Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
When There’s Nowhere for Your Children to Be Safe is title of an article in today's NY Times dealing with the angst of mothers whose children, both youngsters and adults, have psychological issues that are of concern to them.
This gift link will get you past the paywall and into the NY Times to read the article. The link is good for 30 days and beyond that I can renew it if I'm sent a DM requesting renewal.
Here's a few excerpts for those interested in the topic.
Quote:
These mothers keep their phones on silent because their nerves are fried. Every time they hear a ring, they know it could be awful news, and their minds and bodies tense up — over and over again for years. Their adult children have serious mental health issues or ongoing substance abuse issues or both.
One woman, whose son has severe mental illness and has been showing signs of emotional dysregulation since he was a small child, said that sometimes the phone would ring and “I didn’t know if it was a nurse calling to let me know she had to give him Tylenol or if they were calling to let me know that the sheriff’s office was there and they had to pull out the Tasers. I never knew.”
While there was variation in these families’ histories, the women I heard from hit similar bleak notes. A common story went something like this: An adult child had severe mental illness but wasn’t medication compliant because he or she hated the side effects or suffered from anosognosia, an inability to recognize one’s own illness.
Several women reported that even if their children consented to proper treatment and allowed their parents into the process, the treatment they sought could be nearly impossible to obtain.
“The country’s jails and prisons have become its largest provider of inpatient mental health treatment, with 10 times as many seriously mentally ill people now held behind bars as in hospitals.”
So much more in the article but I have to brief here; I hope our members use the gift link to read it. Our nation does a very poor job with our troubled citizens and I don't know if we can find the political will to do much about it, though I often think electing more women to office might help this and other issues we face.
__________________
- Please follow our TOS.
- Any Questions about City-Data? See the FAQ list.
- Want some detailed instructions on using the site? See The Guide for plain english explanation.
- Realtors are welcome here but do see our Realtor Advice to avoid infractions.
- Thank you and enjoy City-Data.
This is very much related to the struggles I've been dealing with, with my younger son. And honestly I'm starting to have concerns about my older one as well. I feel like the choices ahead are to:
1. Just accept that I will have to care for them for the rest of my life, and try to leave trusts to provide for them once I'm gone. (I really don't want to do this - the spending the rest of my life providing for and caring for them, that is.)
2. Cut them loose and let whatever happens, happen. Up to and including prison or death, both of which seem very possible. I am not at all convinced that either of them will buck up and pull themselves up by the bootstraps if only they want it badly enough and I step off and leave it all to them.
3. What I've been trying to pursue, which is some kind of "middle path" of moderated help...where I assist with their basic needs, but it isn't exactly comfortable and they do have some hardships and will continue to have them until they fix matters themselves that need fixing. My help being focused also on trying to solve any problems that are keeping them "stuck" right now...like encouraging them to seek the healthcare they need, trying to help them get transportation problems solved so that they can expand their job searches and so on.
I am afraid that it's hard to keep my assistance reined in to #3 without ending up in a #1 situation, though.
Many say I need to cut them off. I don't know if I can live with myself if I do, though. I tried to back it off with my younger kid and accept he's an adult and will do what he's gonna do...he wound up riding around in a car (living in the car) with an alcoholic and drug addicted girlfriend, getting into daily drinking and hard drugs himself, and getting into a public altercation with her that may end up with him going to jail after an upcoming court date. I feel like I am the only person who can barely help mitigate their propensity to disaster. But it's not a job I want. This is why I have a hard time with the natalists, frankly if I'd known at age 19 what I know now, I would not have had kids at all. This is not remotely the life I wanted, not even as rewarding as it was when they were small and adorable.
