ISEPP is Listening

This was originally posted on the ICSSP website on October 24, 2010. ICSPP is now ISEPP and the video originally added by the administrator to my story was not included on the new site and so I have included it here:

I feel like it is never going to end.  I am a mother who everyday has the blessing of having my son, at all.  It is bittersweet, however.  Rarely does my son show the personality the drugs obscure almost totally.  It is hard to fathom, or accept.  The reality for me is that I feel as I am hastening his demise.  It is not an easy thing to realize that informed consent, client and family driven care are not on the agenda for the local providers, at least not for my son.

My son was in a crisis and sought to be hospitalized, he was attended by the worst kind of doctor–a doctor who attends to a person in crisis in an inpatient setting whom he has never met; and does not bother to speak to anyone who knows the patient, how he lives, his functional capacity, or what precipitated his crisis.

He probably would not think it important.

I know it is though; Isaac said it is. My son had been dealing with some very difficult realizations. Like the fact that he observed, when watching a show of a guy teaching 5th graders math tricks,

“I used to be able to do that.”

Or when he asked in agony, “how could they take so much from me?”

This was when talking about how the massive amounts of drugs were forced on him as a minor at a state run psychiatric facility, “They traumatized me over and over and over.”

My heart aches for my boy. I tried, I really did.  I was told me I had no say, because he was a ward of the state.

The doctor who told me this, lied.

He broke the law, the ethics guidelines of the medical profession, my son’s spirit and my heart.  I cannot tell you what hurts worse, it’s all is utterly devastating.

What I know though is my son has a tremendous heart and a belief that as he says,

“My family knows what happened and they believe in me, I’m going to get better.”

I know that it is true and I am so very grateful that he knows it too.

About Becky:  “My interests are advocacy for those diagnosed as mentally ill and their families. I advocate for truth, accountability and integrity in mental health treatment and reform; support self-determination by advocating for the freedom to choose mental health services and treatments without coercion or force of law. The Constitutional Rights to Procedural Due Process of Law are not protected or defended for those whom Involuntary Treatment Court Orders are obtained against. In Washington State individuals permanently lose their 2nd Amendment Rights and are put on a tracking system for life as a result.” A Mother Shares Her Truth and Her Pain