DC dating someone who has been in mental institution

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DC came home from first year at a northeastern college and they have a significant other (been dating since October). through casual conversation reveals that the significant other was committed to a mental institution for an attempt to take their life. This was when the individual was in middle school. DC told me the SO is on medication and it is all under control. Never encountered this type of situation before. Is this a major red flag? Or can people overcome these types of demons from a young age?

Plenty of people are living completely normal lives with mental illness. They don't tell people like you because clearly you're prejudiced. It is not a "major red flag." But you are! I hope she doesn't marry in to your family.

DP
Mental illnesses are genetic - why introduce those genes when there are plenty of other healthier options for my kid.

Good grief. This is some weird eugenics thing. But in any case, we don’t even know that OP’s kid is heterosexual, if they plan on having children, and if they plan on doing IVF with genetic testing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Some of my closest friends have tried to kill themselves, or have been in a mental hospital for a stint or two. Lawyers, doctors, teachers, parents - all contributing members of society. You should be happy they got the help they needed and are healthy now.

Yes and this is totally different than dating, marrying, or reproducing with these people. I’m happy to be a supportive friend and this is the line I draw

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Pretty normal.

Not normal in my experience

[Anonymous]

Encourage birth control. Especially if the partner is a female and your kid is a son and therefore your DS would not have the choice re abortion or becoming a parent - tell him condoms are a must for STIs and for birth control but warn him that condoms are only 90 percent effective so using a second method is important, too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DC came home from first year at a northeastern college and they have a significant other (been dating since October). through casual conversation reveals that the significant other was committed to a mental institution for an attempt to take their life. This was when the individual was in middle school. DC told me the SO is on medication and it is all under control. Never encountered this type of situation before. Is this a major red flag? Or can people overcome these types of demons from a young age?

Plenty of people are living completely normal lives with mental illness. They don't tell people like you because clearly you're prejudiced. It is not a "major red flag." But you are! I hope she doesn't marry in to your family.

DP
Mental illnesses are genetic - why introduce those genes when there are plenty of other healthier options for my kid.

With the current epidemic of anxiety and depression, it would be hard to find someone without mental illness genetics.

[Anonymous]

My husband's ex is mentally ill. Legit, not just typical "my ex is crazy" stuff. She had a few stays in mental hospitals during their marriage.

Before being in this relationship, I think I would have thought it judgmental and unfair to say people should not date someone due to mental illness history. But now? I say judge away if you are considering someone for a life partner. I also think it's smart to factor in family mental health history.

My husband is not perfect, but he's mentally stable, everyone in his immediate birth family is mentally stable, they are generally happy people.

Because he married someone who is mentally ill, his marriage was blown up, he has less retirement savings, less college savings, and his kids have LOTS of mental health issues themselves, sadly. We have de facto full custody because she couldn't earn enough money or sustain a household for them once the divorce settlement ran out. She could have made the money stretch through till the kids were out of high school, but she spent money on stupid stuff like an expensive rental and a housekeeper (when she unemployed!), expensive hobbies, etc. She moved in with her sister five states a way, hardly ever sees the kids. She has good degrees and is smart but can't hold down a job for more than six to twelve months, if that.

The kids have some psychiatric issues themselves. It's just a mess.

My husband would have been better off marrying and having kids with someone with the same mental health profile as him - generally happy, basically mentally stable. He would have stuck it out with her and tried to make things work, but she's super self destructive and, while of course I know I don't know the full story of their marriage and that he is not perfect, I think one example of her self-destructedness is that she divorced the father of her kids even though her life would have been more stable and financially comfortable etc by staying with him. She really just..destroys her life.

And she encourages the kids to engage in self destructive behavior too. Like we are trying to raise them to have goals, work reasonably hard at school, etc, and she will scoff at all that with them. Well, ok, if you want to wind up broke and homeless like her, sure, take her advice, I want to say (but don't).

Anyway, I think mental health is an important consideration.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My husband's ex is mentally ill. Legit, not just typical "my ex is crazy" stuff. She had a few stays in mental hospitals during their marriage.

Before being in this relationship, I think I would have thought it judgmental and unfair to say people should not date someone due to mental illness history. But now? I say judge away if you are considering someone for a life partner. I also think it's smart to factor in family mental health history.

My husband is not perfect, but he's mentally stable, everyone in his immediate birth family is mentally stable, they are generally happy people.

Because he married someone who is mentally ill, his marriage was blown up, he has less retirement savings, less college savings, and his kids have LOTS of mental health issues themselves, sadly. We have de facto full custody because she couldn't earn enough money or sustain a household for them once the divorce settlement ran out. She could have made the money stretch through till the kids were out of high school, but she spent money on stupid stuff like an expensive rental and a housekeeper (when she unemployed!), expensive hobbies, etc. She moved in with her sister five states a way, hardly ever sees the kids. She has good degrees and is smart but can't hold down a job for more than six to twelve months, if that.

