A Gap In The System

Just before Mother’s Day 2005, my then 11.5 year old son, we’ll call him J, looked into the friendly eyes of a medical intern and mumbled, “I want to kill myself.”

In the emergency room for an unrelated reason, something finally broke inside J. Out came tumbling a story of overwhelming woe and despair. He told us of his deep-seated desire to harm himself, to make all his bad feelings stop, for good.

I had suspected that J was somewhat depressed. A normally bright and successful, though somewhat lazy, student, his school work had been suffering recently. He was argumentative and moody at times. As a lifetime sufferer of dysthymia, I recognized the signs. However, his edginess seemed completely understandable, as he had suffered physical and emotional abuse in the past and had only recently been able to discuss them. I was working on finding him a therapist, but thought that he was handling the situation as best as could be expected.

I was desperately, disastrously wrong. While I thought things were fine, my son was falling apart.

That evening, the supervising physician allowed J to go home, but required him to sign a safety contract and ordered me to get him to a therapist as soon as humanly possible.

However, we were back the next night. In 24 hours, J had became such a danger to himself that my husband, G, and I felt that he couldn’t safely stay home. That night, he was hospitalized for the first, but far from the last time, for suicidal ideation, the medical term for suicidal thoughts.

So began my family’s journey down the rabbithole, through the looking glass, choose your metaphor. It is a journey that we are still taking, one that seems neverending. We’ve been through many hospitalizations, multiple medications, and even the juvenile justice system.

Throughout this time, I’ve been lost in my own struggles, feeling alone in my experiences. Recently, I thought about how I was not alone, that others were suffering the same thing, some farther behind me on the trail, some farther ahead. I decided that it was time to share my own experiences, to show others that they weren’t alone, and perhaps to become an activist for my son and for other children like him, lost in the seriously broken mental health system. You are looking at the initial product of these thoughts.

Welcome to my world.