<p>In light of tradegy at VT (offering my thoughts and prayers for all the victims and their families) and posts from various CCers involving college-age kids and depression, bipolar, eating disorders, OCD, etc., etc. , I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on whether kids that develop mental illness shortly before going to college or while at college should leave their schools or delay enrollment. Is it best for the kids to be where their parent(s) can supervise treatment, or does this just stigmatize and delay the student academically?</p>
<p>It depends on the student's personality, the mental illness, the severity of that illness, the college atmosphere, the college's mental health resources, the home environment, and the current level of control over the mental illness. This isn't a one size fits all situation. The most important factor in most cases is probably the severity and type of mental illness. Often students can start treatment while at school and do absolutely fine, while in other cases students are in no shape to continue in college, academically or otherwise.</p>
<p>If those who can admit for themselves or with the help of others that they are not well, then don't see any reason for them to not be here. No one asks to be inflicted with mental illness or to have some kind of mental breakdown. I think that if they are voluntarily and consistently accepting medication, one-on-one therapy, and guidance and advice from advisors, parents, school and home psychiatrists, councelors that are helping their whole family deal with this disease, and whoever else needs to be involved, then they should have every opportunity to continue with their academics past HS graduation. </p>
<p>If people with mental disease aren't willingly doing this, and others can verify that the person is not well and is a danger to themselves or others, then they should be forced to take a leave of absence and removed from campus by family or a mental health facility until they have the disease under control.</p>
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Is it best for the kids to be where their parent(s) can supervise treatment
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<p>Parents may or may not be well suited for this role. Obviously, a lot would depend on the parents' ability and willingness to understand the illness, to accept their child unconditionally, and to provide constructive support during treatment.</p>
<p>It depends on the individual. One friend of mine has a daughter who was having a breakdown during the second semester of her freshman year. The mom & dad split time with her, going to all of her classes with her & staying with her as she did her homework. They had tried to get her to come home, but she wanted to finish the term. She was under a doctor's care & on meds while completing the term. In the summer, she had intensive therapy (3x/week) and eventually recovered & returned to school in the fall. It was a very difficult time for the whole family, but it worked out well. Another friend has a son whose depression caused him to stop going to classes, stop going out (even for meals), etc. during his freshman year. His roommate called my friend & told her. The dad drove & got him and brought him home. He is currently attending community college & working ... friend is working toward helping him learn to cope so that he might eventually be able to live on his own ... it may be some time before that happens. My own brother, many years ago, returned home from college during freshman year & completed school at a commuter college while living at home. He is now 50 & is still plagued with the depression that caused him to return home (living with a brother now after living in his car last summer). None of these 3 would have been a danger to anyone else had they stayed at school, but they may have harmed themselves if simply left to try to cope on their own. 1 is a success story, 1 might end up a success story, and 1 has never been able to conquer his mental illness. I think all the parents did what seemed best, but each person is unique & each story ends differently. As in the VT situation, hindsight is 20/20 ... but in the real world, we just have to make the best calls we can given what we feel is the right thing to do when the situation presents itself. Mental illness has no easy answers.</p>
<p>I agree with the above posts. It depends on the individual and the situation. Dealing with imperfection is the staff of life. Very few life skills can be learned if the student is confined to his room at home.</p>
<p>It may be the right thing for a student with mental illness to stay at school, but that information should be disclosed to the school. The parents should have a safety net around the student because ultimately it is not the school reponsiblity to take care of the student, more importantly it is not fair for the roommate to have to deal with it. By letting the school know, the school may also let you know if they are capable of dealing with it. I guess I think it's better for the parents to supervise the student's treatment until it is determined that student could take care of himself.</p>
<p>My neighbors had a son who went off to college last fall. He was miserable at the school and started to develop severe depression. After about two months, they brought him home. He got therapy and took some classes at a local college. The following fall, he enrolled in a different university and loved it there. So it does depend on the individual. Sometimes a college really is the wrong fit for a student.</p>
<p>I agree that every circumstance can be different, and should be considered on a case-by-case basis. My question about this issue is -- what about the roommate? Building on what oldfort just said -- under some circumstances, the pressure/stress on the roommate of someone with mental illness or an eating disorder could be intense. Roommate situations can be stressful enough, in addition to all the other stresses that come with college. I lived with some nutty roommates in college, but I wouldn't have wanted to deal with someone with a diagnosed mental illness/eating disorder -- and I wouldn't be thrilled if my daughter had to, either. If the condition is totally under control with medication, that's OK, I guess ... but then, what if the student stops taking their meds?</p>
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Sometimes a college really is the wrong fit for a student.
