Perspective of the mother of a mentally ill teenager

[precious_one]

I didn't see her but I have to agree w/ u.[/quote

She should have kept her identity anonymous for the sake of her child.

[lawfulevil]

It should also be kept in mind that we have no idea what the child's side of the story is.

It pleased my mother to act like I was crazy because it got her attention and let her get away with treating me any way she liked. My horrible behavior was only half the story. Every one of the many, many shrinks I saw diagnosed me with something different, and not one of them stopped for a second to think that maybe I was poorly behaved because my parents were physically and emotionally abusive. They were white and could afford shrinks, so surely they don't beat their children!

As an adult I'm a perfectly normal person. I'm not violent. I avoid conflict. I don't own a gun. And the thought of killing anyone... let alone multiple people... fills me with horror.

It's almost like I'm not who my mother says I am.

[BravaAmica]

I didn't see her but I have to agree w/ u.[/quote

She should have kept her identity anonymous for the sake of her child.

Her entire blog is about parenting her difficult children. At least change the kids' names, where they all live and other identifying information.

[Austin]

I thought she did change the child's name in the article.

At any rate, I do believe we need to have more discussion in this country about mental illness. Forcing parents to be silent and isolated is not the answer, either. My sensibilities usually lean much more towards the side of privacy, but on the other hand, how many parents are suffering in silence and isolation with children they cannot control or seem to find help for?

[Peas n carrots]

I thought she did change the child's name in the article.

At any rate, I do believe we need to have more discussion in this country about mental illness. Forcing parents to be silent and isolated is not the answer, either. My sensibilities usually lean much more towards the side of privacy, but on the other hand, how many parents are suffering in silence and isolation with children they cannot control or seem to find help for?

100% agree the stigma needs to be removed and there needs to be more conversation. The "I'm Adam Lanza's Mother" was totally the wrong approach and I worry about the damage being done to this kid on top of his existing issues. This woman could have said "my son has issues like Adam Lanza's and it is hard to cope." However her approaches- to me - perpetuates the stigma, that all kids with these types of issues end up being mass murderers. It seems to be coming to light that there was more going on in Adam's world than just mental illness...it seems that his mother may have had her own paranoia issues.

[Austin]

100% agree the stigma needs to be removed and there needs to be more conversation. The "I'm Adam Lanza's Mother" was totally the wrong approach and I worry about the damage being done to this kid on top of his existing issues. This woman could have said "my son has issues like Adam Lanza's and it is hard to cope." However her approaches- to me - perpetuates the stigma, that all kids with these types of issues end up being mass murderers. It seems to be coming to light that there was more going on in Adam's world than just mental illness...it seems that his mother may have had her own paranoia issues.

Sorry, as I'm not meaning to be obtuse, but I took that as attention-grabbing hyperbole, as obviously, she isn't Adam Lanza's mother. The point is, given the trajectory her son seems to be on, she is afraid that she one day could be in a similar situation to Adam Lanza's mother in that her son could possibly do something that is beyond her control, despite her best efforts. Not necessarily mass murder, but something that could potentially hurt others or be a crime.

And her son's name is not Michael, as she refers to him in the blog post. Maybe she blabbed his real identity all over the place and I just didn't see it, though.

As far as she should simply say, "My son has issues like Adam Lanza's and it is hard to cope", if she does that, then we wouldn't necessarily know what issues she's talking about specifically. By the grace of the FSM, I haven't raised a child with these sorts of issues and so am pretty clueless on how it would be to deal with this day in and day out and what sort of challenges she, her son, and his siblings face. I don't know how to support parents in these situations and I think we need to them to tell us what they need. I don't believe she should have to deal with it in silence and isolation so that the rest of us are more comfortable. She should be respectful of her son and his privacy, but the lack of accessibility to appropriate mental health services is a societal issue as well as a family issue.

[Peas n carrots]

Sorry, as I'm not meaning to be obtuse, but I took that as attention-grabbing hyperbole, as obviously, she isn't Adam Lanza's mother. The point is, given the trajectory her son seems to be on, she is afraid that she one day could be in a similar situation to Adam Lanza's mother in that her son could possibly do something that is beyond her control, despite her best efforts. Not necessarily mass murder, but something that could potentially hurt others or be a crime.

And her son's name is not Michael, as she refers to him in the blog post. Maybe she blabbed his real identity all over the place and I just didn't see it, though.

