that the social worker at the hospital gave me was to call the cops if he becomes aggressive. I explained that the community depends on the Sheriff department for our police department and that they might have to come from their main office or further away. So their response time could be delayed up to half an hour depending on the number of deputies on shift. She asked if there was any way I could get them to respond faster. So I mentioned the miles involved. 35 miles to the main office, 50 miles to the south border of the county, that kind of thing.. “Can you get them to respond faster???”  she asked. I actually pulled the phone away from my ear and looked at incredulously… like maybe she could see the look on my face

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Seeing David

Each night that David is in care at the mental health unit, we go see him. We are not greeted with any emotion. He never cries when we leave. He is content to live there and visit home. When he comes home, knives will be locked up. Chemicals will be locked up. We are perusing closed circuit cameras for the main areas of our house. When behaviors start, we will record them as much as we can. We are literally turning parts of our home into a jail. How sad is that? But.. he is our son.  He will always be our son.  No amount of mental illness will take that part of him away from us, his family. David, you will likely never read this… please know that we love you very much.   Tweet #fighting4answrs