Laura Pogliano, a mother and advocate in Maryland wrote on the difference between her experience of having a child with serious mental illness and your experience having a child with another type of illness:
Your child's illness gets 500, 000 likes on Facebook when
you post a picture or ask for prayers
My child's illness gets about 5, from people who already
know us and know of our struggle
Your child's illness gets copious amounts of tax dollars to
fund more research for cures; your child's illness has a congressionally
approved budget
My child's illness gets funds cut by 25-40% due to the
sequester, or whenever social services are on the chopping block, which is
nearly every single time a budget is passed
Your child's illness gets the sympathy of complete
strangers, world wide
My child's illness gets labeled by people in the press every
day: pscyho, headcase, lunatic, maniac, nutjob, monster, freeloader
Your child's illness gets insurance coverage so he can
actually get well
My child's illness gets 30 days coverage per year, with
an average inpatient stay of 11 days, with no social workers, therapists, or
psychiatric coverage
Your child gets after care support, medically, socially,
economically
My child's illness is left to the charity of dot.orgs, with
programs we don't qualify for due to income or non-compliance with medication
Your child's illness gets treated in the ER, and quickly
My child's illness gets ignored in the ER for an average of
24 to 30 hours before he's seen.
Your child's illness has specialists trained in care, both
inpatient, and afterward
My child's illness has policemen to handle it, who know
nothing thing about appropriate care
Your child gets a diagnosis through medical means and
exhaustive testing
My child's illness is diagnosed through symptomology,
depending what he does that day in front of a doctor, and gets readiagnosed
multiple times
Your child's illness has a typically standardized treatment
plan and medical path forward to health, even with rare conditions
My child's illness is a quagmire of trial and error with
medicine until you hit a combo that works: average is 10 different medications
over 3 to 5 years
Your child's illness, unless terminal, is aggressively
treated due to a high expectation of recovery and health
My child's illness has an overall low expectation for
recovery and he's relegated to a back ward and warehoused, if there's even a
spot available
Your child's illness gets everything that can possibly be
done medically to alleviate symptoms or put the disease into remission
My child's stabilization period is 10 years. TEN.
Your child's illness gets fundraisers that people gladly
attend and give to, generously
My child's illness bankrupts almost every family, with
self-pay services, and no fund raisers
Your child's illness has medical records that are robust and
shared with cooperating and follow-on hospitals and doctors
My child's illness has medical records caregivers are banned
from seeing, which never follow the child to the next medical facility or ER
Your child's illness is a medical tragedy
My child's illness is a "social problem"
Your child's illness is treated in hospitals, with the full
attention of caring staff
My child's illness is treated in JAIL, in solitary
confinement, often without medicine
Your child's illness is a family heartbreak story
My child's illness requires a standard of dangerousness be
met before anyone is allowed to intervene, and when he does meet the standard,
it's often too late
Your child's illness is never a legal dispute or legal
issue: it's scientifically and medically verified
My child's illness requires laws be passed, that are then
not funded or implemented, just to get him to life-saving measures
Your child's illness is acknowledged as a medical condition
My child's illness is a labeled bad behavior and parents get
the blame
Your child's illness is considered a medical disability on
its face
My child's illness requires lawyers to apply for disability,
with an average number of applications: 9
Your child's illness, when very active or critical, is
immediately treated as an emergency and forwarded to a specialist for follow on
care
My child's illness, when very active or critical, gets him,
at best, a 72 hour hold, then he's released to the streets with a
recommendation for follow on treatment and no medicine
Your child's illness is afforded the cooperation of
caregivers and parents to attend to it
My child's illness is left to the Right to Refuse Care Laws,
leaving him to get as sick as he can possibly be, and choose suicide, death,
starvation, continued illness with severe brain damage
Your child is never arrested or jailed because he's sick
My child is almost always arrested at some point
Your child's illness is comforted by those who love him, and
you
My child's illness means friends drop us, family turns away,
and jobs are lost
Your child's illness indicates the need for family
involvement and care
My child's illness indicates the need for family
involvement, but we're excluded unless he signs waivers, which he often too
sick to do
Your child's illness, if you did not treat it, would mean a
criminal charge against you for neglect and child welfare agencies would remove
him from your care
My child can't be brought to treatment unless he chooses it,
when he's incapacitated cognitively, and he can die at the hand of policemen,
be shot at, hang himself or kill someone else.
Your child's illness means he's helpless and needs
attention, and he gets it
My child is expected to pick himself up by his bootstraps
and Try Harder
Your child can have any bed in any hospital in the country,
across the board
My child can ONLY have a psychiatric bed, and there's an
estimated deficit of 100, 000 beds in this country, and the wait for one can
take 6 months or longer in some places
It's encouraged to ask about your child's illness and
progress and sympathize with your plight and ask what help they can offer
No one ever asks about mine, and when they do, I get
low-brow, upsetting questions like: How many personalities does he have? Do you
let him have a gun?
Your child can tell people he's sick.
My child cannot, or he
won't get a job, or a date, or an apartment.
Your child can get a fun trip
sponsored by an organization that assists sick children.
My child can't go on any trips, usually, and neither can his
family...
Your child is not homeless. Your child is not incarcerated
for years. Your child is not maligned in general by society. Your child's
illness is not romanticized or mythologized with ideas like "Madness is
Genius." Your child is not part of the Gun Control debate. Your child is
not automatically part of the legal system. Your child does not have a
Preventable Tragedies national database. Your child is not a throwaway. Mine is
all of these things.
Your child got sick through no fault of his own. So did
mine.
