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My son is 13. He has been on mood stabalizers for about 2 years. He is not yet in the real throes of puberty and he is very immature for his age. He has been doing school at home since March, there is no in person school available here. He has always been a very emotional child who gets upset easily and has a good amount of anxiety and does not react well to unknown situations. He gets stressed very easily.
He lives with his father and I have every other week weekends with him, he lives 2 hours away. This situation exists because I moved out and left his father right before he started Kindergarten and I had nowhere for him to live so he stayed with his dad. Now its been 7 years or so and its just the way things are now. His dad is generally a good father.
DS has always been a good student, honor roll with hopes of being a mechanical engineer or video game designer. I provide his health insurance and pay child support. His father is frequently unemployed and the money problems cause a lot of stress at his dads house and therefore causes him a lot of stress. Such as he cried one time when we went out to eat because he ordered dinner then decided he wasnt hungry and he was afraid to not eat it since it would be a waste. Since school has been out his grades have fallen to close to failure rate which I know his dad is on him constantly about and punishes him excessively for (not physically).
Anyway, back to todays problem.
He sent my older SS a screenshot of his "depression quiz" which said he has severe depression and asking my SS not to tell me since he doesnt want us to worry. Which my SS immediately forwarded to me. I reached out to my son and asked if he was thinking of sui*ide or self harm and he said yes. But asked me not to tell his dad because he will just yell at him. He said everytime he tries to reach out to his dad for help his dad brings it back round to him doing poorly in school. He said he wants to care about school but he cant.
So what do i do??
He already on medication and Ive been begging him for over a year to get him in therapy but he keeps putting me off and I only see him 4 days a month and offices arent open on saturdays.
I wish he could live with me but NJ has very strict rules about maintaining the status quo and not changing living situations so I would need a lawyer and need to file a custody suit to try and get him and may still lose and in the meantime cause my son more harm because he will be with his dad the entire time and his dad is not very gracious when it comes to my son wanting more time with me. He guilts him about wanting to extend his visits and makes him feel bad, which seems typical in these situations unfortunately.
If he's doing online school, can he come and stay with you? I would have him come and still pay child support and get him to see a therapist. Living in a stressful environment, especially during these times, is only hurting your son more.
I am so sorry for this. From what you describe, your son is having a major adolescent depression. He admits having thoughts of suicide. This is serious business. He is suffering, and you could lose him.
Who is prescribing the medication (which he very well may NOT be taking)? The first step is to make an emergency appointment with the person who is prescribing the medication. That person, if qualified to prescribe psych meds, should do a suicidal risk screen. This consists of gently asking the person a series of questions. "Do you feel sad most days? Do you ever feel like you wish you could go to sleep just to get away from being sad? Do you ever feel it might be better just not to be here? Have you had thoughts of suicide? Do you have a plan? Do you have the means of carrying that plan out? Have you decided when/how to carry it out?
If the person responds, "Yeah, I'm sad, but oh no, I never think about suicide! No way!", then you adjust meds and get them in with a therapist. If they say yes, I think about not being here, but no, I don't have a plan, then you get them in faster with the therapist. If they have a plan (I'll jump out of a skyscraper) but they live in a ranch house, then the plan is not real, because they have no means of executing it, or "I'll take an overdose" but there are no pills in the house, and they have no way of getting any, then you watch them 24/7 and get them into a therapist immediately.
But if they admit thinking of suicide, and have a way to do it (I'll take a Tylenol overdose and I have/can get/ the pills), then you have to hospitalize them right away.
I'm assuming that you have joint legal custody. You can take him to seek medical care. If the situation is that bad for your son, and you have the right to by means of joint legal custody, and if the father "gets weird" about it (and he sounds weird, if the kid is so nervous that he's afraid to waste food), just let the boy know that you will be there at such and such a time, and take him to the nearest children's hospital for a psych evaluation in the emergency room. Tell him to just dash out of the house to your car, and take him to the nearest pediatric hospital emergency room. If they feel he is at risk of suicide, they will keep him there until they find him a psych bed for a stabilizing inpatient stay, and they will arrange outpatient follow up before discharge. You have to make SURE that this is arranged! Do not let them discharge him without appropriate outpatient follow up.
I don't know what the past has been, but it's definitely unusual to have as little visitation time as you have, even for a non-custodial father, let alone a non-custodial mother. Is there some reason that things were set up this way, and continue this way, other than your not having had stable housing at the time of separation eight years ago? If you're the working parent who provides health insurance, and father is unemployed, it sounds as if you are more stable than father right now.
—How long has your son been on the same dose of mood stabilizers? How often does he go for re-evaluations? Do you know for a fact that your son is taking them as prescribed? What diagnosis did he receive to get the mood stabilizers in the first place?
—I would seek out of hospital intensive therapy for your son. There are places where he can go every day, and do school work there, but most of the day is therapy and medical evaluations
—what is the school doing to help your son? Do you have a plan if he fails everything? Are there interventions in place? He can’t just fail this year and move on to next year.
—why haven’t you hired a lawyer yet? Your son is suicidal and failing school and his dad isn’t financially stable. He is having these thoughts and afraid to tell a parent. Please be more proactive before you lose your son.
Hi all, when I made that post I was in full panic mode from what my son told me. In the ensuing few days I have spoken to my son, my ex has spoken to my son and me and my ex have met and talked. Here are some answers to a couple of questions.
