How did your son end up in a mental facility
Read more: http://www.conductdisorders.com/community/threads/sick-to-my-stomach.56225/#ixzz2rnvWzhzt
Aud, haven't been back for a while. Sorry for the delayed answer. My difficult child son was arrested. He was homeless and was having a meal at a grocery store in their cafe. (He has food stamps) I don't know what triggered him, but he tipped over the table, picked up a couple of bottles of juice and fled the store. Security gave chase, police were called and in his agitated state he hit someone and was unruly.
He was assigned a public defender and he appeared in court. The judge ordered psychiatric evaluation and he was uncooperative/uncommuicative with the forensic psychologists who were sent to interview him. They are required by law to try to evaluate 3 times. They space the evaluations out, so after his August arrest he was in the mental health division of the county jail and was eventually found unfit to stand trial in January. The state's attorney said within 1 year they would be able to make him fit. In order to do so, he was sent to a state psychiatric hospital. I don't know what his treatment entails as we are out of touch. We do speak to the public defenders, but because of his age the medical personnel are off limits. He has been in this facility before so they have a full history on him so I don't feel the need to hector the doctors and social workers with his story. To get a hold on any of them is an undertaking that takes hours...days sometimes. I am battle-weary and not going to put myself through it. He hasn't contacted us and refused our visits. In his state we are the enemy. He also brings up things from the past. I chastised him when he was in preschool and scratched another child in the face. His father physically took him to his room after a conflict at the dinner table. He was 11. He was swinging and my husband just restrained him by holding his arms down. He was picked on in school. I took him to specialists and had him medicated for his Tourette syndrome. The psychologist I chose was no good. The list goes on and on and new things pop up all the time. All I can say is that we did the best we could as parents. We were not perfect but we were damn good. I can't let my mentally ill son's skewed perception of his past negate the loving, stable home we gave him for 24+ years. It's what my husband and I dreamed of and worked hard for. I love him, but in this state, he doesn't speak the truth. He doesn't know the truth. I hope and pray that someday he remembers the truth. Be kind to yourself. Let yourself off the hook. Years from now all the treatments and medications that we had available to us will look positively archaic. You and your husband did the best you could with what you had available. There was no way you could know what was happening at that medical facility. Heck, look at all the church scandals. Are those parent to be faulted for taking their kid to church? At some point these adult children have to take responsibility for their treatment and their actions. It sounds to me that you are a very loving and compassionate person. Don't let anyone take advantage of those wonderful qualities.