Some also say that we need to bring back the insane asylums. I am not sure about that. I mean, yes, I'd love it if there were somewhere for my troubled kid to go other than jail. But I worry that these places could all too often be cruel and abusive. I see how even some nursing homes are abusive and neglectful to the elderly, or children's homes brutal to the kids (watch "The Program" on Netflix) so no one will be able to convince me that the mental asylums are going to be kind places by default. It really seems to me like some who go into professions where they have power over others, wind up on a power trip, and do terrible harm to those at their mercy. And even if the staff were all great, there's a certain amount of peril from the other residents. My son is not a monster or a raving beast. He is generally well mannered and charming and has a great capacity for love and kindness...even if in many cases (that are important to being a functioning adult in a capitalist society) he just doesn't seem to know how to act or have the capacity to do what he's supposed to. I hate to say it, but I'd rather his life be cut short than for him to be locked up somewhere that he'd be tortured and miserable, just for the sake of him being alive. But then I am one who believes that there's not much point of life if you have no hope for any kind of quality of life...I know that's a philosophical position that many disagree with.
And he doesn't WANT to be a burden to me or anyone else. Neither of my sons really do. They just do not seem to have what it takes to avoid that, and to survive on their own.
SnazzyB makes a good point. Who has ever, actually, done a really good job of helping the mentally ill?
Honestly I'm not sure that we can reach the kind of solution I'd love to see, with some of the basic mindsets that drive our society in the US. If you had a truly kind and pastoral "put them out to pasture" that assured real comfort and care, you would inevitably have the capitalist-curmudgeon types saying that they are leeches on society just wanting to have the good life without working for it, and by golly if we don't torture anyone who is not either rich or working their butt off, then no one will work and society will collapse around us. As though people really want to give up their liberty to live in even a pleasant cage, and as though the only reason anyone would do any work ever is having a gun to their head in the form of basic survival needs. So yeah I just really don't know what one could hope for. And sadly, Mike, as a woman who pays attention to the voices of women...I don't think that we can hope that having more women in charge will really mean more compassion and better care for the vulnerable. I mean, I get why you might think so. But women are as prone as anyone to greed, graft, corruption, and other evils of power. If you follow politics, and you think about it...some of the women...well. You know what I'm saying.
It is almost impossible to keep politics out of a discussion on this subject, as ANY real solution has to be political, in the sense of a civic responsibility upheld by those with the power to create and enforce it.
The reasons for the dismantlement of state hospitals was political, the failure of the alternative system to materialize was also political. The (largely lack of) treatment of veterans by this country sickens me, and that disregard by Congress is purely political.
Where governments fail and individuals and groups step in to fill the gap, those well-intentioned efforts can slow or prevent a full reckoning and subsequent action. In effect, small churches and kind individuals become enablers for a government that wants to ignore a problem. Yes, individuals might be saved, but the greater problem cannot be properly addressed at that level, and it continues to grow and fester.
As for individuals, and individual situations, we have some guidance as to possibilities. Some of those are unpalatable to us, largely because of a system of ethics based upon "life at all costs." That IS a good basis for ethics in many ways, and it can prevent a lot of abuses and suffering. I see it as the best we can do, and support it. It is important to understand that as my position when I bring up the following possibilities, and recognize that a DISPASSIONATE examination of all possibilities is the first requirement in coming to a more nuanced view of which possibilities seem to hold the greatest promise.
In earlier times and smaller communities, churches and other religious groups were tribal in nature. If an individual within the group was a.) in trouble of some sort, and b.) in good standing within the community, then help was offered to the best of the abilities of the community. What was never said openly was that if the member wasn't in good standing, had broken the written and unwritten rules, that member would be ostracized or shunned, and left to figure out things on their own and only after contrition and recommitment allowed back in.
Such close tribal caring only works when the tribe is strong enough (financially, morally, physically) to support the weak, and the numbers are not overwhelming. With a diverse population and strong divisions caused by education and opportunity, psychoactive drugs that can be addictive, and multiple groups and individuals demanding to be leaders, it falls apart. The loss may not happen quickly, but it does over time.
The tribe response to threats to its existence is usually to become more insular and avoiding the acceptance of greater reality. "Yes, Tommy, there is a force called electricity. We don't believe in it as part of our lives. We also don't believe in weapons." That is all well and good until a neighbor tribe that accepts the realities invades. That is historical fact, repeated over and over through the ages. It might not be all-out war, but as for enforced changes by a stronger group - the native Americans forced into Christian schools can tell you all about that and the deaths that were a side effect.
Tribe care is not a good long-term answer to the problem of mentally ill children.