The kids have some psychiatric issues themselves. It's just a mess.

My husband would have been better off marrying and having kids with someone with the same mental health profile as him - generally happy, basically mentally stable. He would have stuck it out with her and tried to make things work, but she's super self destructive and, while of course I know I don't know the full story of their marriage and that he is not perfect, I think one example of her self-destructedness is that she divorced the father of her kids even though her life would have been more stable and financially comfortable etc by staying with him. She really just..destroys her life.

And she encourages the kids to engage in self destructive behavior too. Like we are trying to raise them to have goals, work reasonably hard at school, etc, and she will scoff at all that with them. Well, ok, if you want to wind up broke and homeless like her, sure, take her advice, I want to say (but don't).

Anyway, I think mental health is an important consideration.

There is a wide range of functioning for people with mental illness. People should be looked at individually, and I wouldn’t write off someone who attempted suicide once as a teenager. Lots of kids have terrible teenage years for biological and psychosocial reasons. Many with mental illnesses as teens do not have serious mental illnesses as adults.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My husband's ex is mentally ill. Legit, not just typical "my ex is crazy" stuff. She had a few stays in mental hospitals during their marriage.

Before being in this relationship, I think I would have thought it judgmental and unfair to say people should not date someone due to mental illness history. But now? I say judge away if you are considering someone for a life partner. I also think it's smart to factor in family mental health history.

My husband is not perfect, but he's mentally stable, everyone in his immediate birth family is mentally stable, they are generally happy people.

Because he married someone who is mentally ill, his marriage was blown up, he has less retirement savings, less college savings, and his kids have LOTS of mental health issues themselves, sadly. We have de facto full custody because she couldn't earn enough money or sustain a household for them once the divorce settlement ran out. She could have made the money stretch through till the kids were out of high school, but she spent money on stupid stuff like an expensive rental and a housekeeper (when she unemployed!), expensive hobbies, etc. She moved in with her sister five states a way, hardly ever sees the kids. She has good degrees and is smart but can't hold down a job for more than six to twelve months, if that.

The kids have some psychiatric issues themselves. It's just a mess.

My husband would have been better off marrying and having kids with someone with the same mental health profile as him - generally happy, basically mentally stable. He would have stuck it out with her and tried to make things work, but she's super self destructive and, while of course I know I don't know the full story of their marriage and that he is not perfect, I think one example of her self-destructedness is that she divorced the father of her kids even though her life would have been more stable and financially comfortable etc by staying with him. She really just..destroys her life.

And she encourages the kids to engage in self destructive behavior too. Like we are trying to raise them to have goals, work reasonably hard at school, etc, and she will scoff at all that with them. Well, ok, if you want to wind up broke and homeless like her, sure, take her advice, I want to say (but don't).

Anyway, I think mental health is an important consideration.

There is a wide range of functioning for people with mental illness. People should be looked at individually, and I wouldn’t write off someone who attempted suicide once as a teenager. Lots of kids have terrible teenage years for biological and psychosocial reasons. Many with mental illnesses as teens do not have serious mental illnesses as adults.

Well, that's probably true. But when I think back to the friends I had who were depressed in middle school etc - it's often because their parents, or at least one parent, sucked, was abusive, is mentally ill, etc. And having a parent like that can have ramifications own the road. And those ramifications might be at bay when you are single and in your twenties but roar up later on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My husband's ex is mentally ill. Legit, not just typical "my ex is crazy" stuff. She had a few stays in mental hospitals during their marriage.

Before being in this relationship, I think I would have thought it judgmental and unfair to say people should not date someone due to mental illness history. But now? I say judge away if you are considering someone for a life partner. I also think it's smart to factor in family mental health history.

My husband is not perfect, but he's mentally stable, everyone in his immediate birth family is mentally stable, they are generally happy people.

Because he married someone who is mentally ill, his marriage was blown up, he has less retirement savings, less college savings, and his kids have LOTS of mental health issues themselves, sadly. We have de facto full custody because she couldn't earn enough money or sustain a household for them once the divorce settlement ran out. She could have made the money stretch through till the kids were out of high school, but she spent money on stupid stuff like an expensive rental and a housekeeper (when she unemployed!), expensive hobbies, etc. She moved in with her sister five states a way, hardly ever sees the kids. She has good degrees and is smart but can't hold down a job for more than six to twelve months, if that.

The kids have some psychiatric issues themselves. It's just a mess.

