<p>No smiles or tigger bounce around here today. The doctor wants D1 to get more ‘intensive’ treatment. Now the trick is to convince her of that. I feel terribly terribly sad. But how sad for her to have all that talent and be paralyzed – and Loveblue, dear, all our love and understanding and patience just doesn’t change that. After almost nine months at home, no progress. Time for more extreme next steps. sigh. Sure, things could be worse in any number of ways, but that thought doesn’t make the present situation any easier to cope with. Thank you all for your good thoughts and support, I really do appreciate it.</p>
<p>think about:‘intensive’ treatment? do you believe that?
It is hard to say but if I were in your position, I may think other direction, reduce the medication.
That is just me. Sorry I may mess up your mind by saying this, but have to say what my believe is.</p>
<p>Love, more intensive than just increasing meds. She maybe has to go to a hospital for ‘partial hospitalization’ – I never heard of that before, but I guess I’m learning about all sorts of new things these days. He thinks that some other clinicians might have further diagnostic input given the opportunity for prolonged observation/interaction with her in that sort of a setting.
She has been off meds before (when she was at MICA) and that’s kind of what got her where she is now.<br>
It’s odd because she doesn’t seem sad when she’s with us, she spends evenings watching tv with us (or doing sudoku or crossword puzzles or jigsaw puzzles while the rest of us watch tv – but she comes up to be with us) and she seemed to be fine in NH on vacation with her aunts, uncle and cousins. She participated in all the activities and seemed to have a good time. But she just doesn’t seem to be able to move her life along normally.
Not sure what to do.</p>
<p>Bears good luck on the sadness. It gets better but takes a long while.</p>
<p>Gma I have a friend whose daughter did a partial hospitalization thing. But it was because of a suicide attempt. This approach sounds kind of drastic. I wonder what the clinical diagnosis is for " failure to launch". She doesn’t sound depressed? Is she? I have more to say, I’m going to get off my stupid iPhone . Back soon. My thoughts are with you.</p>
<p>"She has been off meds before (when she was at MICA) and that’s kind of what got her where she is now. " ---- Actually you are not sure if that is the reason to get her where she is now</p>
<p>“It’s odd because she doesn’t seem sad when she’s with us, she spends evenings watching tv with us (or doing sudoku or crossword puzzles or jigsaw puzzles while the rest of us watch tv – but she comes up to be with us) and she seemed to be fine in NH on vacation with her aunts, uncle and cousins. She participated in all the activities and seemed to have a good time.” ---- She seems just fine from what you say.</p>
<p>“But she just doesn’t seem to be able to move her life along normally.” ----- From your old post, it seems like you rely too much on her mental doctors not on yourself. For example, you hold on until the last day to talk to her about the class enrollment. I am not blame you, just want to help you to reflect what you can do better in the future.</p>
<p>You need to have a plan to have a better conversation with her. </p>
<p>Tell her:
- She have ability to live a independent life
- you love her and want to help her in all means
- Since you feel you are living in prison (home), can we think of a way to get you out? There must be many private studio in nyc to send her in. she can have in person peer this way?
- can you find some sports she enjoy? Sport can balance her body, more out in the sun and make her sweat.</p>
<p>No matter what kind of treatment you choose. Every step, you have a choice. Make sure ask yourself:
Is it really something my girl’s need ?
Maybe there is a way around it.</p>
<p>“all our love and understanding and patience just doesn’t change that.” ---- It is true but I feel you trust other people to fix that for you more than rely on yourself. They (doctors) can help but you need to be the core part to help her.</p>
<p>Hope there is something I say make sense to you.</p>
<p>G-mom…I am sorry for the situation. The good news is that while she is in a rut…she is interacting with you, she seems very unlikely to do herself harm, she eats, she takes showers…etc. I have had a long interaction with a mom on another thread who has a boy who dropped out after one semester, became a recluse with video games (didn’t shower, didn’t interact with anyone), became close to abusive yet one day he seemed to realize he hated his life and recognized he had a real problem with depression and is back at school again repeating the classes he dropped out of his first semester…it may be premature for him to have jumped back into school, but once a kid recognizes that they have a problem and only they can take the actions to solve it they will take steps to change. It sounds like your D is not quite at the point of saying “I have a huge problem and I hate the way I am living and I need to figure out how to change this…” She maybe doesn’t want to admit to herself that she has a major problem (or she thinks that the problem is insurmountable) and she may not hate her situation enough to make the effort to change. Certainly “intensive” as you describe it will mean being away from her loving family and familiar and safe places and is going to be a shock and may be the wakeup call she needs to find the motivation to move onward and outward. Another friend kicked their drug using college drop out daughter who suffers terribly from depression out of the house (I could not have been this tough) who ended up living with a family friend for a few months…she could only move home once she had a job or registered for classes and after months of false starts she now works part time, and she pays $200/month for rent. Still not registered for classes but is submitting to drug testing at home and going to AA meetings. Baby steps for these kids… but the first big one seems to be about them taking responsibility for their lives and not being so passive. How to get them to take that step seems to vary by problem/kid and may take some experimenting as you have done…“hands off” to a full-on intensive/intervention type thing. What if you let your daughter have a say in what she thinks she needs? Will the threat of the intensive approach motivate her to go look for a part-time job? register for a class and attend? move to a new town to live with a relative? I hope that seeing her sisters get back in the groove of school and activities will motivate her to find a way to move forward.</p>
<p>greenwitch:
Feel bad for all the trouble your D have to go through.</p>
<p>D called me TODAY, the first time after she landing in nyc last Sunday! She want to get a PO BOX, but run into a lot troubles. Post office won’t take her copied lease as a proof of where she live. She called her landlord and the landlord is in a “meeting”. Will see how far she can go and hope she can get a PO BOX in Manhattan. It seems like she even don’t want her letters go to Bishwick.<br>
We had a little text message almost everyday but nice to hear her voice but feel she is not in a good mood at all. She didn’t talk much and already had a ton of homework.</p>
<p>Gmom
I wish I can just keep her few days and we’d just make stuff and eat icecream.
