conuly

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A friend of mine is very worried about her daughter, who is diagnosed ADHD and bipolar and who seems to be getting worse all the time. That hair-pulling thing, what looks like the beginnings of an eating disorder, violence towards inanimate objects, suicidal thoughts - that's a lot to fit into 13 years.

I don't have any advice, and doubt I could help, but I know some of my friends are near experts on these sorts of subjects, so I thought I'd ask you to help. If you want to comment there, go ahead, but I gave her my journal's addy, so she can come her and comment and read your comments.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

elenbarathi.livejournal.com

Well, I will advise, but I have to say that I'm not expecting it's going to do any good, because it's going to drastically conflict with all the "expert advice" she's already getting. Still, one must try, so here goes:

Having been "hospitalized" at age 14 myself, the first thing I have to say is that the word "hospital" is a misnomer. Such places would be better called "concentration camps", and the levels of abuse in them are often worse than in prison - the expensive private hospitals often worse than the State institutions, because they are far less regulated. Should this woman send her daughter to one, the first thing she will be told is that any accounts of abuse she hears are lies and manipulation, not to be believed. Here are some references that tell the truth about what goes on:

Ill Treated (http://reason.com/0205/cr.bd.ill.shtml)

Outposts In Our Heads (http://amanda.autistics.org/intangible.html)

Now, as for the drugs, this poor child has apparently been pumped full of them for the past five years and she "appears to be getting worse all the time" - hasn't it occurred to her mother or anyone else that maybe the drugs are what's making her worse?!?!

Psychiatric drug facts (http://www.breggin.com)

My advice is that she find a doctor who can and will help her daughter get off the drugs. It won't be any fast or easy process; the withdrawal symptoms are liable to be severe.

Now, for the rest? There's no information given about what the child says is the problem. Is she being bullied at school? Was she ever molested? (That may not be known - I was molested right before I was hospitalized, which was what caused me to attempt suicide, but I never told anyone for over 30 years. And yes, I was molested again while I was in the hospital, by a member of the staff.) What is her relationship with her father like, and what does he say about her difficulties? How are her grades, and what is her relationship like with her friends?

It takes longer than two years for a child to 'get over' her parents' divorce, even if she has a good relationship with both of them and sees them both on a regular basis. 13-year-old girls are volatile creatures under the best of circumstances, with poor impulse control and a tendency toward Drama And Angst. And Middle School is very frequently an intensely hostile, competitive, high-pressure environment.

My advice about the hair-pulling is to leave her alone about it. It is a very minor matter compared to everything else - if she pulls out every last one of her eyebrows and eyelashes, what real harm is that? - and continuing to make it an issue is only likely to make the problem worse. Decrease the amount of stress in her life, and her 'stress symptoms' will also decrease.

Too long; continued next post

From:

elenbarathi.livejournal.com

As for the stealing food - if she is too thin, shouldn't she be allowed to eat when she's hungry? 98 lbs. is not terribly thin for a 13-year-old, unless she's very tall, but she could probably stand to gain some weight.

My advice is to stop buying junk food of any sort. Instead, keep lots of good healthy food in the house at all times, especially things she can just pick up and eat, and let her choose what and when she eats. If it's all good for her, her choices can't help being good. Ask her what she'd like to have.

Ice cream is the ultimate get-kids-to-eat food; it's got protein, carbohydrate, and a good amount of calcium, which growing kids need. Buy a carton or two of Breyer's Vanilla every time you shop, and don't put any restriction on when or how much she can eat. Bananas and cheese are two other foods to keep around all the time - if they're there, she'll eat them.

While she's in the process of getting off the drugs, she's going to need extra nutritional support, i.e. vitamins, herbal supplements, etcetera. Find a naturopath or other practicioner of holistic medicine to advise you about this; most MDs know very little about nutrition.

Let her wear what she wants - don't buy clothes you don't want her to wear, of course, but don't interfere in her choices. Show her how to do her own laundry if she doesn't already know, then leave it up to her to deal with it - if she runs out of clean and has to wear dirty, bite your tongue, no matter how long it takes before she washes them. Let her keep her room how she wants, and don't hassle her about it - yes, it'll be a pigsty; they're all unbelievable slobs at that age, but they do grow out of it.

If she hates her school or is falling too far behind, pull her out. This seems like a radical step, but it's a lot less radical than sending her away to an institution, and it may be what she needs while she's recovering. There are many good homeschool programs, but she may not be up to coping with any school at all for a while, so if you do pull her out, let her have a couple of months off - till after the holidays, say - then ask her what she'd like to do about her education.

If she likes counseling and thinks it's helping, keep going, but if she doesn't, don't make her go. Stay off the computer when she's home and awake. If TV is an "issue", get rid of it - Life Without Television is possible, and it's hard to re-forge a relationship with someone when one or both of you is staring at an electronic screen. Go for walks, go do fun activities together - don't nag her, don't criticize her, don't give her advice unless she asks - if she wants to talk, listen; if she doesn't, let that be okay too.

Too long; continued next post

From:

elenbarathi.livejournal.com

The point of all this is to reduce her stress-load to an absolute minimum in all possible ways. That's supposedly what the point of hospitalization would be... isn't it?... but that's not what hospitalization would do; instead it would subject her to more stress and more drugs. So I say, set it up so that if she needs to totally collapse, she can do it at home, in safety, with her mother's love to help her through.

No, this is no easy thing, I realize. My daughter is 15 now; her Dad and I split up when she was 8; I know what kind of a heroic effort I'm advocating here. But I also know what's going to happen to her if she's "sent away", and what that's going to do to her relationship with her mother - not temporarily, but permanently.

Bottom line: the shrinks have had their chance, and all their drugs and diagnoses haven't helped. If something different isn't done for this poor kid pretty soon, it sounds like she's destined for the ranks of the psychiatric survivors (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22psychiatric+survivors%22&btnG=Google+Search) - assuming she survives, of course; not everybody does - and we'll be reading her post-trauma horror stories on the Net a few years from now.

Sorry if that's harsh, but I think of what was done to me, what was done to countless others, and then I think of my own daughter. There is nothing - literally, nothing - I wouldn't do to keep such a thing from happening to her. My parents had ignorance for an excuse, which is the only reason I've been able to more-or-less forgive them, but... what if they'd known?

What if they'd known?