As far as she should simply say, "My son has issues like Adam Lanza's and it is hard to cope", if she does that, then we wouldn't necessarily know what issues she's talking about specifically. By the grace of the FSM, I haven't raised a child with these sorts of issues and so am pretty clueless on how it would be to deal with this day in and day out and what sort of challenges she, her son, and his siblings face. I don't know how to support parents in these situations and I think we need to them to tell us what they need. I don't believe she should have to deal with it in silence and isolation so that the rest of us are more comfortable. She should be respectful of her son and his privacy, but the lack of accessibility to appropriate mental health services is a societal issue as well as a family issue.

Here is a link to Jezebel's story...they echo my sentiment, but state it more eloquently:

http://jezebel.com/5968971/that-woman-is-not-adam-lanzas-mother-and-shes-distracting-us-from-the-real-issue

The child has his picture up on the blog. The mother was on national TV...I'm sure in their community they will be recognized.

I can't imagine what parents of children with these kinds of issues go through and I'm sure it's comforting to know they aren't alone. I just don't think that hyperbole should be used at this kid's expense.

[Austin]

I guess I disagree with you and Laura Beck on what the issues are, or at least the complexity and number of the issues. Everyone is going to have their own sensibilities on this subject. There were plenty of commenters on her blog post that found what she wrote very helpful and plenty of critics, too.

[Fargood]

No it is damn near impossible to get a conservatorship. I have written here about my ex-husband. I have been desperate for years to get him help. He is more a victim than a victimizer but the potential is there for both. The police don't help and when I called the county, I have been told that he must be unable to care for himself--meaning that he must go homeless. I have heard of judges denying conservatorship to homeless people because they have the wherewithal to jump into a garbage bin for food (got this information from NAMI). Ex-spouses are looked on with suspicion because they must have ill motives. Brittney Spears' family got help because they are famous and rich and her meltdowns were very public.

This is absolutely true. Getting a conservatorship is almost impossible. So long as the person is orientated to time, space and circumstance a court will not likely allow a conservatorship, even when it's meant to protect the other party from abuse, especially financial abuse.

The best way to get a conservatorship is to sit the person down and ask them to consent to one. Of course, if they would consent to that kind of help, you wouldn't need a conservatorship.

[wild little fox]

I find what she wrote at her blog disturbing. Reaching for a hand hold and thinking about killing her son with a pice of granite because she is angry that he has altitude sickness? Then write about it, publicly in her blog?

Am I misunderstanding her?

[AuntCloud]

A heart-wrenching comment that sums it all up. I did not appreciate Laura Beck's comment of "Lumping everyone into a giant pot of crazy". Another big issue is that there really is no middle ground between "safe to themselves and others" and "have committed a violent crime". The point of intervention - *before* the violent crime is committed - really doesn't exist within the current system.

Laura, I think you're missing the point and it makes this article a pretty painful slap to people who are in this situation without a safety net. Liza Long isn't railing against the mentally ill or accusing every depressed teen of being two minute away from becoming a mass murderer - she's rightly pointing out that even in cases where you fear an individual's actions based on their past violence or threats of violence, there's no resource to help those people until its too late. My younger brother has been prone to violence since he was in Kindergarten. He lives with his wife and children with my parents but cannot hold a job, and his outbursts of manic behavior and violent threats come more frequently and with greater intensity as each year goes by. But without him actually hurting anyone and getting institutionalized as a result, all we can do is wait and hope that when he snaps that the damage will be counted in injuries, not death. I know the fear of walking out to my car after work and seeing someone that looks like my brother out of the corner of my eye ("oh god...is this the day that he shows up and shoots me? I hope my husband and son at home were spared. Please don't let him have gone there first looking for me. Oh thank god, that's not him.") And I know the fear that one day I'm going to get a phone call or check the headlines and find out that 3/4 of my family were snuffed out in a murder suicide at my brother's hands. We've tried for 30 years to find a psychiatrist, a program, a therapy, a medication, anything, that would help him. He's become so good at gaming the system that the last time my 75 year old mother had to call the cops to respond to my brother threatening to kill her and my father, my brother smooth talked the cops into thinking that my mother was the one with the aggression issue. Twice he has been committed over suicide threats but he's always released within a few days and returns home coldly furious at the experience and vowing revenge on those who allowed him to be hospitalized.