Capitalist care: Can we not make caring for these individuals a "for-profit" enterprise? It has been tried and is currently an option, but the costs, regulations, restrictions, and potential for loss make this a business that no savvy investor wants any part of. The "poor farms" and "workhouses" of the 1600s through 1800s worked upon that general principle. The inmates/clients/patients/drones were expected to do useful work for their keep, with that work benefitting the owner. You can read many horror stories about why it was problematic and abandoned.
Sheltered communities: In some situations those can work, but are often plagued with the same issues as capitalist care. There are costs involved, and compassion and pinching pennies are often at odds. Aberrant behavior generally ends up with stronger and stronger punishment. Some of the religious institutions were the worst offenders.
Now for some less palatable realities. In nature, motherhood is selective and can be brutal. The design is to keep the species going. Animals that didn't follow that rule simply died out naturally. Motherhood instincts were developed to keep HEALTHY offspring alive until fledging or adulthood. A mother bird will push an unhealthy chick out of the nest to its death without remorse. Strong siblings may kill the weak ones. The resources needed to care for a less healthy animal are much better used in caring for the strong ones. That allows the weakest to die out, and their genes not go on to the age of reproduction.
Within other species, that even extends to others not of the same tribe. To keep a colony of ants intact, sometimes ants will kill ants from competing colonies. When one tribe of lions takes over another, the cubs of the defeated group are killed by the dominant male.
The human version, eugenics, opened a can of worms. Initially, the "mentally defective" were sterilized to prevent reproduction. Under the stress of war in Germany, those who were sterilized but still alive were consuming resources and "eliminated." The concept became further politicized until the idea of "The Master Race" deemed all other people with different genes as "inferior." The ant colony model happened on a larger more malignant scale.
What the entranced Germans failed to recognize is the power of diversity in humans. Not only does it prevent inbreeding and the diseases that plagued European rulers for centuries, but allows for individuals who can tolerate conditions that others cannot. Eugenics is ultimately a dead-end street. Closing that can of worms back up completely was important to humanity as a whole.
Are there people that shouldn't procreate? I'd argue yes, but only as an informed personal choice. The concept that everyone should have children is misguided on many levels, and partly an artifact of cultures and religions wanting to overpower others by sheer numbers (it was part of German eugenics policy as well).
If every life has value, the taking of the time and energy from one individual to support another only has validity as long as it doesn't totally drain the stronger individual and make them a drain on the society as well. We have an instinctual understanding of that concept within certain settings, but not others.
The masculine concept of a boy growing up strong and becoming independent at a certain age, then building wealth and knowledge to be able to eventually support the elderly parents is part of our culture. The feminine version of that is more nuanced, and generally more focused on future generations.
When a child cannot meet those cultural imperatives, and indeed cannot successfully handle their own affairs, where does the responsibility of the parents end and those of the culture imposing those imperatives begin?
Strictly as a point of discussion, I would posit an age where we generally expect all offspring to be self-supporting, perhaps age 24? That is an age where college is generally finished, the brain has matured and the bulk of hormonal insanity has passed. At that point, a parent is generally limited to attempts to support, and any hope of change has eroded away. In some cases, that shift of responsibility may need to be earlier.
How these individuals are treated or cared for then becomes a question. The CCC was a depression era program for able-bodied men. Are there areas where those with crippling mental issues can feel worth? Are there areas that society in general approves of for those people?
My guess is that sheltered communities may still be a choice, especially if the collective output of those communities holds a greater value than that of any competition. I speak not only of crafts, but of collaborations where an artist of renown dedicates a series of designs that only that community can produce, or products that have one part of production dependent on the community with a portion of profits going to them. Those are simply speculations in hopes of getting a conversation going.
The issue is one that takes a large community to address. "Solving" might never be a possibility. Being compassionate is a start.
It's a newspaper article. If they don't sensationalize it no one will read it. There are many, many places in every country on this earth that are safe, but that doesn't make the newspapers or the news that is online, on the TV, etc. Everyone knows this. And if it IS like that where you are, move.
It's a newspaper article. If they don't sensationalize it no one will read it. There are many, many places in every country on this earth that are safe, but that doesn't make the newspapers or the news that is online, on the TV, etc. Everyone knows this. And if it IS like that where you are, move.
