Reply to Nephew in childrens mental hospital

Forum Index » Family Relationships

Reply to "Nephew in childrens mental hospital "

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Recently, my sister and my nephew left their house in California to come live with me. She's leaving her husband of 10 years. Her son is 10 years old.

He's always had behavioral issues. He is an only child. My cousin babies him often and he usually gets his way. He's been suspended from school in california for bringing a knife to school.

Fast forward to this month. They have been living with me for 2 months now. Recently, he was put in a child mental hospital because he was diagnosed with PTSD. He was going in and out of his "mind" saying he was hearing voices, hitting his head, saying there was someone inside his head trying to kill him. At the hospital they had to restrain him. 
He said his Dad physically abused him and apparently my sister said she never knew. 
He threatened to kill himself several times at my house and was violent to my cousin and himself.

He's spent a week in Childrens Hospital Mental department and will be set to be cleared going home on Saturday. 
I have three kids of my own. 
Am I being a bitch to be nervous that he's not exactly 'better" in a week? My sister seems to think everything is great now and hasn't said much about what his diagnosis is or what the plan is for him when he comes home. [/quote]

A week is about the typical amount of time for inpatient. In fact most around here are five days. The goal is stabilization not cure.

You say you don’t know much about the discharge but in fact you do. He is going into outpatient psych treatment and he is going into a special school program. I am sure he is also set up with an outpatient psychiatrist and will see that doctor within 30 days - it’s the standard in this area. I’m calling you out on this because you named the hospital and then put on a public forum that they discharge plan was unsafe.

I don’t know what the right thing is for you and your family. But a lot of people here are reacting to your description of the discharge plan as nothing more than a recommendation for yoga and that is disingenuous on your part.

Frankly your sister probably has very little information for you. Everything in her world as she knew it has changed and very quickly. It’s scary when your child becomes violent and when he wants to or tries to kill himself. There is nothing that has made me feel more helpless than knowing that I can’t keep my son safe.

[b]And as far as the PP who mentioned chores and other parenting related things, life has changed and parenting has to change with the realities of adjusting to the mental illness. I imagine your sister will be walking on eggshells for awhile until she figures it out. [/b]
 
As I said I don’t know what’s right for your family. But I hope if you ask your sister to leave that you are gentle on her and support her as you can. Mental illness is not like cancer. She won’t have people showing up with dinner or offering to walk her dog. By the second or third hospitalization people won’t want to hear about it anymore. Her job will suffer because it requires a lot of time off from work. She’ll probably lose what friends she has because she won’t have time and when she does she’ll want to talk about her son and people won’t want to hear it.  Financially she will take a hit because even if insurance covers 100%, there is the expense of travel to appointments and the inevitable quick stops for food.

I wish the best for your family. It is a long, hard and lonely road ahead. [/quote]

I forgot to add -- let the parenting stuff go. Do not try to enforce some typical parental controls on the child right now. Your sister will have to figure that out but it seems completely counter productive at this point for you to try to set rules about things like screen time, etc. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics