Lapse back into depression

April 25th, 2013

I am widely known for my past experiences with mental health. Since the age of 15, I have been very outspoken about what I’ve been through, what I’ve been diagnosed with, what medications I’ve taken, what works, and what doesn’t. Everyone knows that with the help of my parents and a large support team I’ve gone through hell and back, survived and become an advocate for youth like myself who don’t feel like they have a voice. I have been told that I’m one of the lucky ones, brave, and most often, strong. These days, I feel anything but.

For the last year and a half, I’ve been battling a severe bout of depression, striving to remain resilient, but slowly sinking back into the all too familiar pit of despair that I’ve grown to hate- and woops! I’ve forgotten my ladder, so climbing right back out isn’t an option. I’ve been trying to claw my way up the hard way but without much success.

It’s not hard to discern when or why I became depressed this time around. One of my biggest supports and best friends was my father and he died unexpectedly in April 2011. Following his death, it seemed like everything fell apart- my family, my structure, my life, my sanity. For the first time in my life, I became a caretaker, as my disabled mother became my responsibilty, and I had little-if any- support in taking care of her. My boyfriend and I moved into an apartment with her in an unsafe neighborhood where we endured a lot of family drama, multiple break-ins, and all the while, I tried to find healthy ways to mourn the loss of my father. It was impossible because I found that I was so busy taking care of everyone and everything else that I forgot to take care of myself too.

For me, this lapse back into depression feels like a slap in the face, especially remembering how hard I worked to get out if it in the first place. I have to remind myself often that sometimes this does happen, and that I can’t beat myself up over it, but that’s hard to do when I get mad at myself for staying in my pajamas all day, wrapped up in a blanket and refusing to leave the house. I know I can’t live in my bed forever, and it’s going to take a lot of effort on my part to find the motivation to function again, so I’ll continue to live day to day, one step at a time.

Chandra Watts is our guest blogger.  She is a young adult who draws on her own life to change how the world sees mental illness.  She is one of the founding members of Youth MOVE Massachusetts.

Tags: behavioral health, depression, health, mental health, mental illness, transition age youth, Youth MOVE

Posted in Blog Posts | 12 Comments �

Heartache By the Number: My life with Dyscalculia

March 19th, 2013

dys·cal·cu·li·a  (Diss- Kal-cue-lee-ah) n. Impairment of the ability to solve mathematical problems, usually resulting from brain dysfunction.

It can be very hard for me to speak openly about the struggles I have endured because of my learning disability, but in the interest of giving others like me hope, I have decided to really speak out. Ask the average person on the street what dyslexia is and most of them will have at least a general idea and acknowledge it as being a legitimate disorder. Ask that same person about dyscalculia, and they will usually not have a clue what you are talking about. When you try to explain, often they will just wave it off and say “Well a lot of people are bad at math.” But, what I’ve come here to explain is: it is so much more than that.

Since I was very little, I was always ahead of my age in terms of reading and writing. I was the type of kid who was reading Stephen King novels by the time I was ten, and constantly trying to write down my own stories and poetry. But if you asked me to do my multiplication tables on command, I would literally burst into tears after a few minutes. It isn’t that I didn’t want to learn. I actually really enjoy learning new things, and I understand how important mathematics is to living in the real world.  I just plain couldn’t. It doesn’t just stop there either. To this day I can’t read an analog clock, I often have to have my younger brother or another family member help me count up my money, and to date, I have never passed a single math class. I’ve gotten through school by using class substitutions and working around requirements with my IEP plan, but that can only take me so far.  One way or another, the phantom that is math will find me. Bus schedules tend to make me dizzy just looking at them, and I have to have a special application on my phone that does the math for tips at restaurants because I am terrified of not doing the math correctly and offending my server.

It’s hard to live in such a number-based world when numbers cause anxiety at every turn. Out of habit I am always early for appointments because I am in constant fear of being late.  I have to be careful to count my change well when I go to the store so I don’t get ripped off, and people are constantly annoyed with me over how I have to count on my fingers, and how slow I can be at that. But before even those things became the big issue, my self esteem was what took the biggest blow.