I agree with the first and second sentence. For SOME people, moving is an option. For others -visiting rights for the other parent, probation for the kid, and a host of other reasons, moving may NOT be an option. Sometimes life acts like the Hoover.
What you might be missing is that the U.S. isn't every other country. Gangs and people going missing in the middle of the night are only a dull roar compared to some other countries. The point is to make the country better, take care of all the inhabitants, have a sane rule of law, and provide help when and where needed, without creating a dependency like in the U.K. where "It doesn't matter, the state will take care of me." Their nice thought has turned their NHS into a nightmare for many.
Newspapers love to have "social" articles all about the plight of mums and moms, to the point of perpetuating a sexism that denies the plights of fathers and offspring. It is, as you suggest, a way to get and hopefully keep readers. Journalism has always had the hacks in the tabloids, and when the income stream dries up, businesses resort to cheap tricks.
This is very much related to the struggles I've been dealing with, with my younger son. And honestly I'm starting to have concerns about my older one as well. I feel like the choices ahead are to:
1. Just accept that I will have to care for them for the rest of my life, and try to leave trusts to provide for them once I'm gone. (I really don't want to do this - the spending the rest of my life providing for and caring for them, that is.)
2. Cut them loose and let whatever happens, happen. Up to and including prison or death, both of which seem very possible. I am not at all convinced that either of them will buck up and pull themselves up by the bootstraps if only they want it badly enough and I step off and leave it all to them.
3. What I've been trying to pursue, which is some kind of "middle path" of moderated help...where I assist with their basic needs, but it isn't exactly comfortable and they do have some hardships and will continue to have them until they fix matters themselves that need fixing. My help being focused also on trying to solve any problems that are keeping them "stuck" right now...like encouraging them to seek the healthcare they need, trying to help them get transportation problems solved so that they can expand their job searches and so on.
I am afraid that it's hard to keep my assistance reined in to #3 without ending up in a #1 situation, though.
Many say I need to cut them off. I don't know if I can live with myself if I do, though. I tried to back it off with my younger kid and accept he's an adult and will do what he's gonna do...he wound up riding around in a car (living in the car) with an alcoholic and drug addicted girlfriend, getting into daily drinking and hard drugs himself, and getting into a public altercation with her that may end up with him going to jail after an upcoming court date. I feel like I am the only person who can barely help mitigate their propensity to disaster. But it's not a job I want. This is why I have a hard time with the natalists, frankly if I'd known at age 19 what I know now, I would not have had kids at all. This is not remotely the life I wanted, not even as rewarding as it was when they were small and adorable.
Some also say that we need to bring back the insane asylums. I am not sure about that. I mean, yes, I'd love it if there were somewhere for my troubled kid to go other than jail. But I worry that these places could all too often be cruel and abusive. I see how even some nursing homes are abusive and neglectful to the elderly, or children's homes brutal to the kids (watch "The Program" on Netflix) so no one will be able to convince me that the mental asylums are going to be kind places by default. It really seems to me like some who go into professions where they have power over others, wind up on a power trip, and do terrible harm to those at their mercy. And even if the staff were all great, there's a certain amount of peril from the other residents. My son is not a monster or a raving beast. He is generally well mannered and charming and has a great capacity for love and kindness...even if in many cases (that are important to being a functioning adult in a capitalist society) he just doesn't seem to know how to act or have the capacity to do what he's supposed to. I hate to say it, but I'd rather his life be cut short than for him to be locked up somewhere that he'd be tortured and miserable, just for the sake of him being alive. But then I am one who believes that there's not much point of life if you have no hope for any kind of quality of life...I know that's a philosophical position that many disagree with.
And he doesn't WANT to be a burden to me or anyone else. Neither of my sons really do. They just do not seem to have what it takes to avoid that, and to survive on their own.
SnazzyB makes a good point. Who has ever, actually, done a really good job of helping the mentally ill?
