Well that did not go well. We went to visit our son tonight. He walked into the visitors room angry. Started right in about how the demons killed him in this hospital last time he was there, that the CIA and big pharma were trying to kill him. So many off the wall things i could not keep track or even begin to know where to insert a comment. I asked him what he wanted and he said he wanted out, out of this world out of our house. Said he would rather be homeless and so on. Totally angry and paranoid. This is usually how he is after he takes the THC gummies wear off. When he takes gummies he is totally the opposite, very compliant and loves you very much and easier to communicate with but after, holly cow! He stormed out and went to his room slamming the door. The nurse came in to make sure everything was ok. We talked and asked him to please not inform Ben he could sign himself out. When Ben was storming out he said he wanted to smoke everyone. I told the nurse that and he said he would put that in his report. I do not know what the next few days will be for Ben. We pray his mind will come to settle down and the paranoia and anger will subside. Im afraid it will not as it hasnt for several years. I told my wife tonight that if Ben cant get on meds he is not going to stay at home with us. I seriously hate myself for having to make a decision like this but i cant let his illness destroy me and my wife. My wife Amanda already goes to a psychologist every two weeks because she is in deep depression about our son. If we kick him out he will have no where to go. Just dont know what to do at this point. Im scared, we are scared.
This is such a tough situation ! Iām sorry you and your family are going through this right now.
Thankfully you were able to get him to the hospital.
Hopefully he can stabilize a bit .
My sibling also uses marijuana and is very hostile when he is out its been his choice of medication for years .
I canāt remember if you said Ben has ptsd if so maybe he would take meds under that pretense .
I wish it was easier to set boundaries around meds and everything else but its Hard and scary . And it does make me feel guilty.
I cannot have my sibling live with me or even stay for a few weeks years ago instead of being able to take him in I had to drive him to a homeless shelter ,find roommate boarding situations and an inpatient program . none of which ended up being permanent ultimately he had to return to my parents .
But now he lives in my Dads home mom has passed and my dad has moved out with a friend because my brother is unmedicated and its to difficult on my Dads health to stay .
I often wonder if they had been able to put a medication boundary with my sibling what might have happened.
Wishing you strength during this time
My thoughts are with you during this super stressful times. It is a dreadful disease and affects the whole family so very much. Putting the medication aderance to live with you seems like the only thing you can do . Your wife and you deserve some peace, which having him on medication may help. You both have lives that are valuable too.
We dont know when our son will come out of the psyc ward this week but we pray he will be more open to taking meds and going to a counselor. He is terrified of our house because of his hallucinations he thinks he has been killed many times by different spirits and hears them talking in the basement. He has his SSI and VA disability so if he wants to ride around in his car all day then sleep at a shelter at night then that is the best we can do i suppose.
I know itās hard to think about him sleeping in a shelter each night. We found that our son could have peace in his life once he moved away from us. The hallucinations about the new place would start up eventually. We would move him again and he would find peace again. Mike had been telling us all along what he needed, we just finally heard him.
My wife was at her biweekly psyc doctor appointment and she asked for her doctors opinion on what he thought we might due for Ben after he leaves the hospital. He suggested if Ben was not open to the two paths we offer him then suggest to him a group home to try out. I think we are going to contact community hospital and see what they have available for group homes in our area just in case he doesnt want to stay here.
I understand how you feel, as when I first had to involve police for forced hospitalization for my daughter, I felt so so badly. Please donāt be so hard on yourself. Do your best to keep yourselves safe and healthy while trying to help your son one small step at a time. Did you ever find a way to attend NAMI meetings?
Morning. Yep, my wife and i have been to all four area meetings across Indianapolis in the past two weeks. We have spoken to other families dealing with similar situations. There stories talk of many hospitalizations and being jailed many times. At least our son has not gotten to that level yet. This is his fourth hospitalization. He is on day four and still refuses to take medications. All he wants is to leave, come home, grab what few clothes he has and take off in his car to another state where he āthinksā he will be safe. I wish Indiana had a long term care facility they would place him in until he was stable on meds and being seen by a psychiatrist but no, they only have that for court ordered persons who have tried to kill themselves one hundred times or commit mass murder. Totally screwed up.
That alone may be the best reason of all to let him go. If he is terrified in your home, well, finding a place where he is less terrified seems important. We own our home, so to help my daughter we built a wall in the hallway with a door that locked from both sides, a back door out of her room, and gave up our second bathroom to totally make it hers. That made a āstudioā apartment. We told her it was for her, but in actual fact it was for us too, as it cut down the screaming noise at night quite a bit. She yelled at her 13 or so out-of-body visitors daily/nightly, and rarely slept. She hated her step-father and made up stories of sexual assault by him and called the police on him regularly. Eventually she left, and stayed out of touch for 3 weeks. One day she walked home pulling her suitcase as she was out of money. The ONLY way she got on meds and stayed on them was arrest, hospitalization, and court ordered monthly injections. The hospitals would only keep her until her insurance authorization ran out (healthcare.gov provided health insurance). Group homes donāt exist here except for medicine compliant individuals.
Morning. Yeah, we are afraid Ben will do the same, get out of hospital get home then jump in his car and leave. With his consistent psychosis we are afraid he will eventually get into another accident that this time he will not walk away from. Called over to the psyc ward yesterday to talk to his advocate person and she did not return our call yet. Nurse said Ben refused meds again, i really wished they would just force patients to take their dang meds. So disappointing.
The forcing of meds is very controversial within the system, especially within the laws of the U.S. A person has many rights here, including the right to ignore their own health as long as it isnāt life threatening. There are not laws that permit forced drugging in most situations, unless the person is a danger to themselves or others.