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A wrong fit college would not cause severe depression. Emotionally healthy individuals can deal with temporary unfortunate environments. It sounds as if time, therapy, and living at home for a while made him healthy enough to enjoy another college.</p>
<p>Okay, so I admit my original question was unacceptably vague... Let me narrow it done a bit:
What about in the case of someone who is doing well but NOT seeking treatment? Take the case of the poster with possible OCD for example. By her account, she is very happy and thriving academically and socially but refuses to seek treatment for a possible, fairlty major disorder. What about a popular, curve-setting full-blown bulimic who resists therapy? In these cases, where the kid is high-functioning but not seeking help, what would you do? It's an interesting twist, I think.</p>
<p>corranged,
There is such a thing as a bad fit. I know from personal experience. I toured three middle schools in 6th grade-a "preppy" one, a warm, laid-back one, and one that was kind of in the middle. I ended up being zoned to the "preppy" school that I thought was a "bad fit" during my tours. Spent six weeks there, made a few casual friends, got good grades, but was fairly miserable and felt like I couldn't find "my people" in this new school. I, who had always liked school in the past, really didn't like going to this new, awkward environment everyday. When JHS started the next year, on the second day, I met a wonderully warm, funny, welcoming (not to mention "in") crowd of friends, many of whom I hung out with all throughout JHS and HS. About 90% of them came from the warm, laid-back school my family and I had loved so much on our tours. Of course, I can never know for sure, but I firmly believed had I been zoned for that school, the last six weeks of middle school would have been much better than they were. So there is such a thing as a "good fit" and "bad fit," imo, and it can really affect one's experience.</p>
<p>I don't see how you can narrow this down to mental illness. First, things like OCD are rarely going to effect others, except possibly a roommate. You would be surprised at the percent of the population that has a mild form of OCD. There are also privacy laws in place to protect people. Very few individuals with mental illness are going to act out violently. The chance of the individual hurting himself is much more likely. You want a twist, by this way of thinking then should every student who tests HIV positive have to wear a sign or be denied admission? What about someone with Herpes or Hepatitis? You get the point. </p>
<p>The only time a student should be forced to go home is if it is proven they are a danger to the community.</p>
<p>"Bad fit" can definitely affect one's mood. I do not agree, however, that being unhappy or in a bad mood equates with mental illness.</p>
<p>Wolfpiper, I don't see what your story about middle school says about anything in my post. I did not say that any kid would be equally happy at any school; I said that a "bad fit" school would never cause severe depression. As Mootmom said, being unhappy in a temporary situation is different than being mentally ill.</p>
<p>Oh, I wasn't saying that! I agree that being UNHAPPY is a world of difference from being DEPRESSED (we only got that beaten int our head about 2 million or so times in abnormal), but a bad situation can, I think, be a TRIGGER for depression (the stress in diathesis-stress, if you will).</p>
<p>Cubsfan,
Wow. You totally misunderstood me.</p>
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a bad situation can, I think, be a TRIGGER for depression
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Hence my use of the word cause, and my emphasis on emotionally healthy people being able to deal with a variety of circumstances. I think we're in agreement on this issue.</p>
<p>I had some weird personal experience with this. One of my close friends -- and a roommate sophomore and senior years -- had a full-blown schizophrenic break in the winter of our junior year. The whole nine yards: God was calling him on the telephone, he was having various auditory and visual hallucinations, at one point he started writhing and speaking in tongues. That's when I took him to the hospital, where he stayed for the next six weeks.</p>
<p>He lost that semester, but his parents had him back in school for the summer, and he graduated on time with his class, and got a job with the government (great psych benefits!). He was crazy as a loon, but properly medicated he was not so crazy that he couldn't do his school work amid the ongoing religious conversion experiences. Senior year was especially trying. Part of the manifestation of his illness was that a crush he had on a young woman in our college developed into something of a cult of her divinity. She was completely unaware of this; he was so in awe of her that he had never actually spoken to her. However, with medication and heavy therapy, he began to consider the possibility that she was human, and he turned into a stalker. That was NOT comfortable for his friends, to say the least. There were other bizarre behaviors, too, and two short periods of hospitalization.</p>
<p>I can't tell you how hard this was on his close friends. His closest friend became horribly depressed and wound up taking a year off and essentially doing nothing. I was probably his second-closest friend, and I burned out on the relationship by the middle of our senior year. We were the only people who had daily contact with him, and we cared about him a lot, but we had absolutely no support. The therapists couldn't talk to us (although we sure made certain they heard what we had to say during the stalking period). The parents were grateful, but were distant and in constant denial about the severity of his illness. The college would have been willing to take him out of our suite, but we weren't willing to leave him with no day-to-day support system. Other than that, there was nothing the institution could do for us. Various individuals helped us understand what was going on. We did the best we could. I was a loyal friend until graduation, and I haven't spoken to him since.</p>
<p>No one ever felt he was a danger to others, except for the girl (who didn't know him at all) when she realized she was being stalked, but the behavior stopped soon thereafter. He wasn't much of a danger to himself, either -- he never did anything much more self-destructive than not sleeping or eating for extended periods, although we were always on the lookout for signs that anything was changing. (God was pretty negative in His communications with my friend, calling him names and telling him how worthless he was, but as far as I know He never suggested violence of any type.)</p>
<p>Should he have gone home? His friends certainly wished he had. We were apalled at his parents' belief that he could handle college. But, of course, with our help, they were right: he could handle college. I suspect that starting a few weeks ago, someone like him would be under a lot of pressure to leave school, but I haven't thought through whether today a college would even have a right, under the ADA, to force him to go home. If his few friends had withdrawn their support, kicked him out of the suite, etc., that might have made it impossible for him to continue, but we didn't feel comfortable doing that. And it's not like we had to babysit him 24-7 -- we just had to treat him like a friend, monitor his behavior, remind him what reality was from time to time, and make certain he did things like go to class and to dinner. It would have been fine if we didn't feel so lonely and inadequate doing it, and in the end it didn't limit anybody's achievement (everyone but the stopped-out friend went to a top graduate school the next year, and that friend wound up at HBS a few years later).</p>
<p>It depends on what the mental illness is. Also, decisions about college should be made in coordination with a licensed mental health professional.</p>
<p>What a story, JHS. Families need to take responsibility but have mercy on their ability to accept psychotic illnesses. My brother has been hospitalized ten times and I never see it coming. He's completely unglued before I recognize that there were warning signs. You'd think I would recognize them right away after 20 years. Put it down to the human inability to see beyond the length of their own arms. The human denial function is incredible.</p>
<p>wolf...I'd say that a student who has a social support system, a student with good same-sex friends, might possibly be able to stay and matriculate. Often mental illness precludes a social circle, however, and in that case, it would be better for the student to return home.</p>
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the kid is high-functioning but not seeking help
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<p>I am puzzled by the new scenario. What would be the point of the student coming home, if the student is not going to accept help there?</p>