Is a discussion about gun control necessary after shootings like we saw Friday? Hell yes! But if you take the mental health discussion out of the equation, you're not really addressing the entire issue. Life is complicated and it's rare that a problem this large can boil down to one issue. In the hours following the initial news reports out of Newtown on Friday we immediately saw a trend of people saying "blame the parents!" or "it makes you wonder what kind of childhood he had." I saw a pretty heinous chat discussion on this very site with someone calling on Lanza's parents to take the blame for this. But for those of us out there with a violent mentally ill person in their family, we live with the fear every day that our family member might be the next killer and we live the devastating helplessness that we are powerless to stop it. Liza Long's essay described what we all live with every day. We are the parents, siblings, care-givers of the next Adam Lanza, the next Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the next James Holmes AND WE NEED HELP. Don't tell us that this isn't as big an issue of gun control. We can make the case that mental health is the bigger issue since sane people who owns guns go an entire lifetime without killing anyone. The issues are intertwined irreparably. And both must be addressed if we're going to get anywhere."

[hoipolloi]

RE: Mental health services, or lack thereof. We have Ronald Reagan to thank for a lot of this since the major dismantling of institutionalized care began during Reagan's first time as way for him to finance the corporate giveaway program (http://www.sociology.org/content/vol003.004/thomas.html). While mental health services were by no means perfect then, they were much more widely available, and had the Mental Health Systems Act, passed during the Carter administration, been implemented (http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/26/6/1539.full), things might really have improved. Unfortunately, Reagan repealed what he could of the MHSA & gutted the rest. St. Ronnie was a terrible old man - good riddance to him.

[keeperrox]

I don't understand why people are so against the possibility that mental illness played a huge part in Friday's massacre. Yes, guns are a major issue and gun control needs to be discussed, but so does the plight of the mentally ill in this country and the very real problem of accessing help. Why can't we (a larger, national "we", not "we" as in FJ) have a discussion about both, without each side point fingers at each other, screaming, "YOU'RE WRONG!!!!11!!one!"? Why can't we try to fix two things at once?

[Austin]

I don't understand why people are so against the possibility that mental illness played a huge part in Friday's massacre. Yes, guns are a major issue and gun control needs to be discussed, but so does the plight of the mentally ill in this country and the very real problem of accessing help. Why can't we (a larger, national "we", not "we" as in FJ) have a discussion about both, without each side point fingers at each other, screaming, "YOU'RE WRONG!!!!11!!one!"? Why can't we try to fix two things at once?

I've been saying the same thing all weekend in my conversations with friends, family, and on fb. It's not one or the other. I believe there was an array of factors that probably contributed to this horrendous tragedy, and probably some that we either don't know or don't recognize yet. We must address gun control, I believe, but we also have to address gun access (two different things clearly, as evidenced by what happened), and also more support for people who need mental health help and resources AND their families. And probably a host of other things. But we can do more than one thing at once, and think about different things that may even seem conflicting, and we must be willing to raise the level of the conversation.

[BravaAmica]

RE: Mental health services, or lack thereof. We have Ronald Reagan to thank for a lot of this since the major dismantling of institutionalized care began during Reagan's first time as way for him to finance the corporate giveaway program (http://www.sociology.org/content/vol003.004/thomas.html). While mental health services were by no means perfect then, they were much more widely available, and had the Mental Health Systems Act, passed during the Carter administration, been implemented (http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/26/6/1539.full), things might really have improved. Unfortunately, Reagan repealed what he could of the MHSA & gutted the rest. St. Ronnie was a terrible old man - good riddance to him.

QFT

[meda]

A heart-wrenching comment that sums it all up. I did not appreciate Laura Beck's comment of "Lumping everyone into a giant pot of crazy". Another big issue is that there really is no middle ground between "safe to themselves and others" and "have committed a violent crime". The point of intervention - *before* the violent crime is committed - really doesn't exist within the current system.

I think this sums it up very well. We need vastly improved access to mental health services, not just to help people who are mentally ill, but to help the rest of society deal with the metally ill. Some mentally ill people are violent, to themselves and others. There are many people who justifiably fear violence from a partner or family member who's illness manifests itselve violently. That's not lumping people into a giant post of crazy, that's being honest. Minimizing danger and shaming the people around a violent person for being honest about their reality does nothing to help the problem.

[m0drnmoonlight]

I initially agreed with that Jezebel article when I saw it on twitter (and retweeted it). But after seeing everyone's comments here, I don't feel as strongly as I did before. Mental illness and how to cope shouldn't be things shuttered away because it's "wrong" to talk about it.