I didn’t get an official diagnosis until I was in senior year of high school. I was told by teacher after teacher that I was lazy, I wasn’t paying attention, I wasn’t studying hard enough or sometimes even that I was just plain stupid. The other kids would laugh at me. They didn’t know that I would stay up all night before tests crying over my textbook, or that I would constantly get into fights with my parents because they would get so frustrated when they tried to help me with my homework. I used to hear, “You’re so smart, and this really isn’t that hard. I don’t understand how you can memorize all 151 Pokemon but you can’t tell me what 8×12 is?” And the truth is, neither did I. I had no answer for anyone, I legitimately believed that I was just dumb, and I was doomed to be dumb forever.

I can’t really explain what it’s like to someone that doesn’t have it, but imagine that every single time something having to do with numbers comes up in your life you freeze like a deer in headlights. Your brain goes blank, you sweat, and eventually you cry or scream, or maybe you walk away from the counter in shame even though you really needed to buy that cough medicine, or you really need to pass this exam. It is paralyzing, it is humiliating, and it feels so hopeless sometimes that it can be hard to get out of bed, knowing you have to face the world. Knowing people might laugh when you get an answer wrong in class, or scream at you when they ask you what time it is and you’re not sure because you don’t have a digital watch on you.

On a whim one night, I got so frustrated I googled “Why am I so bad at math” and there was my answer: Dyscalculia. A learning disorder! I took a short test on a website and brought it to the school, begging them to give me a test. They scoffed at first, telling me that clearly this was just some internet thing someone made up, and I was making excuses. My suspicions were right, and I can remember crying from relief when I realized for the first time in my life that I wasn’t some inferior person.  I was just struggling with something that is so little known and so misunderstood that even the special education department wasn’t aware. The irony is that it is just now being more widely discussed, and it is possibly a very common problem which goes unrecognized in so many people  for their whole lives like it had in mine. I sometimes wonder if I’d made this discovery earlier, how much it might have changed my life.

Of course I still struggle. This will be a lifelong issue and I will always be different because of it. However, it is my hope that with advocacy and research, I can do my part to ensure that maybe in the future no kid will have to go through so much pain. Nobody should have to feel inferior because they have a mind that works differently, and I end this blog with a message of hope for those who are aware and struggling, and a call to the world to do your research. We are not lazy, and we are not making excuses. Our disorder is legitimate and painful and we would like to be treated accordingly.

For people who are curious they may have this learning disability, or that their child or student may have it, this web site has a treasure trove of information on the subject.  That site may have saved my life when I was in the lowest point, and I can only hope it will change yours as well.

Brittany Bell is our guest blogger.  She is a 24 year old youth advocate at Youth MOVE Massachusetts who is studying to become a youth counselor.  She hopes to bring awareness and support to the learning disability and mental health communities by sharing her experiences. 

 

Tags: bullying, dyscalculia, learning disability, math disability, stigma, transition age youth, youth, Youth MOVE

Posted in Blog Posts | 8 Comments �

Choices

March 4th, 2013

My son has been in St. Elizabeth’s Hospital for more than a month, but he can’t stay there forever. We are faced with a couple of choices, neither of them good. He can go to jail for the charges pending against him (two assaults, three stolen cars, destruction of property) or he can go to a locked IRTP, an intensive residential treatment program. For six months he wore an electronic ankle bracelet which was supposed to keep him out of trouble. But he repeatedly “forgot” to charge it, kept pushing its geographic limits, then finally managed to pull it off and fling it somewhere in the park, never to be found again. Now the District Attorney says that to keep society safe, he has to be locked away.

“He’s not a bad person,” I tell our attorney, as though he needs convincing. He stole three cars in a three week period. Why? Because he met a boy at a dance who lived an hour away and he needed to see him. He assaulted program staff when they set limits which he didn’t think were fair. Or he imagined they set those limits, it wasn’t clear.

And all of it, deep down, stems from trauma. When he likes someone, even if he’s met them only once, he becomes obsessed, he must impress, make sure they like him back. He won’t give them a chance to reject him (diagnosis: borderline traits.) And if a staff sets an unfair limit, it feels like a horrible breach, the end of their relationship. He loses it, attacks (bipolar I; impulse control disorder.) All so he doesn’t have to feel that initial pain again (PTSD.)

He was sixteen, the first time staff pressed charges for assault. Instead of adult court, there was an administrative hearing. We sat in comfortable chairs around a gleaming oak table: the lawyer I’d hired, my son, the staff member of his residential program whom he’d assaulted. The staff passed around photos of his injuries: a hugely swollen eye, purplish bruises, ghoulish; a bump on the back of his head where my son had “grazed him“ with the fire extinguisher. “He could have been killed!” the magistrate boomed at my fidgety son, who was looking alternately scared and bored. I averted my eyes from the staff, though his face was healed.

It feels more shameful to have a child who hurts others than to have one who is “just” mentally ill. My son’s probation officer promised to “get him,” claiming he wasn’t disturbed at all. I worry that people think I am trying to keep him from jail because I condone his behavior. I know the staff thought I over-indulged him. But there is a ninety-three percent recidivism rate for teenagers who are sent to prison. I feel as if I am trying to save his life.

So we wait. I need to fax psychological reports, past hospital discharges, proof that he has “major mental illness” to DMH central office. As I collect the best documents–meaning those which make him look the sickest–I feel like I am trying to gain admittance to the country club or get him into college (I wish!) It’s a scary race. Will he get into the IRTP before St. Elizabeth discharges him?

Postscript: I found out this morning that he got into Center Point, the IRTP. Now we begin a new chapter.

Our guest blogger, Randi Schalet, is a psychologist and an adoptive mother of her twenty-two year old daughter and eighteen year old son . She credits her ability to carry on with parenting her challenging son to the support of friends, family and, especially, other parents.

Tags: behavioral health, Children's Mental Health, juvenile justice, mental illness, PTSD, residential, transition age youth

Posted in Blog Posts | 1 Comment �

What’s in your wallet?

February 21st, 2013

Not too long ago my youngest son and I went off to Walmart to get some much needed supplies.  We each grabbed a cart and our plan was to meet at the checkout aisle in 30 minutes.  Little did we know that three hours later I would be supporting a mom whose daughter was having a mental health crisis and having trouble accessing mobile crisis services.

The store was filled with shoppers and lots of noise on this busy Saturday.  Every aisle I visited had at least two people, sometimes many, in conversations.  There was one constant sound in the store, though, and it was a young girl screaming about a doll. At first I ignored it, thinking it would stop when she got tired or her parents left the store.  I remembered at times my boys would cry because I would not buy them another toy while we were out shopping.  So I had learned to tune those sounds out.  But I couldn’t tune this out ….it was different.

The yelling was getting louder and closer with the little girl now screaming “I want that doll.” Then the chase began.  The little girl ran right by me screaming, chased by her crying mom who was walking fast to catch up with her.   This went on for a long time and I kept thinking that the manager or an employee would offer the mom some help or even call the police to help calm the situation down.  But no one did anything.  When my son and I got to the cashier, we started unloading our carts.  I could still hear the mom crying so I looked for her.  When I saw her trying to restrain her daughter and being bitten, I knew I had to try to help.

I bent down and said to her “I don’t know how I can help you right now but I would like to try. Please let me know what I can do”.  By now there were at least 20 people watching us and not one said “I’ll help too.”  She said that she could not pick her child up because she was biting and kicking her and she needed someone strong to help.  As I stood up to see who I could ask, a man entered the store and came right over to us asking how he could help. The two of them carried her out as she was trying to hit and bite them.

The mom asked the man to put the girl in her car seat so she could not hit or bite anymore. The girl was stiff and rigid and it was impossible to get her in her seat.  The man restrained the girl and the mom and I began to brainstorm ideas.  She told me her five year old daughter had ADHD and saw a clinician. When I asked, it turned out she had the clinician’s crisis number.  She called and explained that she could not get her daughter into her car seat and need them to come to Walmart and help her.  She was told she had to bring her daughter to their office.  They offered nothing else and that was the end of the call.

I then asked her if she knew about mobile crisis services and she did not. I explained, then asked if she wanted me to call for her.  She said yes but please, don’t call the police.  I said I would not.  So while the man was still restraining the girl, I ran into Walmart to use the phone and call for help.

First, I called directory assistance.  I had the address and knew the kind of service but they replied they had no such listing and even though we tried to brainstorm, it got me nowhere.  I then called the local hospital’s emergency room for the number.  No luck. Next, I ran and got my purse out of the cart because I thought I had the mobile crisis business card in my wallet.  I didn’t. I ran to my car to see if I had it in my briefcase but again, I didn’t.

