Hi, sorry I haven’t posted in ages, my lad has been so much better for around 5 months.
Not now I’m afraid. Over the last 5 weeks I’ve been warning his psychiatrist that I’ve seen the signs of him going downhill again. He’s been sleeping all day, getting angry with everyone, had a few voices briefly appear, some paranoid delusions. She has increased his risperidone again, up to 2mg morning and 2.5mg evening.
This week he has been very aggressive, seeking out his little brother to start fights, saying he can hear us talking about him (we aren’t). Knows that we hate him and that he wants to police to take him away.
Monday the voices started calling him names and telling him to hurt people. They have got worse through the week, and last night he completely lost touch with reality. He was being chased by 3 headed monsters and sinkholes were opening up all over the floor. Someone kept trying to strangle me, so he was trying to pull them off me, he was very agitated.
I called the crisis team, as he is in the process of being assessed by the adult team. He’s 16, autistic and has moderate learning difficulties. He is with CAMHS, but they don’t have enough experience with sz, so they want him to be transferred early to adult services. Crisis team were excellent. They reassured me and advised me to sedate him with 1.5mg lorazepam, 353mg chloral betaine and his normal dose of risperidone. The doctor faxed details to CAMHS and promised me that I would get a call from CAMHS to take over.
By midday no one had called from CAMHS, so I’ve been chasing them all day. To cut a long and frustrating story short, no one from CAMHS LD team is available to see him till his scheduled appointment on Tuesday. Early intervention adult team say that medical responsibility stays with CAMHS, they won’t see him. Home treatment team refuse to see him until a medic can asses him and refer to them.
So I have no support for the weekend. He is still hallucinating, visual and auditory. They say call an ambulance, but they will only sedate him, which I can do myself.
Is it going to be this bad always? Is mental health services really this bad normally or have I caught them on a bad day??