Honestly I'm not sure that we can reach the kind of solution I'd love to see, with some of the basic mindsets that drive our society in the US. If you had a truly kind and pastoral "put them out to pasture" that assured real comfort and care, you would inevitably have the capitalist-curmudgeon types saying that they are leeches on society just wanting to have the good life without working for it, and by golly if we don't torture anyone who is not either rich or working their butt off, then no one will work and society will collapse around us. As though people really want to give up their liberty to live in even a pleasant cage, and as though the only reason anyone would do any work ever is having a gun to their head in the form of basic survival needs. So yeah I just really don't know what one could hope for. And sadly, Mike, as a woman who pays attention to the voices of women...I don't think that we can hope that having more women in charge will really mean more compassion and better care for the vulnerable. I mean, I get why you might think so. But women are as prone as anyone to greed, graft, corruption, and other evils of power. If you follow politics, and you think about it...some of the women...well. You know what I'm saying.
First I can't recommend the Nami family to family program strongly enough. You have nothing to lose by looking into this.
I think it's worth it to figure out what resources are available to you so you don't get totally overwhelmed.
The issues you are dealing with are problems that expand to fill the time you allocate to them. If you quit your job and devoted 24 hours a day to these problems, some of them still couldn't be fixed by you alone. Your long term goal should be to move directionally toward interacting with your kids as their mother, but not making it your job to solve all of their problems. You can never win at that job. The problem is too big.
But the intermediate step is to figure out what resources are available to your kids, so you can redirect your kids to institutions that have the ability to better address their own need at the appropriate level of care your kids require. At some point we all die and then what? Not everyone has parents that can afford to pay for this stuff, so there are resources available here for this purpose. That is why you need to figure out what institutions can help because they will be around long after you are gone.
You are not the only person who has family members dealing with this stuff. The truth of the matter is there are powerful people in all levels of government who also have family members with mental illness and so there are resources available at all levels of government.
The bureaucracy is well intended but difficult to navigate because that is also how it allocates limited resources. If the bureaucracy make it too easy to get on permanent disability/ gain access to services scam artists would game the system. If it's a real hassle to navigate through the system, only people with significant actual problems are going to bother to jump through the hoops. It's not worth it for everyone else. Nami family to family explains how the to navigate the system successfully. You are meeting with other families who have family members in the system and they explain the system to you, they also help you figure out what level of care your kids need.
But frankly the pursuit of "resources, programs, and systems" overwhelms me more than just dealing with my kids does. You invest time into these things only to be told a lot of what you already know and when the rubber meets the road of ACTUAL like...housing? ...reliable transportation? Real logistical things individuals need to live a life, these "programs and resources" have endless wait lists for vouchers and overfilled "affordable" solutions that are not affordable and shelters that will rob you of your belongings, where you are in peril from the other residents and will have to follow in/out hours in a manner that will prevent you from being able to work a job... The REALITY of these things SUCKS. And it makes me pretty upset when those who often argue against funding programs to help vulnerable members of society insist that there are already good programs, and well it's hard to keep those darn scammers from getting the luxe life off mah tax dollers as it oughtta be but it's out there! If you really REALLY have actual real need, you can get help! He's been denied for disability 3 times now. Even with tons of backup and multiple psychiatrists saying he "definitely qualifies." It is a struggle for him to stay on food stamps and Medicaid, he has to constantly go show up with this or that documentation, how can you begin a job and be a reliable employee but have to take time off to go up to the DHS office, I don't know. On top of his appointments, and the days his mind or body just won't let him work. And the fact that getting anywhere in town on the bus takes hours when it would take ten minutes in a car.
And all this that stresses me out...ME, a well employed, fairly comfortable, pretty reasonable and chill kind of person who is generally very good at calmly thinking stuff through and finding solutions to problems... I mean, I ENJOY tax preparation, OK? It stresses me out thinking about the pile of problems and obstacles my kid has just to get by. Imagine what it's like for someone who now has a pile of mental health diagnoses, mainly among them schizo-affective disorder with anxiety and depression...and he's on meds but the meds have side effects...and he is in constant pain from some mysterious problem in his gut that makes him feel stabbing pains inside all the time, but the doctors can't seem to find why...but guess what? Schizophrenia and gut problems such as Crohn's, colitis, pancreatitis, etc are shown by autopsy studies to have EIGHTY percent co-morbidity... So he's dealing with all this within himself and he also somehow has to handle navigating "the system" for "resources" that if he's very lucky and extremely persistent, will help him to (barely) survive...
