Daughter seems to be getting worse

Family
1

I need some advice. My daughter seems to be getting worse and I am afraid for her. She has had several episodes lately of violence, not talking and withdrawal. Her medicine has been changed 3 times since December and she is still not stable. She took my car without permission yesterday and when looking for her boyfriend because she thought he was in trouble. He was fine! She got more upset when we wouldn’t com e with him and threatened to kill herself. She finally drove my car to a middle school and parked. Thank God we found her. But that was after we called the cops and EMS. My husband is tired of her “acting” like this and thinks she just needs to be committed. I don’t know what to do. I’ve been on hold for over one hour waiting for the doctor or advice.

2

If she’s a treath to herself and others the best is to hospitalize her. Then she’ll have the time to adjust to a new med again.

Hope everything goes for the best.

3

Hi jdtukes,

When things get rough around here I do what you’re doing: call a professional who can advise on whether or not to try for inpatient commitment. When things get out of control, I call the crisis team.

I also hide car keys (even though my family member is scared of driving and does not have a license).

None of us family members really knows what to do. If your husband wants to make decisions and take actions that you can support, see how things go.

The regional department of Health and Welfare here has a crisis team that is always on call and can come to the person’s house for a welfare check and mental health. Hopefully there is a team like that where you live who can send someone to your house to see how your daughter is doing. Also, people in a nearby NAMI chapter might know some local resources.

4

Sounds like she might need clozapine.

5

Sounds like your daughter is confused-maybe scared. I don`t know your history, but I would try to get her to the hospital-at least for a few days so she can stabilize.
Hope the situation improves quickly!

6
  1. Get a copy of these books, read them and have your family read them, as well. (Torrey can be a bit totalistic and unwilling to see exceptions to his “rules” at times, but most of his book is really worth the effort to plough through.)
    http://www.amazon.com/Surviving-Schizophrenia-6th-Edition-Family/dp/0062268856
    http://www.amazon.com/The-Complete-Family-Guide-Schizophrenia/dp/1593851804/ref=as_sl_pc_tf_til?tag=schizophren0c-20&linkCode=w00&linkId=XKLY6NWSWJSQ3VYN&creativeASIN=1593851804
  2. Get properly diagnosed by a board-certified psychopharmacologist who specializes in the psychotic disorders. One can find them at…
    Find Top Psychiatrists by State. and Find Psychiatrists, Psychiatric Nurses - Psychology Today
    .
  3. Work with that “psychiatrist” (or “p-doc”) to develop a medication formula that stabilizes their symptoms sufficiently so that they can tackle the psychotherapy that will disentangle their thinking.
    .
  4. Psychotherapies for that currently include…
    DBT – http://behavioraltech.org/resources/whatisdbt.cfm
    MBSR – Welcome to the Mindful Living Blog
    MBCT - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22340145
    ACT – ACT | Association for Contextual Behavioral Science
    Vipassana – Samatha-vipassana - Wikipedia
    .
  5. the even newer somatic psychotherapies like…
    MBBT – An Introduction to Mind-Body Bridging & the I-System – New Harbinger Publications, Inc
    SEPT – Somatic experiencing - Wikipedia
    SMPT – Sensorimotor psychotherapy - Wikipedia
    .
  6. or standard CBTs, like…
    REBT – Rational emotive behavior therapy - Wikipedia
    Schematherapy – Schema therapy - Wikipedia
    Learned Optimism – Learned optimism - Wikipedia
    Standard CBT – Psychotherapy | NAMI: National Alliance on Mental Illness & scroll down
    .
  7. Get two or more of those “down,” and one can use the skills therefrom in this way to combat delusional thinking and emotional reactivity very quickly: 10 StEP – Pair A Docks: The 10 StEPs of Emotion Processing
    .
  8. If you/she/he needs a professional intervention to get through treatment resistance, I would use those search tools in item 2 above. Look for clinics that include intervention and treatment resistance services.
    .
  9. If you or your sz patient suddenly becomes manic: What to do when your depressed patient develops mania | MDedge Psychiatry?
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  10. Look into the RAISE Project at Google.
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  11. Look for mental illness clubhouses in your area (which can be hugely helpful… but may also pose risks). Dig through the many articles at Google to locate and investigate them.