<p>Thats exactly the point, Cobrat. Misunderstanding or distain for the mentally ill continues to be a huge problem, as your post demonstrates.</p>
<p>Yes Cobrat, we get it. You don’t like people with Mental Health issues, nor the folks who treat them, live with them, advocate for them, etc.</p>
<p>Back to our regularly scheduled broadcast. Nobody here is defending the roommate who went ballistic or the roommates parent. But we can all take a deep breath and admit that if WE were that parent, it would be very difficult to concede that your child was too ill to attend college, or that living in a dorm was likely to be a trigger for an illness you thought was under control/well managed, or that your kid’s need for quiet and other “quirky” behaviors which you were getting treated with both meds and therapy, would in fact, be a huge obstacle (and behavioral trigger) once your child was living with a roommate.</p>
<p>I’m not defending the parents or the kid. I’ve just got plenty of sympathy to go around.</p>
<p>Where’s the “like” button?</p>
<p>Yea, I’ve got to tell you…I definitely prioritize my concern for the well-being of Betsy (victim) over that of the roommate. I am sorry she has mental health issues. I hope she gets the help she needs. I hope she has people in her life that can help her do that. Her behavior, and that of her mom was inexcusable.</p>
<p>Her (ill roommate’s) behavior was irrational. There is a difference.</p>
<p>“if WE were that parent, it would be very difficult to concede that your child was too ill to attend college, or that living in a dorm was likely to be a trigger for an illness you thought was under control/well managed”</p>
<p>Maybe so. But if we failed to overcome that difficulty, I believe we’d be largely to blame for the consequences. It may be tough to accept that your child has a broken leg, but if you send him back into the football game to play on the leg, that’s a serious parenting failure. Dealing with all kinds of ugly truths is a central job of parenting. Really, it’s a core part of being an adult, but parents take on a higher responsibility to make good decisions for their children even under awful circumstances.</p>
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<p>In my view, this isn’t disdain so much as prioritization of sympathies more toward the victim of the violent attack which IME is natural for most folks. </p>
<p>The split into different camps based on whether one should have equal sympathies for both, more sympathies for the attack’s victim than the violent attacker, or no sympathies for the violent attacker could be seen in various news stories on violent incidents.</p>
<p>I personally fall somewhere between 2 and 3.</p>
<p>Lets please not derail this thread. Lets get back to the OPs topic.</p>
<p>I mentioned earlier that I felt perhaps the parents were so used to being around the young lady that they were somewhat unaware or simply passed her behaviors off as quirky. so in a strange way all the back and forth about mental illness is somewhat on topic. I found this comment in an earlier post interesting simply because it supports some of the comments about how people categorize and “talk” about mental illnesses.</p>
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<p>I find this whole situation so heartbreakingly sad. Horribly for Betsy, for sure, but the former roommate must have been suffering terribly.</p>
<p>The young woman may have been relatively ok at home and not gone completely over until she was away from home and everything seemed strange and unfamiliar. Adjusting to college can be scary just all on its own.</p>
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<p>No one believes for a moment that if you stepped in on a violent situation to prevent someone from getting injured that you were “lambasted” by a “couple of acquaintances.” </p>
<p>BTW, in what world do “acquaintances” “lambaste” anybody? Your little world is one in which everyone is always up in everyone else’s business. You know what acquaintances do? They say hmmm and go on with their lives. They just aren’t into other people’s business the way you always describe.</p>
<p>I’m happy things are working out for “Betsy”</p>
<p>As I said in the other thread, last year my younger daughter had a roommate who was bipolar. The parents knew it - she’d been in therapy and on meds. Parents did not check up on the girl in college. She stopped both and went off the rails on her suitemates. While a 19yo holds some responsibility, parents also need to make certain their child is taking care of herself, is actually able to attend classes (RM was on academic probation for poor grades freshman year), and is stable. Their lack of interest/connection put <em>my</em> daughter in danger. That is unforgivable, in my mind.</p>
<p>I’m sorry…but “got lambasted by a couple of acquaintances of that ilk” just sounds like it came from a turgid, overwrought, badly written novel…</p>
<p>I also disagree that there is any “prioritization” of sympathies to be had. The overall priority is to get both Betsy and her roommate to where they are each safe. There is nothing to take sides on in this situation. It is tragic.</p>
<p>This thread is an update on a situation involving the OP’s friends’ daughter. Thus it is natural that many of us would look at this scenario from her POV (as in the original thread). It’s not about taking sides, but I do have greater sympathy for the unwitting victim of someone’s out-of-control mental health issues than for the parents of the person with the problem (I do have great sympathy for the troubled roommate). In this case, the parents are also on the offensive, casting blame and ignoring both their daughter’s ongoing unreasonable behavior (making Betsy live in complete darkness and silence in their room?) and her more recent acts of violence. I don’t know what recourse Betsy’s parents have for the impact this situation has had on their daughter but I would be furious if my child had to endure even a few days of what Betsy went through at a time when she, like most college freshmen, had plenty of her own adjustments to make. She will never get back the fall of her freshman year, and I can’t imagine this helped her get off to a good start.</p>