My girlfriend years ago was Baker Acted by her boyfriend who happened to be a police officer and knew how to use the law to help himself. He as abusive both physically and mentally and she was trying to leave him. She was examined in the psych ward and let go as she displayed no harmful tendencies toward herself or others but ended up getting a restraining order against him. So in that case, forcing of medicine on her would have been unjust and unneeded.
Unfortunately, your son has the right to live as he chooses unless he becomes dangerous and that danger can be proven to the police or the court.
My daughter was arrested out in public for kicking a police officer. That threat was enough to get her jailed, and the judge listened to my plea for forced medication and it saved her from her weird mental world. I took advantage of the laws too as she never ever would have agreed to be medicated. I had to wait for incidents or threats of violence to try to force medication on her. Pills didnāt work, the injection did.
Ben called today asking for us to come get him out. We told him as soon as the doctor thinks he is well enough to be released he would be. He got upset and said he did not need the meds and was going to leave home as soon as they released him. We are praying the meds they have him on will get him to a mindful state next week that they can encourage him enough to continue his meds and go to outpatient counseling after but from past experiences with him i dont see that happening.
Is his old counselor available still ?
Hi. No they have since moved on. We will have to find him another counselor.
Our son has called from the hospital a few times the past few days. Keeps asking if we are coming to get him out. We keep telling him it is up to the doctor. He goes on about paranoia things then hangs up. He is taking his meds but they are not getting him out of his paranoia phase and now he is back to thinking he does not have an illness. He says as soon as he gets home he is leaving to go out east, no plan, no money, just jumping in his car and leaving. I tried to talk to him about having a plan, saving some money then finding a place to rent but he thinks he can live in a tent in the dead of winter. Just cant get through to him. Totally frustrating. He refuses to let the ward move him up from level one to level three where they can work with him on coping skills and talk to others with his type illness, he says the place has bad spirits or something like that and refuses to go. So the social worker says the doctor will probably release him if he wont go up to the third floor and he has taken his meds for three days. We are trying not to have to tell him that if he cant stay with us if he stops taking his meds after the hospital or refuses to go to counseling, we dont want him out in the cold alone but on the other hand my wifes nerves are totally shot and she is taking several meds for severe depression. We are thinking that we can give him a choice and let him choose, if he chooses to leave then so be it.
It is quite normal in my opinion for someone hospitalized to not want to be there. It is quite restrictive and they donāt understand why they are there as they āarenāt sickā. You have been trying to help him for 4 years, since his illness started and he had to leave the Air Force. I think that is a pretty valiant effort, although unfortunately it may not have gotten him to the point you wish he was at. Instead, both you and your wife are suffering. I think that your conclusion is correct: give him a choice and if he chooses to leave then so be it.
Yeah we are thinking if he does chose to leave he will quickly return home, blaming us for his failure to make it on his own safely. He will blame the VA for controlling his disability money. He will blame us for wanting to control him with meds and he will say the counselors dont listen to him and so on. We hate to see him suffer but damn it the kid is driving us freakin nuts. My wife is already on anxiety meds and seeing a psyc doctor because of our son. Im more the tuff love guy who has very little tolerance for family issues. I dont even talk to my sisters but maybe once a year.
We were big fans of ātough loveā and by that we meant firm boundaries. Schizophrenia threw such a wrench into our parenting works. We had to figure out how to work within the boundaries of Mikeās capabilities . I know, it isnāt always possible., schizophrenia is a parenting nightmare.
I wrote the following in 2017 when my husband was struggling to understand how schizophrenia was affecting Mike and making him unable to make choices to help himself. My husband was getting angry instead of trying to understand, I still agree with it today - I think compassion is important, heartbreaking for us all.
No one throws my child into the street without compassion. Now if I were to determine that was the best action to take, as many parents have in the past, I would do it myself, with compassion and deep sorrow.
A lot of people say to try the LEAP approach when talking to our son but when we try to talk to him he is very short and doesnāt like to be in a conversation long enough to use the LEAP technic. He usually talks about the most off the wall things that we donāt know how to respond to his comments. Listening to Dr. Amador in his videos he says Oh it is very easy to use LEAP, well he hasnāt tried talking to our son! Ben will be released from hospital on Thursday and he hasnāt even talked to a psychiatrist, only a doctor and nurse. The nurse called today and said the doctor put generic notes in Bens file for today and said the went over a safety briefing with him. So messed up. States dont put any money into schooling more people in the mental health profession so they can adequately provide enough time to every patient. I have been reading a thread here: https://www.healthyplace.com/blogs/mentalillnessinthefamily/2011/05/schizophrenia-and-parenting-step-in-or-let-go?page=1
So many stories about adults with mental issues and a lot of them are actually worse off then our son. I cant believe the stories i have read. So painful.
This is a tough place to be , generally my sibling will refuse all treatment when inpatient and basically if he doesnāt coperate they release him quickly .
Unfortunately usually with little to no discharge plan .the few times he has been inpatient more then a week and done the group therapy I have actually seen it benefit him . after all the years and different programs I know some of the tools he has learned have helped him at times , hopefully your son has gained something that may help him when he is discharged.
In the past sometimes my sibling just seems content to be out and get to his own bed but often times its not long before the ptsd starts and angry trying to make sense of what has happened its such a hard cycle . wishing you and family strength .
The leap method I usually get as far as the listen and empathize . Its rare that I could get to the point of suggestions .
But the listen and empathize part have helped . not always