My husband would have been better off marrying and having kids with someone with the same mental health profile as him - generally happy, basically mentally stable. He would have stuck it out with her and tried to make things work, but she's super self destructive and, while of course I know I don't know the full story of their marriage and that he is not perfect, I think one example of her self-destructedness is that she divorced the father of her kids even though her life would have been more stable and financially comfortable etc by staying with him. She really just..destroys her life.

And she encourages the kids to engage in self destructive behavior too. Like we are trying to raise them to have goals, work reasonably hard at school, etc, and she will scoff at all that with them. Well, ok, if you want to wind up broke and homeless like her, sure, take her advice, I want to say (but don't).

Anyway, I think mental health is an important consideration.

There is a wide range of functioning for people with mental illness. People should be looked at individually, and I wouldn’t write off someone who attempted suicide once as a teenager. Lots of kids have terrible teenage years for biological and psychosocial reasons. Many with mental illnesses as teens do not have serious mental illnesses as adults.

Well, that's probably true. But when I think back to the friends I had who were depressed in middle school etc - it's often because their parents, or at least one parent, sucked, was abusive, is mentally ill, etc. And having a parent like that can have ramifications own the road. And those ramifications might be at bay when you are single and in your twenties but roar up later on.

I’m pp and grew up with a very mentally father. I fully understand the impact that can have on a childhood. But a single datapoint of having attempted suicide as a teenager does not justify writing off the kid as a potential partner. Anyone can develop mental (or physical) illness at anytime.

Of course, active mental illness or a failure to acknowledge the important of mental health are a different story. All we know is a teenage suicide attempt.

[Anonymous]

This was my aunt at that age. I cringe to think if people had judged her (her mental hospital stay was a result of being sexually abused by a relative while she was in MS). She went on to graduate from college, have 3 children, get 2 masters and help countless victims of sexual abuse as a therapist in a hospital similar to where she had been a patient. Now that she’s retired, she volunteers as a therapist at a homeless shelter.
OP please go into this with an open mind until you know the full story. You can’t assume anyone’s backstory or what they’ve been through.

[Anonymous]

A huge red flag.

My dating advice to my kids is to avoid substance abusers and the mentally ill.

[Anonymous]

Yeah, absolutely not. But you can't say that. So you counsel that they understand the life long commitment to that person's disease and the sacrifices it might entail - e.g. can't handle kids, can't handle life stressors, not an equal partnership.

[Anonymous]

I really don't know about this or the data on it, but I'm surprised at the number of people confidently stating that this will be a lifelong problem.

Teenagers go through fairly extreme emotions at that age and for many teens, issues that were present at that time do go away. I had pretty severe anxiety at that age and it has definitely not been a lifelong problem for me. Likewise I can think of many friends when I was a teen who had pretty significant mental health issues who completely stabilized over time and are living normal lives now.

I wonder if people writing this here are just speaking from individual bad experiences.

Even if you dig up data and it does point to it being a lifelong issue on average, I'm not sure if that's a good reason to write someone off completely.

[Anonymous]

I’m going to give an alternative perspective.

My college aged child spent a week in a psych institution as a middle schooler. The schools are now extremely paranoid about kids expressing self harm and some counselors will report basically anything as a red flag. The hospitals don’t have pediatric psych people and are very nervous about being sued, so again if a kid is expressing anything like self harm they will get a referral. I was told that if I did not agree to admission, they would call CPS and do the admission over my objection and I would lose control over anything to do with treatment or discharge, so I caved. Once you’re in, it’s a standard week to get a discharge due to the time for assessments and everything until they decide your kid is not a danger. My kids level of suicidal thought was akin to or less than what basically all the girls I knew in middle school who were gojng through hormonal adjustment dealt with. No one ever would have referred us to psych assessments. The trigger now is much much much lower.

So if this was a one week hold situation, I would not assume this indicates a life long depression problem. My kid does have some level of anxiety, which is what manifested in MS, but it’s very manageable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Some of my closest friends have tried to kill themselves, or have been in a mental hospital for a stint or two. Lawyers, doctors, teachers, parents - all contributing members of society. You should be happy they got the help they needed and are healthy now.

This is it. Many teens or young adults have been hospitalized for mental health treatment. It doesn’t mean they have some genetic defect. Kids can be admitted to the hospital for they couldn’t handle on their own. Death of someone close, a tragedy that happened to them, a long term issue that they can no longer tolerate.

Some do have major depression or bipolar. They are treated with therapy and medication. Sometimes breakthrough symptoms happen and they need to be hospitalized for a few days to reset medication or just break the pattern.

The good news is the younger generations understand that these things and they don’t freak out like the older generations.