<p>Interesting article</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/08/health/08Kids.html?hp&ex=1165640400&en=6d958028c9812fe6&ei=5094&partner=homepage[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/08/health/08Kids.html?hp&ex=1165640400&en=6d958028c9812fe6&ei=5094&partner=homepage</a></p>
<p>A very interesting article. Don’t you just root for Jean? What an amazing girl!</p>
<p>Here’s a snippet:
"Published: December 8, 2006
Josh Anderson for The New York Times </p>
<p>"Her mother called it a negotiable proposition. But to Jean Lynch-Thomason, a 17-year-old with bipolar disorder who started college this fall, her mom’s notion to fly from their home in Nashville to her campus in Olympia, Wash., every few weeks to monitor Jean’s illness felt needlessly intrusive.</p>
<p>At 17, she wanted some distance from her parents. </p>
<p>“I am so totally aware of the control you have over me right now,” Jean said, sitting in her parents’ living room one evening last June, before coolly reminding her mother of her upcoming 18th birthday. “In a few months the power dynamic is going to be different.”</p>
<p>For Chris Ference, 19, who is also bipolar, the fast-approaching autonomy of his freshman year held somewhat less appeal. His parents had always directed every aspect of his mental health care. Last summer, over Friday night pizza at his home in Cranberry Township, Pa., he told them that assuming control felt more daunting than liberating. </p>
<p>“If it was up to me, I would just have it so you could make those decisions for me up until I was like, 22,” he said. “I mean, you’ve raised me well up to now. You know me better than anyone.”</p>
<p>The transition from high school to college, from adolescence to legal adulthood, can be tricky for any teenager, but for the increasing number of young people who arrive on campus with diagnoses of serious mental disorders — and for their parents — the passage can be particularly fraught.</p>
<p>Standard struggles with class schedules, roommates, and sexual and social freedom are complicated by decisions about if or when to use campus counseling services, whether or not to take medication and whether to disclose an illness to friends or professors. …"</p>
<p>Because it is a long term illness, it is sometimes advisable, I think, to keep a distance with parents and handle responsibilities on your own.</p>
<p>I’ll admit I did not read the entire article- but it came with all the identifying info. Names-faces-schools.<br>
Now I’ll be the first to say that people should not hide or be embarrased by having an illness-- but is it really wise to ANNOUNCE it to the world??
Oh brother- sometimes I just do not understand people!!<br>
I would not at all be surprised if some of those kids have to transfer elsewhere after getting all this publicity.
Call me a cynic- but maybe the parents wanted the kids to transfer back home after all!!</p>
<p>My heart goes out to these families, these students.
It is easy, Jentren, to say keep a distance, but the problem is that people who are mentally ill don’t always think straight when they are sick. Think about an illness that interferes with your thinking! The sicker you get, the less you realize that you are sick, and the less insight you have into your need for treatment - you need someone to watch your back, so to speak. I remember on my psychiatry rotations, probably half the people we saw at any one time wouldn’t have been there if they had not gotten the notion that maybe it would be a good idea to stop taking their meds. Also, often, the illness first strikes around the late teens, just the time when people are undertaking the separation tasks that lead them to an independent living - going to college or learning a trade, getting a first apartment, falling in love. Many of the patients I saw “woke up” at about age 28, having reached the life stage of a 20 year old because of the earlier difficulties coping with their illnesses.
