Abandonment

I began writing this piece nearly 6 months ago. It was too painful then to complete it. Today I was ready to face it again.

Content: Mention of suicidality and hospitalization

“Are you angry?” she asks me.

Something in me breaks free. I AM angry, but not for the reasons she thinks.

I’m sitting on a telehealth call with my therapist. I’ve been working with her for over a year – since shortly after my now 22-year-old son, Blake, made his first call to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. We’ve been talking about how I’m dealing with Blake’s chronic suicidality and the aftermath of his recent hospitalizations. In particular, we are discussing the regular, yet now decreasing, messages I receive from people who care about me asking if things have gotten any better.

I am angry because I feel utterly abandoned – but not by friends or family. They have been wonderful. I feel abandoned by the very field I have come to love and to have put the utmost faith in. I feel abandoned by mental health.

I am a psychologist with more than thirty years of experience under my belt. I’ve worked in community clinics, and with people with some of the greatest social and emotional needs. I veered from my original path and toward specializing in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder when it struck my own home and I realized that too few people understood the disorder or how to treat it. I have dedicated myself to educating people, making treatment more accessible, and volunteering my time for mental health causes. I have utterly, completely imbibed the mental health “Kool-Aid” because I believe people can be helped, because I am passionate about providing that help and directing others toward it, and I believe all people have a right to excellent mental health care. Ask anyone. I live, work, play, breathe, and sweat mental health advocacy.

And then my son became suicidal. And mental health abandoned me.

“I am angry,” I tell her.

“I am angry because the community I have believed so completely in has failed my son. It’s failed our family. I feel like I have lost my community.”

When Blake was in the hospital, he was told he belonged in a residential placement to address his depression and his OCD. When he interviewed for those and shared that he did not want to live and did not believe that he could get better, but agreed he would give it a try, he was declined admission. Too suicidal for a residential placement. Yet, he wasn’t suicidal enough to be in a hospital psychiatric unit. Our insurance fought with the hospital over reimbursement for days. Ultimately, the hospital agreed that he was finally not suicidal enough to be there. Yet, he had no placement to go to.

Take that in:

• Too suicidal for a residential placement
• Not suicidal enough for a psychiatric unit

And so he was sent home…

Our son was released home from his second two week stay in the hospital with an appointment with a telehealth psychiatric practice (who, when they met with him, merely told him he was too severe for them to treat) and the phone number for a mental health companion service (not covered by insurance) that charges more per single visit than many people make in a week. It was then that I was hit with the gigantic void that exists in mental health. No one checked in on us or our son to make sure he was well. Not the hospital. Not his previous therapists. No one directed us toward treatment that might be useful for him. We were left to figure it out. He was very “severe” we were told – but we were left alone, scared, and confused.

Our family is incredibly privileged. My husband had foresight and we had the ability to save a little money from each paycheck for most of the time we’ve been working. It’s turned into a nice savings. We can take the financial hit right now. I am a psychologist who is active in my professional community and I have many connections. I can call people who know people.

And even with that, the system is confusing. There may be treatment for young adults like Blake, but the point is, I’m more knowledgeable than the average mental health consumer and this is unbelievably confusing for me. The bits of treatment we have cobbled together so far are mostly not covered by insurance. The costs are staggering. I am not complaining. My son is worth it. I am able to pay for it. Many, many people would not be able to do so. And it is just not right.

Humans deserve a better mental health system than the one I am feeling abandoned by. I feel let down and disillusioned by something I’ve poured myself into and I’m still licking my wounds and taking care of what’s at home. But I hope to turn this experience into something more. Mental health can be better. It can be the care system I believed it to be. I am an ardent believer that one person can make a difference – even if it is a very small one – and, as I regain my own personal sense of strength, I will dedicate myself to making a better system. We all deserve it.