It's no freaking wonder he has thoughts of ending it. Good grief.
No, there is no safe place, not inside of his mind and body and not outside of it, not for him. Well. Maybe if I commit myself to creating and maintaining one, I can give him the "outside" part. But only at very great cost to myself.
I know this is a whole arse rant from me here. I guess what I wish one might take from it is, please try to understand when I say that I frankly struggle to imagine how he could possibly overcome the challenges he's got without a great deal of help. And I really do not think that simply suggesting he go and interact with some "resources" is going to replace the help that I can give him in a way that avoids death or jail for him. Sure, shelato, I might do the class if I can find the time, I'm also in the middle of a hell of a moving project as well as home renovations that have to get done and work and everything else. But read the text on the linked page for Colorado Springs, if you would, please? Read it. Do you think I don't understand my kid's mental illness? Do you think I don't understand the meds? Do you think I need someone to talk to me about empathy or listening skills? And "self care"...jeezus...look, either I am charging forward at 110% or I'm crashed, there's no in between over here. That just is what it is. As for the supports and services in the community, yeah, we don't need help finding them, we found them and they had little meaningful help to offer.
If you did not know, Colorado Springs, while things are starting to shift, has been a conservative led community for a very long time. Which means that where it comes to "community supports and services" he could go to a church and they will pray for him. The homeless shelters are nightmarish. The mental hospitals are, at best, daycare without shoelaces of a very temporary kind and when they toss you back out, you're still right where you started.
And those government officials at all levels with family members who have these mental problems have piles of money to take care of them. There's a group home up in Boulder I looked at, at one point. Many thousands of dollars to go there, and no insurance of any kind pays any part of it. America has little to offer for those who are not already rich, and who cannot participate properly in the labor force. You either own wealth or you labor for those who do, here. There truly isn't much compassion for anyone who falls through those cracks. Except from their own family, if they are very lucky. In my case...I have just enough resources to provide for him, but not enough to do it comfortably. Not enough to see to my own retirement and security, if I do. And it is horribly unfair to my husband, who did not ask for this, and it is harmful to my own quality of life...and again, not least of the matter, I'm also not even sure if my kid will consent to LET me help him long term. Hell I don't know if he stays out of jail a few months from now.
I just have a hell of a lot of envy for those who are positioned (not you specifically shelato, more the longer post from harry, up-thread) to see this matter from off the chess-board and be able to discuss it as a matter of politics, philosophy or theory, presumably because they have no real life involvement in it but find it interesting. MAN do I effin' envy that. I wish that I could just...discuss this from a rhetorical place, and not a "hey remember that horse from The Never-Ending Story movie? that's what this feels like more often than not" place.
...I wish that I could just...discuss this from a rhetorical place, and not a "hey remember that horse from The Never-Ending Story movie? that's what this feels like more often than not" place.
Sonic, put them (your sons) on a keto/carnivore diet. Do it now. They'll improve their mental health. Please, watch the final 12 minutes of this, if you can't watch all of it. Take care.
I just have a hell of a lot of envy for those who are positioned (not you specifically shelato, more the longer post from harry, up-thread) to see this matter from off the chess-board and be able to discuss it as a matter of politics, philosophy or theory, presumably because they have no real life involvement in it but find it interesting. MAN do I effin' envy that. I wish that I could just...discuss this from a rhetorical place, and not a "hey remember that horse from The Never-Ending Story movie? that's what this feels like more often than not" place.
Your presumption is incorrect. I cannot discuss that further, due to privacy issues.
The mindset to look for the larger picture is available to most anyone, although it can be difficult for many. Mine comes in part from a lot of experiences that required introspection and repeatedly asking "why?" I also have a bunch of training, a lot of it self-taught over the years. I think some of that came from writing a few major computer programs from scratch, solo. In those, you HAVE to look at the big picture and pare it down to what is important, what is raw data, what is manipulated, what the desired output is - and then write the interface to be used by the uneducated. Computer programs don't have emotions.
I understand slipping into emotional responses, I do not mean to denigrate that type of gut response. Those responses are human and part of what separates us from the cold of logic.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
