BPD daughter is scheduled to be discharged from residential treatment on Feb 1 so we are in the process of planning after care. She's made very little progress there but any progress is better than things getting worse which is what has happened over the past two years. I made it clear to all involved she can not come home as this would be setting her up to fail. I have many reasons to believe this and her psychiatrist agrees.

RTC counselor suggested a group home so Monday we went to visit one. No one showed up to let us in. It was a total waste of my time. And the home, which is just a house in a residential neighborhood had no door knob only a screw sticking out. Two of the windows on the top floor of the house were propped open with wooden blocks. It was 7 degrees outside. The neighborhood was scary so if DD wanted to find trouble she could. It's run by a nonprofit so I understand that funds are scarce but this was more than I bargained for. Combine that with the fact that no one showed up for the appointment even if it was Disneyland inside I knew this was not the right choice for her.

I told her we were going back to the RTC and she said no I am allowed to be out until 4. It was 1:15. I said this is not a field trip and took her back. She had her own agenda which I shut down. I wondered if this appointment was really even scheduled. I told her to have her counselor to call me Tuesday morning as this is unacceptable. She said they are really not supposed to call me. I said BS. I went to court to become her legal guardian when she turned 18 because it was clear she could not handle her life. They have no choice but to call me.

The counselor did call me yesterday and once again I expressed my concerns about putting a child who has the emotional maturity of a 13 year old in a group home that is generally unsupervised. She needs to be in a structured environment with support. She has NO life skills. She is impulsive, has no understanding of her BPD, and really believes that she is just fine and above all of this and does not connect the dots to understand that it is her behavior and choices that has landed her here. She really believes she's okay and that's just not rational.

The appointment at the group home was legit and the counselor apologized but they are not connected to the group home and have no control over what happens. It's simply a resource.

I said we need a better plan and she said she'd look into other options available in the county. She called me back today. No one is willing to take her if she's on psych meds. She has bipolar disorder too and is on a lot of meds. To be clear the RTC she is in is an addiction treatment center with some support for people with mental illness. It's not technically a dual diagnosis facility but because mental illness and substance abuse are like bread and butter they do take people with mental illness. However the other places do not. No one wants to deal with a child with a history of self harm and violence who really, really needs some help to get well. The resources are just not there.

So I said this. I will invite you to the funeral. She will fail without support, follow her impulses, find bad men who will take advantage of her, use drugs, run, run far away and die. That is the truth. She's done all of that before with the exception of dying although she's tried suicide twice and was very nearly successful once.

The counselor said she'd see if the court would allow 30 more days in the RTC but she and I both know that's not the answer. It does buy us some time. I am grateful to this counselor for hearing me. I have been mistreated and dismissed so many times while searching for help for a daughter I love dearly. I told her this and thanked her for caring.

I am not catastrophizing when I say this is a life and death situation if she does not get the right follow up care. The court wants her to come home and go to an intensive outpatient program. She's done IOP 5 times at 3 different places. The definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over yet expect a different result.

I had a radical idea. Because she was diagnosed with depression, then bipolar, then BPD in the course of 2 years and we did many med adjustments and she just kept getting worse because she was most likely using drugs the whole time I thought what if she goes off all the psych meds, goes to a place unmedicated for 6 months and we see what happens? Maybe she's not bipolar and this is all just BPD which from what I know is really not treatable with meds. I would consult her psychiatrist first but she even agrees she's had no baseline to work with because by the time the drugs got DD in trouble and the writing was on the wall we were almost a year an a half past the psychotic episode that brought the bipolar diagnosis. I totally believe she has BPD, the behaviors are real and completely fit the criteria. BP, not so sure. Desperate times call for desperate measures. The number one priority is to keep her safe and alive and get appropriate treatment.

Any thoughts or advice are appreciated. Once again I feel like I am on an island, isolated and alone. I am grateful to have this forum to vent because I do know none of us are really alone as long as we are sharing our stories.