Mental health treatment AND gun control/access are two very big priorities in this country that need to be dealt with. And please (not this board, just speaking generally here) get away with the stigma that people suffering from mental illness are nuts or crazy or fucked up. I've been diagnosed with depression and see a therapist (and am on my third psychiatrist because I can't find a good one at all and I finally got one that takes mental health insurance, thank god) and my mom is really uncomfortable with it. Getting therapy isn't a bad thing, it doesn't mean I'm fucked up. And I certainly see that my problems are nowhere near as severe as what some of you have experienced, I can't imagine how difficult that must feel sometimes :(

[Mama Mia]

I have a couple of teabagger fb friends who are now posting about the dire need for mental health care -- primarily to deflect away from the gun issues. They are even sharing posts about how it is even MORE important to keep your guns close, since lack of mental health care means there are more people ready to come shoot you. Never mind that these people are also constantly ranting about the horror of having to provide ANY care, for anyone, for anything that could possibly come out of their taxes.

I have very mixed feelings about the "I am Adam Lanza's Mother" post - having mentally ill family members I really identified with her feelings of frustration and fear - but I think she could have somehow stated the day-to-day struggle without such personal information being given. Reading her older blog posts I'm sure she could not have expected the level of attention - her other posts seemed to average once a month, with only a handful of comments - but privacy is something people have to keep in mind if they are going to be ranting about their real lives to the entire world.

[Witsec5]

That's why if I ever have anything semi-personal to share, I post to FJ Chatter. You have to be logged in as a FJ member to read it and I don't think it's Googlable. Everything I post in Snark is. Anyway, I kept a diet blog for about a week and then realized it was way too personal to share with the world so I made it private--only to me--so it's an online diary. Maybe that's what this poster should have done. Writing is great therapy (and I do empathize with her plight) but does not have to be shared.

Also, my mother was a little unhinged a lot of the time growing up and her tendency was to project so I was often the identified patient in the family. So I understand the other side of the coin as well. If Asperger's had existed, she would have had me labelled, along with NLD, OCD, Bipolar 2, ADHD, you name it. It wasn't acting out enough outside of the home and none of it would have stuck.

[m0drnmoonlight]

I have a couple of teabagger fb friends who are now posting about the dire need for mental health care -- primarily to deflect away from the gun issues. They are even sharing posts about how it is even MORE important to keep your guns close, since lack of mental health care means there are more people ready to come shoot you. Never mind that these people are also constantly ranting about the horror of having to provide ANY care, for anyone, for anything that could possibly come out of their taxes.

I have very mixed feelings about the "I am Adam Lanza's Mother" post - having mentally ill family members I really identified with her feelings of frustration and fear - but I think she could have somehow stated the day-to-day struggle without such personal information being given. Reading her older blog posts I'm sure she could not have expected the level of attention - her other posts seemed to average once a month, with only a handful of comments - but privacy is something people have to keep in mind if they are going to be ranting about their real lives to the entire world.

Ugh, this too. I think one reason why I was irritated was I saw a very conservative friend on facebook (the same one who made a post after the election proclaiming anyone who voted for Obama was retarded...she then deleted it) link to the blog post and say that this is MUCH more important than gun control. How about both of them are huge problems in this country?

[JesusFightClub]

It's a weird one. I know a lot of folk who are mentally less than well (including myself) and a handful who are violent. (Not including me. I'm impulsive but not aggressive.)

Think she was trying to raise awareness and did it in a strange way. Violence is a tough thing to deal with in a family. People don't get it right because there isn't a "right". So mistakes are made.

[cindyluvs24]

Regardless of what the mother wrote on her blog in the past, the fact that her young son has taken steps to kill her and the siblings is a hint-and-a-half. Yes, teens get moody and yes, they will scream they hate you and yes, they may even say they wish you were dead. But - this kid had been in the kiddy psych ward, the family has frickin' escape drills for when he goes after them , the mother carries the knives along with her. This is not typical angry teen behavior. Where do you keep him until medical science comes up with a pill to keep him from trying to kill his family?

[cindyluvs24]

Just my $.02 but re: Adam Lanza: Going by what's been reported, it would seem to me that its probably not a great idea to take your Aspie kid to a gun range in the goal that it will help him "to connect to people."

[Austin]

ITA with both your posts, cindyluvs24.

[Minerva]

And Like the other response someone posted (which was worth reading) I'm really afraid that this discussion is going to become "protect us from the mentally ill" (re-stigmatizing, and creating backlash--especially since the mentally ill are so often victims) instead of "how to fix a broken system"

My thoughts exactly. This could lead to better access to mental health services, but the way stereotypes and misinformation are already being reinforced, the discussion could very well make things worse in other ways for people with mental illness.