Measuring The Progress of Our Village

Nov. 10, 2018

It's important to measure progress. I wrote this more than three years ago as a blogger for the International Bipolar Foundation. My feelings are still the same but, thankfully, our village is ever-growing.


May 27, 2015

Parenting isn’t easy. Anyone who’s ever parented, or has even just been parented well knows that. Don’t they say, “It takes a village to raise a child”? As if to say raising children well takes more than just one person, it takes a community, right?

Let’s suppose, God forbid, that your child has been diagnosed with a very serious illness, such as diabetes or, dare I say it, cancer. My assumption is that the outpouring of support would be ample from the very start. From what I can tell, serious childhood illnesses like these are publicized and supported locally and nationally in many ways. There are 5K races, online campaigns, viral videos, fundraisers, and celebrity spokespersons offering their support to encourage donations and community involvement. And, of course, in our local communities, neighbors and friends seem to be willing and able to offer random daily kindnesses. They are bringing over lasagna, mowing the lawn, or caring for your other children when you take your sick child to the hospital. Yes, the entire village certainly seems to step in and help. And thank God, too. Because caring for a sick child is not only heart-wrenching, it is exhausting. Caring for a sick child can break you.

But now, let’s suppose, that your child has been diagnosed with a mental illness. What does the community do for you? How do they reach out and help?

(Crickets, the sound of crickets)

Childhood Cancers and other similar illnesses are tragic diagnoses, life-changing, and sometimes terminal. Parenting a child with such an illness requires on-going support. Parents need to be thoroughly informed, comforted and encouraged to stay strong through the challenges ahead.

But, have we forgotten, Childhood and Teen Mental Illnesses are tragic as well? Life-changing...and yes, sometimes even terminal. Parenting a child with such an illness requires on-going support. Parents need to be thoroughly informed, comforted and encouraged to stay strong through the challenges ahead.

Parenting isn’t easy. But when you are parenting a child with mental illness, the walls cave in. I know this first hand. And there are no neighbors offering lasagna at your doorstep. Because it is likely, you haven’t told anyone. Because who would you tell? What would people think? What would they say? And what could they possibly do to help? So, often times, it’s just you. And your child. With perhaps their siblings, frightened and alone.

I met a mother this week, a mother of a son who has schizoaffective disorder. Her son is exactly my son’s age. We traded stories and some tears over coffee. The onset of my son’s bipolar diagnosis paralleled her son’s situation in many ways, only her son’s illness is relatively new, while my son’s illness has been a part of our lives for five years now.

As I relayed our family’s story to her, the tension in her neck, the quiver in her voice, the furrow in her brows all seemed to lessen a bit. She kept saying, “How do you do it? How have you been so strong? I am not sure I can do this…”

But, clearly, she can do this. Because she took a step I didn’t take when I should have. She reached out for help. When my son first presented with his illness five years ago, my walls all caved in. I didn’t tell anyone. And there was definitely no lasagna, no one to share stories, coffee and tears with. But now, thankfully, the stigma of mental illness is finally breaking down a bit. This other mother and I met through a local mental health organization that put us in touch when she contacted them for help. I became involved with the organization about a year after my son’s spiral into serious illness, after he’d begun self-medicating out of denial and after he made life-altering decisions that ultimately led to his incarceration. She, however, became involved at the onset of her son’s diagnosis. So her son, thankfully, is now getting help...and so is she.

This is progress.

Our communities need to acknowledge that parenting children with serious conditions, whether they are illnesses of the pancreas, the blood, or the mind, need help.

We need a village of support to do this right. I hope to be part of that village, if only for this one mother. Because nobody should have to do this alone.

Original post titled as "Be the Village" on http://www.ibpf.org/blog/be-village

Examining Fear

Nov. 4, 2018

Today I dug up an old post from six years ago. Looking back, I still identify with a lot of it, but there are a couple of key differences. First, I claimed that "I am speaking out for all other parents..." yet, at that time, I was still writing blog posts anonymously fearing the stigma. Eventually, I would find the courage to overcome my anonymity. And second, in this post, I am really fearful. I remember, six years ago my son was so unpredictable. He'd already shown that he was potentially dangerous. I lived in a constant state of fear. At the time, he had not yet been arrested, but his erratic behavior was increasing and his arrest was imminent. Of course, I did not know that then.

But looking back, perhaps the fear I expressed here is less about him being dangerous and more about the uncertainty I felt. Not knowing what might happen terrified me. Today, six years later, I cannot say that my son's situation has completely stabilized. But in a way, I think I have. My stability comes from gradually accepting the uncertainty of serious mental illness, not only his illness but mine. That fear came from not knowing. My evolving courage comes from accepting the fact I may never know.

