I am glad the young man has been found and is under the care of his parents. @compmom is correct - laying blame on the parents is inappropriate and unhelpful. It is a terrifying thing to deal with an adolescent or young adult with mental illness and it often takes family members some time to fully grasp the extent of their child’s illness. Stigmatizing and blaming parents for their child’s illness only serves to delay attempts to get appropriate care. When you’ve been made to feel ashamed because your child is ill, you are unlikely to reach out for help.
Thank goodness. Thank you OP for updating. Best wishes to your son and to his roommate and family.
SO glad to hear the young man is safe. Hugs to OP’s son. Hope the school is supportive for him as well.
I told S I am proud of him for recognizing his roomie was in crisis and continuing to speak up until he was taken seriously. Roomie’s mom was so thankful and gracious on the phone; I just wanted to hug her and tell her to hang in there. He is with doctors who can help him now.
If you have a child with anxiety or depression (or worse), or even just a family history of it, you have probably already worried about something like this. I certainly have, and I’m glad this kid turned up safe.
I’ve been following the thread. I’m so, so thankful the roommate was found safe and is reunited with his family. Praise God.
OP, you have a wonderful son, and you are a great mom and comfort to the roommate’s mom, as well.
As the parent of child that has diabetes and who is one of those 33% of diabetics that suffers from depression (but is currently doing well unmedicated), I can attest to the fact that depression and its many causes is a complicated disorder/condition. Mental illness is complicated. It’s just hard, and there are often no easy solutions. With my own son, we are very open about it, and I’m glad to see how well he’s doing unmedicated, but in a heartbeat, I would recommend medication if I saw the need, and we talk a lot about recognizing changes and signs indicating the need to get help.
I agree that your S handled things exactly right. Given their troubles, it was gracious of the the roommates mother took a few minutes to express her appreciation. Hopefully the roommate will get the help he needs.
You might mention to your S that if he feels he wants to talk to someone about the incident that he could contact the school’s counseling center and make an appointment. This was a highly charged situation and he may want just want to unload his feelings etc. on someone.
So glad he has been found. I hope he gets appropriate help and is OK in the future. So very sad for this boy and his family.
As an exercise, if ask myself, if this roomie did a medical leave because of a cancer diagnosis, how would I respond? Would I send a casserole? A card? … Always a worthwhile exercise.
I brought up the parents shouldering some of the blame because Texasmom mentioned “The roommate has immigrant parents with certain expectations for him, including this school and this major for this son. I am sure that his why he came back.”
While mental illness is certainly a possibility and certainly there is something going on, parental pressures are in fact a huge source of anxiety and a spiral to mental issues for many college kids. The ones that I know are the unhappiest at school (and in life) are those just being a robot for their parents. That was the point. If they have been trained to have little input into the direction of their life, that is just sad, and unfortunately there are a lot of them out there paying off some imposed debt to their parents, and we aren’t talking poor first gen kids. Expectations on your kids is normal, be we all know people whose kids have little choice in their life, at least through college.
So no, we don’t know exactly what is up with this kid, but the fact he was miserable and came back gives a hint to the home situation.
Dyiu, good point. A card and a follow up phone call? Encourage your son to do the same.
I have a friend whose kid is having some mental health issues and touch base with her from time to time. This situation is different because these parents aren’t OP’s friends, but it does seem kind to contact them.
Responding late (as the matter seems to have been resolved), but this is an example of a situation where it is important to know whether campus security is an actual police department, or whether the actual police department is an organization separate from campus security.
Dyiu, Interesting exercise, but in this particular case I would probably opt not to contact the roommate. It may be best for him to move forward rather than get brought back to this difficult time so close to when it happened.
I am so relieved that the kid was found. I hope he can find his way.