My prayers for you and your family. I’ve shared about my youngest grandson, and his struggles with autism, adhd, and extreme bipolarism.
His occasional violent outbursts greatly concern us, because unless we can get his meds balanced, and the proper inpatient/residential long term help and guidance, we worry he’ll be institutionalized…
We also believe he has issues with paranoid schizophrenia, as his father (daughter’s ex-husband) has a severe case of it. He’s currently in jail (again) in Southeast Colorado in his hometown, for domestic violence on his current girlfriend. HIS mom had severe mental issues and self medicated, which eventually killed her.
Grandson is eleven, and has been in and out of behavioral hospitals a couple dozen times in the past six years. I had to take him again late Saturday night to the Wyoming Behavioral Institute in Casper, a five hour round trip there and back. We arrived just before midnight, and I got home just after two am.
Before taking him to Casper, he’d been in the local hospital in a safe room…one that he couldn’t hurt himself in. He had been having hallucinations, first at home, then at the hospital…”seeing a man come in through the wall…”. This wasn’t the first time he’s seen things no one else could…
He spent eight months at St. Joseph’s Children’s Home in the Eastern Wyoming. This facility used to be an orphanage ages ago, and is currently operating as a psychiatric hospital…
From their site…
“Saint Joseph's Children's Home is a private, non-profit psychiatric residential treatment facility (PRTF) for youth ages six through seventeen that has been providing quality services to youth and families since 1930.”
If you look at some Google reviews, the staff seem to have a very physically abusive culture, which grandson talked about several times. That truly concerns me, that sending him there only made things worse.
Six weeks ago, he was expelled for a full year for verbalizing a threat to a kid who was bullying him and some of his friends. His sixth grade IEP requires the school district to educate him …period.
He’s been spending his school days here, and accessing class via Zoom…with a school-provided Chromebook. It’s been hit and miss most days with tech issues that have tried my patience because there are several issues with the laptop that causes the connections to drop several times a day. It’s certainly not our 100 mbps internet speed.
During an all hands meeting at the middle school, including teachers, counselors, principal, district managers, and even the school resource officer, attended by my daughter and I, the suggestion for long term residential help at a place called the Huntsman Institute in SLC was brought up…
Their site…
Behavioral and mental health services are provided at Huntsman Mental Health Institute located in Research Park by University of Utah. We specialize in treatment for all ages, all types of mental health conditions and disorders.
healthcare.utah.edu
Their facility is almost five hours from home, and regular visits would be greatly restricted due to costs and time off.
One of the teachers described how a couple of students had been there, and that it greatly helped them when they returned to classes, but that’s all we’ve heard about it.
In all, we’ve spent the last several years seeking any kind of help, psychological evaluations, psychiatric guidance, etc., trying all kinds of meds (his therapist suggested trying Adderall to his med collection this past Wednesday)…and we now feel like we’re spinning our wheels.
It’s just another hard ball lobbed at the side of the barn…with the conversation (which I was in for the first time since he started) sounding like he wasn’t listening to what is actually happening to, and with, dear grandson..
We’re now at our wits end, but I think we can see it in the distance..heading our way with no brakes or lights…just pure D chaos.
I love grandson with all my heart, and I’d give anything and everything to help him.
My own history with him since I came home crippled from the work related wreck in 2018, put me in the hospital in late June 2018, and seeing my own therapists ever since. We’ve done much better the past four months.
Again, most humble prayers for you and yours, to all traveling this path right now…I’ve never seen a societal flood of these kinds of issues in my life…and it’s very worrisome in my eyes..,