maybe she could, comes Oct?</p>
<p>S enjoying the big party at cmu because they just got a future donation of $265 million from one guy (AB from Princeton, PhD from Pitt!..makes it a lot sweeter). [Bill</a> Dietrich & Carnegie Mellon University](<a href=“http://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/]Bill”>Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences - Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences - Carnegie Mellon University) He has to die for the money to come to them…someone is probably tempted to push him off the Randy Pausch Bridge…(sorry, awful thought, bad FAMM! bad!). Not sure if S will ever see any benefit from this except for the celebratory party/concert for the students last night with lots of food…this semester he is paying for some of his food so he collected leftovers to put into the fridge. I have an image of him going through garbage cans looking not only for art materials but cold pizza…I have been saving leftover ecuadorian soups in little tubs and hope to make a run to pittsburgh with nutritious yuca and quinoa and potatoes…ok bears…please start the launch countdown…</p>
<p>Glutenmom, sent you a PM. You are doing the right thing. I hope your daughter sees this as a positive step and not something to be embarrassed about. Clinical depression is not something you can snap out of or make go away through willpower. If she had diabetes, you would take her for treatment no matter how intensive it was. Depression is a condition that needs to be treated and like diabetes, there is no cure - just treatment. Choose doctors you like and trust and that your daughter likes and trusts. Your sadness is normal, but have hope. This may work.</p>
<p>It is me, didn’t trust mental problem is something need doctor. I am too old fashioned.
I read somewhere:
In the World war 2, German or Japan use human to do labs. they put a human in one room and have his arm go through a hole to other room. and tell him, they would cut a wound on his arm to make him bleading a little by a little until he die. Actually the cut is small and he would not die of it. But they have water running in another room to make this person feel his blood was running out and … He died finally
That teaches me that mental imagination can kill a healthy people.
This is just my education.</p>
<p>bears: sorry I mention this here about Japan :—(</p>
<p>Gmom:
It seems famm and mom4art have different understanding of this kind of professional help. Any direction you go, be in the core part of the treatment. We all want to share ours ideas and in case it help!</p>
<p>famm:
265 million! it is amazon.
It is funny that he didn’t get education from CMU, but pour money here.
Princeton University and University of Pittsburgh may feel bad about it.
How heavy is your S’s class load? Computer stuff plus Art will not be easy, both are time consuming.</p>
<p>famm:
265 million! it is amazon.
It is funny that he didn’t get education from CMU, but pour money here.
Princeton University and University of Pittsburgh may feel bad about it.
How heavy is your S’s class load? Computer stuff plus Art will not be easy, both are time consuming.</p>
<p>nah
It is OK to use war time ref, I grew up with grandma and heard stuff my generation should never have told. When I am in pinch, I would go
WWMGD (what would my grandma do?) extreme hardships make people focus on immediate needs, that made them live thru. There must have been lot of mental illness and problems caused by it, but it was nor researched nor recorded properly back then.
We never know.</p>
<p>it’s totally fine.
you outa see what folks say to me in parents forum yonder.
NOOO
you don’t wanna go there, love. they’d eat you alive with your cute amazing “amazon” :)</p>
<p>I posted abercrombie Ivy looks link in their Ivy thread because I was genuinely curious what they have to say, but it was gone in mili second after someone tattled.
