How I Ended Up Advocating for My Child In the Middle of a Mental Health Crisis

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Trigger Warning: This post makes mention of/alludes to suicide.

One thing I was not prepared for in motherhood was when the life you built begins to fall apart and you have no idea what to do to fix it. There are some things beyond our control. Life is a series of extenuating circumstances. Even with everything going on in the world, as a mom, a mental health crisis is at the top of the list of things that currently terrify me. The only thing that scares me more is the thought of my daughters finding themselves in the middle of one and feeling overwhelmed and broken with nowhere to go and no idea what to do. I’ve been there and it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to survive.

As someone with a mental illness diagnosis myself, my biggest fear is losing control and being at the mercy of other people. Inpatient treatment has always particularly scared me. I guess that is all that residual mental illness stigma rearing its ugly little head in my mind. But when it comes to my children, there is nothing I won’t do to protect them and myself. I literally have no shame if its the difference between my girls being healthy and my pride being intact. Once I had my girls, I knew my life was no longer just my own and I would do whatever I needed to do keep them out of harm’s way. So when my children started experiencing mental health struggles during the pandemic, I addressed it immediately with specialists and compassion.

Anyone concerned that someone may harm themselves or someone else, reach out to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline by calling the toll-free number 1-800-273-TALK (1-800-273-8255). Representatives are available 24/7 by phone or online chat. If you feel overwhelmed with emotions like sadness, depression, or anxiety, reach out to the Disaster Distress Helpline at 1-800-985-5990. If it is an emergency, please call your local emergency line.

I often feel like my diagnosis is a source of shame for my mother, which is why it took a chance meeting with the right person to get on track.

My own mental illness diagnosis was discovered by chance; no one ever advocated for me. I was literally saved by a new gynecologist (in a new city) who happened to have a daughter around my age who was bipolar, so this particular OB/GYN was educated in my particular illness. She recognized similar behaviors between her daughter and myself. Thanks to this one coincidence, I was able to get a diagnosis and start healing from a lifetime of feeling irreparably broken.

My own mother, to this day, asks me where I could have inherited it and has been known to tell me to “just calm down” and to “snap out of it.” If I had a nickel for every time I’ve been told this, I’d be a millionaire. It’s often genetic and I know exactly where I inherited it from because there is a precedent set for my particular ailment on her side of the family. I often feel like my diagnosis is a source of shame for her. That’s made it difficult to go to her when I’ve needed her the most in my life.

Just an FYI: People who suffer from mental illness (whether it is anxiety, depression or bipolar and everything in between) are in just as much pain as those who suffer from physical illnesses. They feel unfixable and abandoned by a society which, in may ways, still stigmatizes those suffering so much so that many are afraid to seek the psychiatric care they need to feel better. I knew I never wanted to do that to my children.

I’m probably more aware of the state of my children’s mental health than the average parent because of my own struggles.

I knew there was a chance that my girls could inherit my illness just as they can be predisposed genetically to any of my medical issues. The difference was going to be my openness with them about mental health since they were small, my efforts to de-stigmatize mental illness and my willingness to get past my own pride and guilt at possibly genetically predisposing them to mental health struggles and do whatever was needed to get them the help they needed if/when that time came.

Well, thanks to the pandemic, the trauma-free childhood I’ve diligently worked so hard to give them got blown up. The fear of contracting COVID-19, the isolation from social distancing for two years away from other people, losing family and friends before their time, and the constant upheaval of the unknown triggered in my daughters the mental health crisis bubbling right beneath the surface.

My girls have been in therapy to navigate through their anxiety since April 2020. They embraced cognitive behavioral therapy. But last fall, returning to in-person schooling in a building with hundreds of other teens, most of whom weren’t vaccinated and not wearing masks, triggered the anxiety they had been managing. It became unmanageable, and last fall behavioral therapy evolved to include medication.

They returned to class under duress and almost immediately found themselves quarantined time and time again, despite being vaccinated and testing negative. Even after returning, they were sent home this time without any Zoom classes or TEAM meetings. You can imagine the stress that added to them. I spent the school year being threatened by the school with attendance contracts and homebound learning when all my girls wanted and needed was a return to normalcy. I can’t tell you how many emails were sent between the vice principal, attendance, the principal and myself. This was stressful and triggering even for me, so you can imagine the state my girls’ mental health was in.

But I fought and in the end it all got sorted … or so I thought. I was wrong. Things may have been sorted with the school but not with the girls. They were taking all the mental health blows in silence with the occasional acting out in anger, which I mistook for the typical angst and moodiness of the teens years.

Earlier this month, everything I was doing to keep their mental health intact failed.

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One morning when I went in to wake up my 14-year-old for school, she quietly asked me to lay down and snuggle for a few minutes. I did.

As I lay there and she snuggled me, she said, “Mom, can I please stay home. It’s too much.”

I wasn’t sure if this was typical end-of-the-year burnout or something more, so I asked, “What do you mean too much?”

Her answer took my breath away: “Mama, I don’t feel any joy. I can’t get happy. I haven’t been able to for months.”

I could feel her quietly sobbing, even though I couldn’t see her face. I kept her home. She went on to say that some days she wished she wasn’t here anymore. This scared me more than I’ve ever been scared before. I immediately contacted her therapist and then her pediatrician and a plan was put into motion; operation save my baby.

After consulting the therapist, we agreed that her medication needed to be titrated up. The pediatrician agreed and while I was there, I made them test her iron because I’d been noticing she’d been chewing ice in huge amounts all day. I used to deal with low iron and I know it can affect other things as well, like your mood and overall health. At my behest, she begrudgingly agreed and I was right so we added some iron to her meds. Our pediatrician is a kind and caring woman, but she is not a mental health professional. Her expertise on the subject is limited.

We came home and as the day went on, I noticed my daughter was still morose (because mental health like all health is a long-term investment and nothing can fix it immediately) and I had this nagging feeling that more needed to be done but I knew that the meds needed a couple weeks to stabilize.

When my wise 14-year-old looked me straight in my face and said, “Mama, I was doing some research and maybe I need to go inpatient.”

I was shocked and simultaneously elated that she was able to verbalize this to me. I was also scared because that meant she was feeling so desperate that she was asking for me to help her to save herself. I called the local behavioral center and took her in to be assessed. I couldn’t just wait and see when it was my daughter’s life on the line.

I remember being her age and feeling hopeless and like there was no way out or past that feeling.

I had to will myself to keep going when I wanted to quit life. I recognized that look in her eyes. I will fight for her as hard as I had to fight to save myself, probably even harder because she means everything to me. Long story slightly shorter: I’m doing whatever I need to do to get her through this. I will take her to see whatever doctor she needs, drive her to as many appointments or group sessions, push that they take it seriously, be disliked, seen as overreacting and called pushy — because none of that means anything as long as my daughter can feel joy.

At the end of the day, the important thing is to help our children feel as healthy as possible. Don’t play the blame game. As a parent, you can doing everything right and mental health issues still happen to your child. Its our job to advocate for our kids but its also our job to take care of ourselves and advocate for our own well-being and mental health so we can be there for them. Taking care of ourselves is an imperative part of taking care of them. I’m trying to be the mother to my children that I wish I had fighting for me as a child. Please, do the same for yours.