The drugs and treatments are much more effective now, with much less severe side effects, and mental illness has lost some of the stigma it had 20 years ago, but these families still have a hard path to follow. I thought the 3 people and families outlined in the story were each coping fairly well using their own strategies. Bless 'em.</p>
<p>“Now I’ll be the first to say that people should not hide or be embarrased by having an illness-- but is it really wise to ANNOUNCE it to the world??”</p>
<p>You bet, if we ever want to challenge the absurd stigma we attach to mental illness and our baseless separation of illnesses like bipolar disorder from illnesses like cancer. I’ll be doing this in front of a federal agency, the press, and (I hope) some TV stations next Wednesday. If we we act as though we have a shameful secret, then we can’t blame the world for treating us like we do.</p>
<p>I would be concerned that colleges might have to become like public high schools and provide all sorts of expensive special programs and accomodations for people with the gamut of disabilities and other problems.</p>
<p>They already do. It’s the law; the ADA demands that every college have an office of disability. Colleges can refuse to admit kids, which public schools can’t, but they also cannot deny reasonable accommodations under the law.</p>
<p>marny, maybe these families want people to know about their chilren’s mental illness - to demystify, to de-demonize, to enlighten. I say more power to them.</p>
<p>Katliamom–</p>
<p>I understand that and maybe I am reacting the way I did because I read the article in the newspaper this AM and not on-line. This was a PAGE 1 story. Top left-hand side–significant placement in the NY Times. The picture with the sub title “TROUBLED CHILDREN”- PAGE 1 NEW YORK TIMES!!<br>
My kids got embarrassed if they were mentioned in the local town paper be it scoring in basketball or soccer- or if they won an award.<br>
Somehow I do not think these kids expected a discussion on their “psychiatric disorder” be page 1 news in the NY Times.<br>
What may have sounded like a good idea to their parents, might have serious consequences to the kids.</p>
<p>I’m sure neither the kids nor their families expected to find themselves on front page – and I suppose there could be some difficulties for these students as result of this article. I don’t know about the PA school the boy attends, but I doubt Jean would face major issues at Evergreen. It’s a progressive school in a progressive place and the girl strikes me as someone who could articulately and powerfully defend herself and her choices if she had to.</p>
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<p>I think that’s probably exactly what they hoped for. Unless you’re very foolish, you don’t expose yourself to the NYTimes that way (photographer, in-depth interview, letting them accompany you around campus) unless your GOAL is to publicize your issue as much as possible.</p>
<p>Public schools at the lower grades have had to provide very expensive special ed progams which go far beyond reasonable accomodations.</p>
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<p>While it may seem to be “expensive” for the public schools to educate these young people I believe that the final cost will be a savings to society over what it would be to ignore them. And where does one draw the line between “reasonable” and “unreasonable” accomodations? Should we only provide educations to students with IQs over 130 who have no identifiable “psychiatric” problems?</p>
<p>I think it’s wonderful that the students were so honest about mental illness. Only by getting it out in the open will mental illness not be a stigma anymore. I do not think anyone will be forced to transfer after this was published. If anything, they will probably receive a lot of support. People, including students are amazingly accepting and caring if you are honest about mental/physical disabilities.</p>
<p>I draw the line at double the cost or regular students. Spending $100K a year so a kid can learn to tie his shoelaces is not efficient or productive.</p>
<p>There is a delicate line between advertising mental illness openly if you have it and advocating publicly for the recognition of mental disorders as any type of illness in society. Unfortunately, I believe moral is today: dont tell unless you are forced to. But when you are indeed a victim of any sort of usually uninformed discrimination, fight it vigorously and further do not hesitate to litigate.
I went to Columbia undergrad and MIT graduate schools and had to be hospitalized during my studies at each school. In the university environment, I personally found the highest degree of support and understanding I could expect from all professors, deans and it is very reflective of the high level of sophistication and intelligence of the university environment.
Conversely, work environment and life in society at large is a different story. Mental health patients with little support and financial means often end up in the streets as homeless and are often incarcerated as cities and states do not want to spend enough money to house them in appropriate shelters.
Would you like to end up thrown in Rikers Island among a population of hardened criminals if you started going down the slope of mental problems and then into the streets? How would you like to come out of the mental facility of Rikers with a few bucks in your pocket and a subway ticket.
Please see Brad H.vs Guiliani filed 1999 by the Urban Justice Center in New York. Preliminary injunction for this class suit granted in 2000 ordering the city to arrange for the continuous mental health care of more than 30,000 (!) mental health patients discharged every year from City jails.
Fortunately, there is a group of people who cares and it is a remarkably outstanding group of people. I just want here to give you a list of a few law firms who have worked pro bono to litigate in favor of mental health patients with little or no financial means. I think you might easily recognize them:
Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP
Binghman Mc Cutchen LLP
Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP
Cravath Swaine & Moore LLP
Debevoise & Plimpton LLP
Dechert LLP
Dewey Ballantine LLP
Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz
Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP
Gibson Dunn & Krucher
Greenberg Traurig LLP
Klakso, Rulon, Stock & Seltzer LLP
Koob & Magoolahan LLP
Latham & Watkins LLP
Milbank Tweed Hadley & Mc Loyd LLP
Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP
Outten & Golden LLP
Paul Weiss Rifkin Wharton & Garrison LLP
Proskauer Rose LLP
Reed Smith Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP
Sherman & Sterling LLP
Skadden Arps Slate Meagher LLP
The Mason Law Firm LLC
Weil Gotschals and Manges LLP
Wilmerhale LLP</p>
<p>Source: <a href=“http://www.urbanjustice.org%5B/url%5D”>www.urbanjustice.org</a></p>
<p>MIT Mental Health services:</p>
<p><a href=“http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2000/counseling.html[/url]”>http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2000/counseling.html</a></p>