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<p>No, but THANKFULLY she had made other friends already in the dorm, and had an option of picking one of those friends (in the forced triple) when the vacancy opened up! Hopefully that made a terribly miserable situation, a tiny bit less terribly miserable.</p>
<p>I think there are enough sympathies and good will to go around to all. It is a tragic situation. It sounds like the U handled this in the end. Hopefully Betsy will be able to enjoy the rest if her freshman year. </p>
<p>One concern I have in reading this is equating mental illness with violence. My BFF and college housemate is bipolar. She was not dx until after college. She was never violent. Yes she had some really odd behaviors and times that we girls needed to intervene but we were never unsafe. I think self harm is more common than harming others.</p>
<p>I just wanted to chime in that parents who hear of such bizarre stories with roommates and of a lack of responsiveness from RA or other residence hall staff should encourage their student to go above the RA’s head sooner rather than later. RAs can handle minor things like unclean common areas or noise (and usually not that successful with noise) or underage drinking on premises, illegal appliances, and perhaps minor disagreements over use of the room. If the disagreement is major or behavior seems bizarre, then it is time to get the professionals involved - residence hall director or housing office professionals. In many places the dorms are oversubscribed (eg. in this case forced triples) and no room is open, so the RA, and even housing office may say nothing can be done. If the behavior is truly bizarre (and we don’t have to be mental health professionals to recognize some bizarre behavior), keep going up the chain of command - Dean of Students etc.</p>
<p>This seemed to escalate immediately when the fiat of “rules” was not in effect, so perhaps everyone would have been taken by surprise. I do think that a trained person (not RA) who heard about no lights, no noise, don’t come in after 12, no guests, might have at the very least tried to speak to both roommates at one time, before the violent escalation, but if only the RA was on notice of the problem, and just swept it under the rug with all the other issues that come up in freshman dorm, this could not have happened.</p>
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<p>momofthreeboys – That was my quote. I assume that your point was that I went to pains to say that my child is not mentally ill. (Please correct me if I am wrong.) The reason I distinguished autism from mental illness is this: There is so much misinformation about autism. For one thing, many people mistakenly think that it is a mental illness. Not being a mental illness, though, doesn’t make autism easy or “better”. It is just different.</p>
<p>I believe that the best thing I can do as a parent is to raise my son to be open about having autism. The more it is out in the open, the more people will accept him and try to understand and help him. I would feel the same way about a child with mental illness. Mental illness is absolutely nothing to be ashamed of, and the more it is out in the open, the better.</p>
<p>One of my good friends has a mental illness that has required treatment in a psychiatric hospital. Rather than keep that a secret, he has been totally open about his difficulties. When people see how open he is, they feel free to talk to him about it and have been wonderfully accepting. I am convinced that the reason that he has a good, stable marriage and lots of supportive friends is that he is open and honest. If he is having a rough day, he lets people know.</p>
<p>When I was a child, the word “cancer” was almost taboo. It was whispered and treated as something shameful. I think that we as a society are beginning to realize that words like “autism,” “depression,” and “bipolar” should also not be whispered and that people who have those challenges should be treated with acceptance and lots of support. Obviously, in this case, the first priority was “Betsy’s” safety. However, I feel for her roommate as well, especially because it seems like her parents have not been helping her. Maybe they are mentally ill themselves or they are still caught up in the idea of mental illness as being something to be hidden.</p>
<p>The older I get, the more I think that we should be more honest with each other about our struggles, whatever they are. That doesn’t have to mean going on a TV talk show and announcing our problems to the world. It just means being open with our family and friends and being willing to listen to them as well.</p>
<p>So, if you thought I was talking about mental illness in a secretive, disparaging way, be assured that that was certainly not the case.</p>
<p>blossom – Thanks.</p>
<p>For Betsy, this is most likely a one and done situation. She has friends and her mental health and will go on to enjoy and most likely succeed in college. Thankfully, she was not injured and tragedy was avoided. While I can agree the roommate needed to be removed from campus, I hope she can get help and find stability and a productive life. It’s just a very sad story.</p>
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So, Sally, what would you have done differently from what Betsy’s parents did? What would you have done in your “furious” state of mind?</p>