<p>I am back after being a frequent poster back in 2003-2005. Thanks to everyone's help out here and lots of work, my brilliant S was offered a full tuition scholarship at WASHU. It was a dream come true. He started right out doing research with a prof he has been conversing with online. Very friendly campus. Freshman year was great! Looking back there were a few incidents that were a bit out of character that occurred Fall of sophomore year...he was talking about students in his co-op coughing just to keep him awake or interfere with studying..profs who were picking on kids..Christmas break was fine. We don't live near WASHU and didn't see him (we did talk on the phone) from late January until he called me to pick him up from school 1 week before finals were scheduled to be over. I have never been so shocked at what I found when I got there. My S looked and acted like a homeless person who has lived in a cave alone for months. He was fearful, confrontational, dirty, long beard and hair. </p>
<p>I am now writing 3 years later. He is living in my house, sees no one, plays video games, watches tv, hears voices, hallucinates, paranoid, scared of germs..basically he is very ill with a brain disease. He has not held a parttime job in the last 1 1/2 years. He is unable to understand he is ill so he refuses meds..why should he take them as he is not ill? Basically it is shocking, sad and incredibly unexpected.</p>
<p>My reason for writing this is to say that age 20 is a very common time for this to happen to you men. Young women tend to develop illness in later 20s-early 30s. His college basically ignored it. No friends called to tell us..nothing. PLEASE try to see you kids frequently enough that this cannot fly under the radar. PLEASE talk to them about illness that can happen and that if they see it in a friend or get scared about changes in themselves, to get help. Getting meds right away is the best chance of recovery. Don't assume odd behavior is a kid just being a college student. </p>
<p>I hope this made sense. If it helped 1 person, it was worth writing. It is a nightmare that I hope none of you have to live through. </p>
<p>I am so sorry that your son is suffering and that you are as well. It was tremendously generous of you to share your story here, out of concern for people you’ve never met.</p>
<p>I will use this thread as a springboard to talk to my son, to raise his awareness for himself and friends. I will make clear to him that it’s not okay to ignore signs out of some misplaced “respect for privacy.” It’s such an important conversation and I thank you for the prompting. </p>
<p>So sorry to hear about your S! Hopefully, you’ll find a way to get him effective treatment. I had a friend (clinical psych PhD student) who did a lot of work with people with schizophrenia and said, while they were many, many sad cases, she had also seen some amazing recoveries.</p>
<p>I’m so sorry to read this. Thank you for taking the time to share this heartbreaking story with us. </p>
<p>I have a friend who recently had to pick her daughter up from college because she’s become bi-polar and had to be hospitalized. Many mental illnesses begin to manifest in the college years, and it is something for us to watch out for.</p>
<p>I hope things improve, and that your son is eventually able to recognize his illness and accept help - for your sake as well as his.</p>
<p>kdos, thank you for sharing your story. While most people might just read it and go on, a few will be helped.
I would like to add that the statistic about young women not being affected until later is not always true. Many college students of both genders run into bio-chemical mental health issues and don’t know where to turn to and or how to help their room-mates or friends. Many, many people will first present with symptoms in the early 20’s . Please don’t blame yourself for missing the early symptoms. None of us expects to have a child develop a psychological disease - especially after the kid has been such a shining star before-hand.<br>
Hopes and prayers for you and your son.</p>
<p>Thank you for posting this, kdos. I think it took a lot of strength to write it. My heart goes out to you and your son. Since he isn’t able to acknowledge that he has a psychological problem, will he at least see perhaps his primary care MD to start some evaluation/intervention? I know how difficult it is to get help for an adult who isn’t willing to accept it. Keep trying. Keep writing. I wish you the best, and send hope and prayers your way!</p>
<p>I appreciate all of your kind wishes and thoughtful replies. Unfortunately this is something people just do not talk about and I am really trying to change that with family and friends. It just recently occurred to me how wide of an audience was out here. I LOVED this website and developed many friends and received such great support and advice. I guess I see this as a way to give back. We were SOOO unprepared and knew literally nothing about mental illness before. It is everywhere around us but rarely mentioned. If we could shine some hopeful light on it I think it could only help ease the stigma as well as help other family members and people with the illnesses.</p>
<p>kdos: I am sending as much love as possible to you and your son. I am so sorry things did not work out as you’d hoped. All is not lost, and I will hope for your S’s recovery.</p>
<p>I want to add my thanks to the others who have posted theirs.</p>
<p>This happened to my s-i-l in her late 20s. Fortunately her neighbor noticed when she had her first mental break, and contacted her parents, who were many states away. So sad to see a beautiful, intelligent young woman literally lose her mind. Your son may need in-patient care to get him on meds. Staying on meds is key. (Why don’t they make implantable meds for the mentally ill? Allowing her to decide when/if to take meds led to most of her problems.)
