In support of any person which has taken care of a child having mental health concerns, specifically bi polar disorder as well as schizophrenia, My wife and I will not need to let you know that it’s 100 % pure hell on earth. Being parents, we have difficulty daily with the guilt associated with definitely not having the ability to provide enough for our own Son. Being the leader of our house I’m continuously searching for a healthier way to deal with this particular endless challenge.
Our son is now twenty-one and is living in an apartment; however, we must visit every single day to make sure he takes his medicine. He will never have what we would call a normal existence. It just breaks our hearts to believe that the small sweet innocent baby boy that we brought into our home at the really young age of 3 months old will most likely in no way maintain a career or possess a family of his very own. Anybody that doesn’t think that bi polar or schizophrenia is not a crippling illness, needs to witness the existence of our adopted son.
He would always want to drive! He had taken the bonds which his grandpa had given to him each and every birthday celebration since the 1st 1 and purchased a vehicle at his graduation. He furthermore signed up for a Vocational College to become an industrial electrician. I can not explain exactly how thrilled my wife and I were for him despite the fact that at that point the only thing which had manifested itself had been the bi polar disorder. We assisted by taking out a personal loan to assist in paying for the education. He’d only turned 18 a couple of months before.
I guess he made it through about four weeks of school before he began missing a day here and a day there. Before you know it he was missing two or three days at a time. Not long after he dropped out completely. We were very upset with him at that point not knowing or understanding that he not only had bi polar but now he was beginning to take on the mental illness of schizophrenia. We had no idea except that we began to see stranger and stranger behavior from him.
It wasn’t too much time after this that he totaled out his vehicle. He was driving too quick and slid it into a tree right in front of someone’s home. We still did not fully realize the illness at this point and just believed he was being irresponsible. He had quit college, wrecked his vehicle, did not have work, and wanted to sleep all the time. In our book he was just becoming lazy and irresponsible.
What we were clueless of was that the pacing, speaking with nobody, the sleeping, the unpredictable actions was part and parcel of bi polar and schizophrenia disease. The regrettable factor was that this was only the tip of the iceberg. All heck was starting to expose itself and we failed to recognize precisely what we were in store for. His bed room was in the basement and he wasted most of his time down there in most cases sleeping. On the other hand, he then would spend the majority of his nights up, going through the fridge and cabinets creating chaos. Not to say he seemed to be wandering through the entire home creating disturbance and keeping the rest of us awake.
Argument after argument occurred, but no progress was made. If you have any understanding of bi polar or schizophrenia you will know that without the right medicine it gets completely out of control. Well that was exactly what was happening. In the true sense of the word, things were getting crazy. Our solution was that we needed to be more forceful and demanding of what we expected of him. Wrong answer, at least in our case!
He was getting more and more delusional. He began referring to the home as his and we had been guest there. He began unusual gestures with his hands and head. He would stare right passed you without saying a word while you would be talking with him. Following, in a few seconds he would then answer a question you may have asked two or three minutes ago. He became more and more aggressive in his behavior. His mother started to get frightened of him.
This all continued until the time he totally erupted in to physical violence. He swung and hit his mom in the face. Despite the fact that I wanted to un-load on him, I threw him to the ground and kept him there till the police showed up. I never used that much energy to hold an individual down until that moment in time. He was battling with each and every oz of his being to get free. I was not going to allow that to occur until the police got there. He’d bite my arm that I had all-around his neck. I invested 12 years in the Marine Corps and never did I encounter something so totally spinning out of control.
I understand that I wanted to beat him to a pulp however I couldn’t simply because he was my boy. The police finally showed up and managed to hand cuff him. They recognized instantly that he had some form of psychological medical concerns. They did not arrest him based on our pleas to have him get psychological help. Rather they placed him on a hold in a community psychological locked ward.
As soon as he had been examined they instantly established he had not merely bi polar, but additionally schizophrenia. It had been like a light went on for us. It absolutely was great to understand that there was reasons for his actions and not that he had been merely a misfit. That has not necessarily made living any simpler; however we recognize much more about it. As a matter of reality we’re turning into experts through the University of Hard Knocks. Not really a university you would like to go to, believe me.
If you’re a parent who has a kid with either bi polar disorder or schizophrenia, trust me when I inform you that we understand. Get assist and stay focused.
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