angry mother
Fewer than 3 Posts
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What is your sexual orientation: Straight
Who in your life has "personality" issues: Child
Relationship status: Mother
Posts: 1
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« on: February 29, 2020, 08:34:08 AM » |
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Sometime between 8:30 pm on February 13 and early morning on February 14 my 37-year-old son took his life. He had only recently accepted the BPD diagnosis that he was first given at age 18 (2001). He had concurrent diagnoses of bipolar disorder, anxiety disorder, and ptsd, all most likely accurate. Substances had been a problem since he was 17, with first alcohol, then cocaine, and finally crack. His tragedy for me is that in 2015 he went through a series of events that finally led him to eliminate substances from his life, start to work, become licensed to sell insurance in 30 states, become a top producer for his firm, establish strong and positive relationships with his children, and begin to experience the success that had always eluded him in the past. However, he chose to ignore the underlying mental health conditions that had led to the substance abuse issues and relationship issues in the past.
Being substance-free allowed him to function, but not to move beyond the behavior patterns (frequent rages, blaming others, refusal to take any personal responsibility for life problems) that follow BPD. So of course, when life hit him with a new set of problems - partner and mother of his children returning to active alcoholism, he gradually unraveled. What angers me is that his death was preventable. Through the months of trying to deal with partner's alcoholism, the foster care system got involved due to her having an open case on an older child not fathered by my son. They had had 4 children together, and suddenly his 4 children were caught up in a child protective service system across two states. Through the months of working through this system with him, attempting to help him maintain custody of his children and start a new life where he could move forward with them, I am learning that foster care workers have absolutely no training in recognizing mental health issues or the connections between mental health and substance abuse.
My son's suicide followed first, being ordered by a Florida court to remain living in a household with the mother of his partner and the older child whose open case led to the involvement of his children in the system. He tried to explain the impossibility of this situation (the mother herself displays BPD traits and had been identified by her own daughter, my son's partner, as being highly emotionally abusive.) Nevertheless, the judge's stereotypical view that a grandmother would automatically provide safe, loving care formed the basis of her decision, and my son's objections were seen as a refusal to comply with the court. For 7 months, he struggled to maintain, racking up over $20,000 in debt on his own, and causing my 91-year old mother to pull $40,000 from her savings, and my husband and me to remortgage our home and take out additional personal loans totaling $31,000 (mortgage and loans) to cover the expenses. This total seems outrageous. It was. But $3,000 per month for 7 months ($21,000) was needed to pay for 35 hours a week of in-home babysitting, required because the loving maternal grandmother refused to cook, clean house, do laundry, feed children, supervise children's baths or bedtime, or help with homework. My son was working until 8 pm each night, getting home at 8:30, and finding his 4 and 6 year old daughters hungry, tired, unbathed, and with no kindergarten homework completed. The children's ages made dealing with meals, baths, bedtime, and homework between 8:30 and 10 pm impossible. The 4-year old began waking up every night, leading to sleep deprivation for my son. Weekends were impossible because the maternal grandmother, a Jehovah's witness, spent all of Saturday and Sunday doing her "service", which meant he either had to take 4 kids ages 2 (twins), 4, and 6 to run all errands or pay for the babysitting time. Add to that the $2000 ($14,000) per month he lost because the children's mother was contributing nothing to the household, the loss of his job in June because he could not work the 6-hours plus required by the company while dealing with all of the court-ordered appointments, and a move across states, and you have the total.
He was advised by his attorney not to seek mental health care based on the Florida court's attitude toward mental illness. Finally, he was allowed to relocate to Michigan with my husband and me, bringing the kids. Unfortunately, by the time he reached us here, his personal resources had run out. He sought mental health care, but he also reverted to alcohol use. The children's mother also moved here, and they attempted to reunite as a family. Again, her own mental health issues (bipolar disorder combined with psychiatrist's opinion that she also suffers from BPD although she refuses that diagnosis for herself) interfered with any healthy reunion, and my son's own mental health issues exacerbated their problems with their relationship. Finally, he relapsed into cocaine use and asked that the kids be placed in foster care because he realized that without significant treatment neither he nor the mother would be able to maintain a safe home for their children. At this point, he had accepted the BPD diagnosis and was on a waiting list to begin dialectical behavior therapy in the only program in our area, a waiting list of 6-8 weeks.
When the foster care workers visited our home to discuss removing the children they asked for his diagnoses and for the mother's. Their responses, written in their report for the court, show they have absolutely no understanding of mental health. My son said, "I can't be a single dad," after telling them of his diagnoses (anxiety disorder, bipolar disorder, PTSD, BPD). The worker stated in his report that my son did not want to take responsibility for his children. He did not connect this statement to the anxiety disorder. My son was displaying anger and making provocative statements to the worker, which were interpreted as a lack of desire to work with the reunification system instead of an expression of his BPD. The case plan this worker put together for both parents includes substance abuse evaluation and treatment, random drug tests, required AA meetings, and, almost as an afterthought, followup with their psychiatrist for medication management. There was no inclusion of the DBT that could have helped my son, and no attempt to speed his entrance into the DBT program. There was no recognition of the mother's need to work on financial management (she has run out of her own money every month since leaving their home in Florida last January.) This worker obviously did not connect her relapses to her not having her medication because she had spent her monthly disability check on clothing for herself nor the fact that spending problems is a classic symptom of bipolar disorder. I could keep going, but it is simply too frustrating to recount all of the indications in this man's report that he has no training in or understanding of mental health, the relationship to behavior, and the types of treatment that are required.
Now, with their father dead, these four children are in a system that is actively working to restore them to their mother, the woman who already had one child permanently removed and who cannot manage her own expenses in a way that allows her to eat for an entire month. She loves her children, but she relates to them almost as if they are toys, not taking into account their own growing needs. She desperately needs intensive therapy to work on her parenting skills, but one parenting class completed in another state is deemed sufficient.
If anything good can come from my son's death, I want to work to make those dealing with Child Protective Services and Foster Care be required to be trained in mental health care issues and be required to undergo regular professional development to update their training. I know my son relapsed. I know he should have dealt with the mental health issues long ago. I also know our society's attitudes toward mental health contributed to his desire to avoid the issue. More than anything, I now know that we run a child welfare system in this country in which people with no training in or understanding of the relationship between mental health, substance abuse, and subsequent child abuse and neglect are routinely returning children to parents with the parents not having had the treatment they need to provide for the children. I don't have any idea how to begin to address this issue, but if I can, I will.
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