S-i-l made in-laws’ life hell–they had to evict her from their home (she turned them in for imagined abuse of their other handicapped son, which led to more problems. . .) She had periods of stability when she was on her meds, worked, went to grad school, got straight A’s, etc. Then she would decide that she was “well” and didn’t need meds. She lived in homeless shelters, then she was evicted from shelters for threatening to sue them (she was always imagining various kinds of abuse and reporting to authorities, contacting lawyers–she is educated and writes very well, so often she would be taken seriously . .) She lived on the streets. It is a miracle she is alive. She was picked up by the police several times.
No one in the family could take her in because she was sometimes violent and we all had kids.She couldn’t hold even a fast food job (she had been asst. director of financial aid at a major university). Finally in the last couple years (she is now over 40) she has gotten on disability, gotten housing, back on meds. She still spends her days wandering the streets and hanging out in the library, but at least she is in a safe place.</p>
<p>Inplantable meds would be great for times like these.</p>
<p>The problem with meds is they can take away what is important to you. For example, if you are a writer and like to write creative stories, but the meds cause you to lose your creativity and therefore unable to write, will you want to keep taking them? Of course not…even though you need to.</p>
<p>I think in most cases the fear that meds will destroy creativity is a myth. However, there are obvious First Amendment violations in involuntary implantable meds.</p>
<p>A very difficult problem indeed.</p>
<p>Again, OP, please feel surrounded by support as you once did. And if you need to rant sometimes, do that too. You don’t have to be strong every minute. I’m sure we’re all here for you.</p>
<p>kdos, I am sorry for your family and your son. I know how difficult this is and grieve with you.</p>
<p>This illness comes on in unique ways for many different people…we too have been shocked and confused by that late, gradual onset (between age 30 and 40) of a close female family member. She gets sick episodically but will allow herself to be hospitalized when it happens (so far). She takes meds, but they cause awful side effects that make her sicker than the original illness at times - you can hardly tell the med side effects from the disease sometimes. The medical privacy laws confound the situation because a person in this condition can’t possibly navigate the medical systems alone to get help, can’t make decisions, won’t get medical help, or be forced to take meds. She has finally signed over all medical power of attorney, and legal guardianship, but we still afford her as much privacy and decision making power as practical. Health insurance has been another very difficult issue.</p>
<p>We have begun to talk about the illness very openly and freely as we have slowly tried to understand what can’t be understood. It’s a brain disease, a wiring problem. We find some people are insensitive and closed-minded and say stupid things, others we wished we’d opened up to sooner.</p>
<p>Thanks for bringing this up on this board. I too hope you find effective treatment. Take good care of yourself as well though I know it can be hard to do.</p>
<p>I can’t imagine dealing with such a sad situation, and still being generous enough to share it with others.</p>
<p>I wonder, though, if meds may help him-and he is living in your house, and you are probably feeding him…can you grind it up and put it in his food like we used to when they were little? I am unconcerned with privacy, rights, self-determination, all that, when it comes to ones child. If the medication is effective enough that it could help him, is that something you could try?</p>
<p>and re:implantable meds…if the meds worked, that would be great. But it’s amazing how often they need to be adjusted, they get thrown off for no apparent reason…if implanted, I don’t know how easy it would be to make minor or quick major adjustments.</p>
<p>It bothers me when people say ‘if they would just stay on their meds’ - the side effects for some people are absolutely unbearable. Or no med works at all. One of the side effects for my family member is uncontrollable, unsafe walking (until feet bleed, until complete and utter exhaustion). This is impossible to live with - for her, it’s more dangerous than her actual illness, which is mild compared to what others have.</p>
<p>The system is very bad right now between HIPPA laws, lack of funding, the public being woefully uninformed, our inability to force meds (they ARE his only hope!), insurance (he has it and right now that means he CAN’T get the care we hoped to get him). We have been through a couple doctors for 1 visit each, involuntary hospitalization which was handled very poorly and no connection or info passed between netcare, hospital, court, police. Right now we are trying to get mental health power of attorney. What particularly scares me is that my husband and I are bright, educated people who are having a hard time navigating this mess of a system. What about the poor people who are ill trying to navigate through it by themselves?</p>