Finally, I ran back to the mom’s car to find the little girl was still so out of control that the man was not able to let her go.  I felt like a failure and said to the mom, “I can’t find the number.  Do you want me to call a relative or someone?”  She told me her husband had just picked up her message and was trying to find a ride.   I told her I thought she was doing a great job of staying in control and handling the situation. I gave her my card, told her about PPAL and said to please call.   At this point, the young girl’s father arrived.  The girl was still crying, but exhausted now and it was easier to get her in her car seat.  They thanked us and off they went. It had been almost two hours since the crisis began.

I went back into Walmart and talked to the manager.  She said they usually call the police when there is an incident, but didn’t feel it was the right thing to do with a young child.  I explained that the police shouldn’t be your only option.  Later that day, I returned with a stack of business cards that I asked her to pass to her employees and leave at the service phone.   I put a few cards in my glove compartment and several in my wallet.  Now when I am in a store I give the manager one and ask her to post it by the main phone and let their employees know what it is.  I would never want another family to have problems accessing a service that is intended for this purpose.   So, will you be ready to help someone in crisis in your community?  What’s in your wallet?

Beth is the mother of three young men with mental health and medical challenges.  She is a strong advocate and involved with several groups and initiatives around genetics, medical and mental health.  Beth is the Training Coordinator for PPAL.

  

Tags: ADHD, behavioral health, Children's Mental Health, family engagement, meltdown, mobile crisis, parenting

Posted in Blog Posts | 8 Comments �

Better than I ever thought

February 12th, 2013

So, my life has been very hard. I was living in a home with my mom and stepfather (my real dad is in jail) and they didn’t know what was best for me. It was very scary along with having them abuse me and they’d think it was only in fun but it was not fun for me. Then DCF came in and changed my life.  They first took me away two days after my 13^th birthday.  I hated that year so much because of that.  I was very upset and so was my mom and my family. They wanted me back, but I went to a foster home where they spoke only Spanish so it was very hard for me.

Then I was moved to different foster homes and I just started to run away. Even though I would come back in two to three days, at the time I didn’t know why I was running away.  I felt lonely and no one understood me and running did not help. It might have made it worse.  All I wanted to do when I was 13 or 14 years old was to go back home.

After the years have gone by, I know why they took me out of my house, though I didn’t then. They took me out of my house because it was very unsafe with my mom hitting and “horse playing” or that’s what my mom called it. There were loads of times during our visits when my mom would bring things I did not enjoy because she still wanted her “little girl” back.  I knew that was never going to happen and by the time I turned 16, I knew I was not going home.  At that point, I really was hoping that I did not have to go back home. I would have been very scared if I had to go back there because I did not know what my mom would do to me or if she would do anything to me. Things might have turned out worse than they did.

I think I have turned out better than I ever thought I could.  I never thought I would be where I am right now and I really am impressed with myself. No one can say that I can’t do something because I know that they are so wrong about me.  Look where I am today!  I am going to high school, I’m in twelfth grade and hopefully going to get my diploma this year. I worked at PPAL  as an intern during the summer and it is really fun getting into the working business:  making blogs, phone calls, folding, stapling and other jobs.

I still have struggles but that is to be expected in my life and I control them as much as I can. I know that people look up to me so I try to be a good role model so others can look up to me and use me as a good influence. I think about all that I have been put through. I coped with it pretty well and I think the most hardest part of my life is done with. The court stuff and the mom stuff is over and done with.  I am very happy about that because that stuff really stresses me out. I know other  people really hate when I am stressed out because, well, you can tell when I am stressed.  I think what happened to me helped me after all and I am a stronger person  because of it. I want to thank everyone who has helped me.  I really believe that because I have gone this far because it’s made me stronger.

Our guest blogger, Patricia, is a remarkable young adult.  She is a member of Youth MOVE Massachusetts. Her experiences help inspire others and allow youth/young adults not to feel so alone. Patricia is an amazing support.

Tags: behavioral health, Children's Mental Health, foster care, mental health, running away, transition age youth, youth, Youth MOVE

Posted in Blog Posts | 9 Comments �