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  • Mental Illness and child rearing

    Friday, October 23, 2009
    I deal with a lot of stuff in my line of work. I see mother's giving up their 16 year old mentally challenged kid so she wants to "focus" on her other two children more, I've seen parents that will snort ANYTHING, including Tylenol, parents with trichilliomania, dermatillomania, schizophrenia and psychosis having their children taken away from them. Although trichilliomania (hair pulling) and dermatillomania (skin picking) are serious disorders, they do not totally interfere with child rearing unless there is some form of psychosis behind them, for instance a parent picking their skin to get the "bugs" out of their arms. As scary as these disorders are, parents can receive help from medical professionals in their community to battle these disorders. Usually if we see parents in our files with these above problems, they are always backed by the person having a psychosis issue, or they suffer from bipolar, depression, multiple personality or similar manias.

    I struggle with mental health issues myself, and have for most of my adolescent/adult life. I deal with my own manias with medial help and medication, and I am fully sufficient to look after my self and any future children I may have. I am on the less serious end of the stick, I have mild depression and also suffer from a sensory integration disorder where I experience hypersensitivity to touch, smell, hearing (tactile defensiveness). This disorder has only recently been discovered and I am learning about it more and more every day.

    A lot of my clients like to pull the "depression" card, for instance "my wife was on anti depressants last year, and I don't think she can be a good mother because of it". The sad thing is, THIS COULD ACTUALLY STAND UP IN COURT. But no one cares that last year that this lady's her mother died, and she had a miscarriage all at the same time that pushed her to seek help. No one cares that the depression could have been situational and not chemical. I hate this stance, because it scares the crap out of me knowing that someday, Adam could just whip that card out of his deck and say that I'm not a good mom because I once fought depression.

    Some women experience post-partum depression, and I even read a brief where a lawyer actually went after a woman in court for having post partum and labeled her a bad mother because of it! Of course, the judge was a female and the judge dismissed the lawyer and the Respondents claim as the mother had had treatment for her post partum and had approached the disorder in a controlled and informed matter.

    But sometimes you’re not so lucky.

    I would just like you to know, that it’s hard living with depression. It's hard not being able to help yourself, let alone someone who depends on you like your child would. But there are ways to manage these effects so that you can go throughout your day.

    Because a mother or father takes medication for depression does not make them a bad parent. As long as they stay on the drug and follow doctors orders, they should be able to reintegrate back into society without none being the wiser that this person had an issue in the first place.

    My whole rant today is how I hate the fact that depression even comes up in a court proceeding, especially if the person has it under control and the other party wants to bring this condition to light because they've run out of "ammo".

    Anyway that’s my rant for today. I'm tired.

    1 comments:

    1. ZNLA said...:

      I think I have that skin picking disorder :P
      All jokes aside, good rant :)

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