But when I started as a new thread, it was moved to “parent cafe” = chatting and gathering place, I think?
and guess what, forks I thought who always hated my guts are posting rather civil comments on it. (except this really angry one that is now gone, and this one cynical spelling /grammar police)
from my experience with Trin (hey mom, how’s your own launch to cambridge, eh?) I’d think people here has real people-person behind it, that motivate to do stuff they say they do, or say stuff they think or thought.
but not always so.
there really not much of virtual grudge. they’d do one upper-s and criticize each other to death, argue for the sake of argument and in the next forum, they’d be talking about handbags or TV shows together.
I want to understand this, because I am finally figuring out I did not know ANYTHING about America after 20 some years.</p>
<p>^that goes for mental health issue.
like love, I myself still don’t get it, but I do understand the needs and benefits of professional help.</p>
<p>colcon and mom4. you better stick around, yes?</p>
<p>and
phillymom!!
where is my TraderJoe’s shelled edamame $1.49?
it’s GONE!!!but thanx , the caramel salt chocolate is back as the staple. phew.</p>
<p>Took the day off…some bureaucrat came up with some creepy idea to have the entire agency sit and watch the 9-11 documentary together. I felt sick. We got through that day without that bureaucrat’s help-coworkers/friends calling from NY after the first plane–should we go back in the building for our computers? and why do they think the best we can do 10 years later is to watch the towers fall again in the comfort of a lecture hall where we looked out and saw smoke from the pentagon and guns that looked like stupid toys all over the white house roof… How are you holding up Bears? Anyone else feeling a bit down? I think I will go look for the wow-wow book…something useful to someone…</p>
<p>It is bit depressing as you can imagine.
and there is some terror threat over weekend
WNYC save all souls, thou naturally bit overkill this week.</p>
<p>survived but damaged firefighter’s D finds emotional outlet in art, decides to become medical illustrator.
<a href=“http://www.wnyc.org/shows/rookies/2011/sep/07/[/url]”>http://www.wnyc.org/shows/rookies/2011/sep/07/</a>
the school is said in Albany, SUNY Albany?
now there is a hope. if not so art-y SUNY can do this to one girl…</p>
<p>Or
check this out fammom
found in parents forum.</p>
<p>-D1 looks superficial, until you get to know her. By the way she dresses, you would never know she was the only girl who passed all exams in her finance training class, including a badly dressed girl from CMU. Judgement can go both ways.</p>
<p>^this was after the same mom publicly announced in some different thread her D’s loud statement
“I am proudly shallow!”</p>
<p>Life goes on. and let me add that this D’s then HS teacher’s H was killed in 911.
it’s not like they can’t feel/tell what really matters.
people, has many sides. There must be good (or bad) reason why this bureaucrat did what s/he did.
I am thinking of you (and you, you, you and you, you, you, thanks all, really)</p>
<p>I got sucked into listening to this yesterday - and could barely crawl out…</p>
<p>[The</a> 9/11 Tapes: The Story in the Air - Interactive Feature - NYTimes.com](<a href=“The 9/11 Tapes: The Story in the Air - Interactive Feature - NYTimes.com”>The 9/11 Tapes: The Story in the Air - Interactive Feature - NYTimes.com)</p>
<p>It really shows how confusing it all was and how slow we all were to imagine the worst. (as happy, optimistic people should be…)</p>
<p>I’ve been thinking that H and I will visit Fort McHenry this year on the anniversary. We somehow ended up there on the first anniversary so it seems appropriate. In case your history is rusty – it was the fort out in Baltimore harbor where the Star Spangled Banner flew during the war of 1812. Francis Scott Key was imprisoned over night on a British ship in the harbor and watched the battle and the remaining giant flag, until the morning. I’m not sure if he composed the poem then or afterwards.</p>
<p>D2 has been pestering me for a visit so we’ll make a day of it. DC promises to be locked down and a little too full of official events and dignitaries for my comfort level.</p>
<p>loveblue - I get what you’re saying about “treatment”. H has a friend who is a psychiatrist (so he can prescribe drugs) who uses various forms of therapy. The VA hospital near him sends him schizophrenic patients that drug therapy didn’t work on. Clearly he is a believer in other methods. He believes that drug therapy is too automatically reached for in many cases.</p>
<p>That being said, some type of treatment is necessary and drugs are often an essential part of the big picture. Depression is considered to be a chemical imbalance in the brain and many people are helped by pharmaceutical correction. </p>
<p>So many people were damaged by WWII and our ability to effectively treat that sort of trauma is relatively recent. Even the children of Holocaust survivors have an elevated suicide risk. Many, many vets were put in homes because they were “shell shocked” and if it were today, they would be treated for post-traumatic stress disorder. I had a teacher in high school who confessed to us that he still slept with a gun under his bed because he was so afraid of a night attack. </p>
<p>As frustrating as it must be for G-mom and her daughter since they are in the thick of it now, it hasn’t been a terribly long time and there’s no horrible trauma behind her problems. They are dedicated and will work it through whatever it takes. And we’ll all be here to happily cheer them on!</p>