---

Sometime in early 2013


If my twenty-year-old son knew I was writing this, I'm not sure what he'd do. Bipolar disorder can be a dangerous thing when it goes untreated. I am a mother who is afraid of her son, but I am speaking out for all the other parents out there who fear their own children.

First, you should know something about me. I have bipolar II. I was diagnosed in 2011, a year after my world crumbled. A year after my older son walked out my door. With a right-for-now cocktail of medications plus a wonderful therapist, I function well day to day. My colleagues would never guess that I have bipolar II. They probably attribute my high spirited antics to being a creative teacher. They don't know there is electricity tingling underneath my skin when I'm hypomanic. And when the melancholy settles in, I rely on my finest acting skills at work and my peers are none the wiser. From the outside, I seem just fine. But on the inside, I struggle.

Thanks to a proper diagnosis and treatment I manage my life better now than I ever did before. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for my older son. Though his diagnosis came over two years ago, he has refused any treatment. Instead, he self-medicates with drugs and alcohol. He dropped out of college. Twice. And he's usually unemployed. He is trapped by his own apathy and sees no way out. And I am powerless to help him.

His story is my story and I want to share it with you. His story, my story is one of heartache and tragedy, broken promises and last chances. But it is also a story of hope. I am still hopeful that he will get help for himself. I am still hopeful that his life will turn around. I am still hopeful that he will become whole again. I am his mother and I will always love him. But because I fear him, for now, I will have to love him from a safe distance.

This post was originally used as a blogger biography on http://ibpf.org/blog/stillhopefulmom.

"So Maybe You're Not Bipolar"

August 6, 2013

Seek Treatment. That's what we hope people with mental illnesses do. We want them to feel free to acknowledge their condition and seek treatment. Talk to a therapist. Try medication. Follow a doctor's plan to treat your illness. "You can feel better if you seek treatment." Isn't that what we say?

Well, that's what my 21 year old son has done. Finally. After over two years of ignoring his diagnosis, he's finally acknowledged it and sought treatment. In prison.

See where it's gotten him.

He is currently incarcerated in our state prison. Inside, he has had to convince the DOC psychiatrists that his Bipolar Disorder is real. The psychiatrists on the payroll who are expected to treat inmates for mental illnesses have been less than helpful.

All this time, while my son has been in prison, he's been trying to tell them he's "Bipolar". At first, they believed him and gave him a generic anti-depressant and a low dose of a mood stabilizer. Not the meds he'd been on in the past, but at least they were something. Then he was experiencing bad side effects so he reported them to the psychiatrist making her rounds on his tier that day. This was her response:

"So maybe you're not Bipolar!"

You can imagine my shock when my son told me a medical professional said this to him. Isn't it her job to diagnose and treat mental illnesses? Yet she can speak to a patient like this?

But the worst part was what she did next.

She took him off the anti-depressant completely. She told him that in order to receive any more treatment, his doctor needed to contact her and inform her of his Bipolar diagnosis. She left him on the low dose of mood stabilizer which he said did "nothing". Subsequent visits from her and other psychiatrists doing their rounds on his tier did nothing to improve the limbo in which he'd been damned.

So for the last several months I've been trying to acquire all of his records to prove that he IS, in fact, Bipolar. First, I called his regular doctor who was unable to call the doctor at the prison- this is because the diagnosis did not come from his regular doctor, it came from a psychiatric hospital. Makes sense.

So then I went the route of requesting his medical records. Sounds easy enough. But consider the fact that he's 21 years old. This means every single medical professional he saw in his lifetime required a separate release form signed by my son. So, through snail mail, I began my quest of accessing the forms, sending them to him to be signed, having him send them back to me, and then sending them to the correct establishments in hopes of receiving the records. This was a nightmare. Thankfully, the nurse at his regular doctor's office helped me with this and eased the stress considerably.

We were almost home free when we realized that the release forms we'd been using were not accepted at certain mental health facilities. 

Back to the drawing board.

Thankfully, at this point our attorney stepped in and worked his magic to acquire the records more quickly. It's amazing what attorneys can accomplish. What took us months took him less than a week. So now, we may have finally struck gold. The last of the records have been acquired and presented to the prison mental health ward director along with a personal note from our attorney.

After FIVE MONTHS, my inmate son may finally be given the proper medication for his Bipolar Disorder.

So Maybe he IS Bipolar like he's been saying all along.