1) The reason we do every other week visitation is when I left I moved about 45 minutes away and then wasnt able to find a decent job and had to search further out and now we live about 2 hours apart. So to the courts, I have 2 weekends a month and his dad has 2 weekends a month and he attends school at his dads house. Its pretty standard considering a more equitable split would jeopardize his school schedule.
2) he is on mood stabilizers because he has trouble with anxiety and emotion processing. A generalized anxiety disorder.
3)He takes his medication on schedule because we make sure he does
4)My ex spoke to him, looked at the test he took online and talked through each of the questions individually to see what he answered and why. He misunderstood what some of the questions were asking and after more clarification, at least that part doesnt seem as serious as it originally seemed.
5) we are both very concerned about his feelings of self harm, but based on what we got from him individually it is more wishing he could escape the frustration he is feeling.
6)he is struggling a lot with the remote learning and his school wasnt open, however they are reopening in the next week, at least until the next time they close for covid. So we have submitted the request in writing to switch him from all remote to hybrid and he will restart in person classes next week. We dont know yet what that will look like but its at least a start as he expressed his negative feelings and frustration stem from not going to school. Also in person school will allow us to get some support from the school.
7) I am calling to find out about finding him a counselor he can see that is paid for by my insurance to try and get him regular therapy and a different medication if necessary.
I'm glad that you and his father are working cooperatively on this. Be forewarned that parents tend to minimize/rationalize away when children have mental health issues, for very understandable reasons. The test is not meant to be scored by a parent going through all the questions and pointing out to the teen why they don't really mean what they answered, pointing out that they misunderstood the test. The kid didn't misunderstand the test. These tests are crystal clear, not vague. If the kid came out as depressed and suicidal on it, then that's how he feels, no matter how his parent rationalizes it away.
It takes a long time to get in with a therapist that is covered by insurance, even before the pandemic, and now, what with increased mental health problems from isolation, it's even more difficult to get an appointment. Definitely DO start trying right away, but also, call the doctor who is prescribing his medication currently, and get an immediate, urgent follow up with that doctor. That doctor will also do screening, and take appropriate action, including medication adjustment. In addition, the doctor may have access to get him in very quickly with a therapist.
I'm glad that you and his father are working cooperatively on this. Be forewarned that parents tend to minimize/rationalize away when children have mental health issues, for very understandable reasons. The test is not meant to be scored by a parent going through all the questions and pointing out to the teen why they don't really mean what they answered, pointing out that they misunderstood the test. The kid didn't misunderstand the test. These tests are crystal clear, not vague. If the kid came out as depressed and suicidal on it, then that's how he feels, no matter how his parent rationalizes it away.
It takes a long time to get in with a therapist that is covered by insurance, even before the pandemic, and now, what with increased mental health problems from isolation, it's even more difficult to get an appointment. Definitely DO start trying right away, but also, call the doctor who is prescribing his medication currently, and get an immediate, urgent follow up with that doctor. That doctor will also do screening, and take appropriate action, including medication adjustment. In addition, the doctor may have access to get him in very quickly with a therapist.
I understand what youre saying but as an example, the test said "do you often lay awake at night unable to sleep and find yourself tired and unmotivated during the day" To which my son said yeah he cant fall asleep until like 11 and then hes tired when its time to get up in the morning. Those are not quite the same things. And additionally if a doctor was analyzing him it would have been much more in depth than yes or no which is what I would like a doctor to do for him.
Thankfully I have good insurance and a good members assistance team who help with things like this so hopefully it wont be long.
The doctor that gives him his medication has him on a waiting list for an associated therapist but apparently there are a lot of people on the list so Im going to try and find someone else. My biggest concern is obviously the feelings of self harm but his over all mental health state are very concerning to me. I see the stories on the news about children killing themselves, their parents and their classmates and it makes me very worried for him.
I struggled at his age, my mother had just died and I was lost. It look a long time to get to where I am now, contented and happy. I dont want him to lose the battle with himself before he has the opportunity to discover who he truly is and find contentment.
"He has always been a very emotional child who gets upset easily and has a good amount of anxiety and does not react well to unknown situations. He gets stressed very easily."
"I know his dad is on him constantly about and punishes him excessively for (not physically)."
When I was a kid, I was subjected to this. It is abuse when the child has a clinically diagnosed mental illness. He needs support. Right now, its about treading water, until things return to normal. Your son has gone beyond thinking of suicide in a fleeting moment. The current situation isn't simply not working, its failing and it might even be considered negligence.
The mood stabilizers might not be working, they might not be appropriate as his body and mind changes, the same way what's good for a 30 year old is not good for an 85 year old.
There is a tread on here about Edgemeade. I am a survivor of that. My point is that not about the school, but that suicide is very real at this age and if this is where your son's mind is, then you need to act now. Its not about how his father feels, how you feel, its about your son's life. Your son's mind is still forming; its also forming long term ideas about himself and for lack of a better term his own mental mantras about his worth. Are they going to be you aren't doing well at school and I want to die, or are they going to be I'm good at things and a worthwhile person.
Hospitalization is not without its own risks: over medication, stress, isolation. Take him to a hospital and they will send him G-d knows where there is a bed, but he may not have the time to get where you are now without intervention.
Last edited by webster; 01-08-2021 at 04:10 PM..
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