A little over a year ago, in August 2006, I took my son to meet the administrator at a local mental health agency and clinic, because this is the one place I could find to get my adult son the mental health he desperately needed since my employer’s health insurance would not cover him any longer. The name of this agency is The Rushford Behavioral Center, Inc. It is located in Meriden, CT, and since that is the mental health catchment area my family lives in, this is the agency we had to go to for our son’s mental health needs.
Little did I know what I was getting us all into — especially my son — who is bipolar, rapid cycling, and primarily manic.
But let me back up and share a historical perspective of my son’s illness.
My son was diagnosed formally with Bipolar illness around the age of 15, during his second psychiatric hospitalization in CT. He was at a facility known at the time as The Portland Behavioral Center. At that time it was starting to be managed by St. Francis Care Behavioral Health. Until that time, my son had been mis-diagnosed from the age of 5 years old. First, it was ADD and ADHD plus significant learning disabilities in math, written expression, speech, and auditory processing. This diagnosis was made at Mel Levine’s Clinic at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This diagnosis continued until my son was first admitted to a psychiatric hospital at Yale, formerly known as the Yale Psychiatric Institute, or YPI. While there, my son was given another incorrect diagnosis as having borderline personality disorder, by a young female Dr. at YPI. She didn’t even talk to us about our son, but instead, made that determination in about 15 minutes! You may think that was impressive, but after the many years I had already spent as a parent and advocate for my son and his mental issues, I knew that this Dr. had not taken the necessary time or steps to even begin to make an accurate diagnosis!
My husband and I were angry and devastated, because we had fought so hard to get our son into Yale, thinking it would be the best place he could be during this time of crisis — we could not have been more wrong!
It took another doctor, several days later, and my husband and I arguing with staff and interviewers, as well as other doctors at YPI, to get a more accurate diagnosis of possible bipolar — not borderline personality disorder. It also took several days to get the staff to realize that we, the parents, were not the cause of our son’s behavior — it was his illness. We were not bad parents, and we certainly did not make our son hallucinate and hear voices during a psychotic episode. Again, it was his mental illness that was driving his behavior and creating the auditory hallucinations he was experiencing.
However, my husband and I were perceived as criminals and that we MUST have done something really bad to cause our son’s behavior. This was a pattern of treatment that my husband and I would receive for many years — even up to and including the present.
Did we share with the intake Dr. that my maternal uncle, father, and first husband were all bipolar? Yes. Did I delve deeply into the genetic background of my family with every clinician I have ever met with regarding my son’s illness? Are my son’s genes loaded? Yes, yes, and YES! Did anyone ever listen to either my husband or myself? Sure — they nodded their heads and said, “Yes, hmm, very interesting.” And then it was always followed by, “But your son cannot be bipolar, because he is simply too young.”
Unfortunately, that response has proven to be tragic for my entire family, but most of all for our son. Our son is now almost 23 years old, to give you some sense of how long we have dealt with his mental illness — as well as “the system.” My husband and I are not newbies to any of this, and we are both very bright, articulate, and absolutely committed to our son being successful as a bipolar individual. For some reason, however, many important caregivers for our son continually fail to recognize these attributes in my husband and myself.
Why?
We will be exploring that question in other posts.
I will continue the story about the beginning of all this, but for now I must take a break, as this is still a very raw memory for me to write about.
Thank you for reading, and please feel free to comment.
