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Mental Health Awareness Month: THE TRUTH
If we want to get real about mental health awareness...here is a true life situation happening right now that will give you some perspective on what needs to change in the system. This is happening here in Bend, Oregon to a dear friend of mine..but is happening in every city around the United States.
1. Healthy teenage boy starts feeling picky about food, clothing, routines, decisions. Over time he begins getting agitated and moody. He starts to isolate himself. He starts to think that his food "Just isn't right", or "something is wrong" with his schoolwork so he can't complete it. Fast forward 4 weeks and he is completely debilitated by newly acquired OCD. He can't eat because food is contaminated, he can't leave his room because "the house is covered in germs", he can't do schoolwork because "everything is wrong" and he is trapped inside a brain that is obsessively telling him that everything will harm him. His hands are cracked and bleeding from washing and he has lost 15 pounds in a month from not eating. He can't even hug his family.
2. Mom is devastated. She tries to look for how to help her child. Psychiatrists have month long waiting lists. A doctor tells the boy to try and take a new medicine. An OCD crisis creates delusional thinking so the boy doesn't want the medicine because it is contaminated. The Exposure Therapists have 6 month long waiting lists. After son threatens to run away and harm himself, mom takes son to Emergency Room.
3. Emergency Room admits the teenager. He is put in a special "code gray" room (reserved for combative patients). He has to wait for a bed to open up somewhere in the state that is a psychiatric hospital reserved for pediatric patients. The boy and his mom are in the Emergency Room for 5 days. The boy won't eat any food because it is contaminated. While in the ER there is NO TREATMENT happening because there is no pediatric psychiatrist on staff. Staff threatens to hold down the patient to administer drugs to keep him calm. He is a BOY WITH EXTREME ANXIETY living in the ER witnessing daily commotion from shooting victims, gang stabbings, patients screaming in pain, and distress. His door has to be kept open for safety reasons so he has to SEE all of the trauma all day. After 5 days of waiting he is told a bed won't be open to treat his OCD until JULY. Another boy has also been waiting in the same ER since APRIL 10th (almost one month). The few beds available around the state are constantly FULL.
4. Mom can't stand watching her son suffer. She can't justify being caged in a room with no treatment for the next 60 days. Brings son home. Son continues to decline. He is in crisis and is dying. Mom has NO OPTIONS. She works full time and if she misses another week of work she won't be able to afford her rent. Her son will need an intensive inpatient/outpatient program for OCD. This treatment to try and heal him will take at least 3 months and require her to leave work and accompany him. It will cost tens of thousands of dollars that isn't covered by insurance. Plus travel and hotel rooms (because there are only a handful of programs and they are spread all over the country). The waiting lists for these programs are still many months away.
5. This sweet boy did not ask for this disease. This disease is no different than any other health problem that is newly diagnosed. Yet the barriers for treatment, the inhumane way mental health patients are treated, and the lack of timely, targeted resources available is INHUMANE AND INEXCUSABLE!
If he had a broken arm, a heart condition, even cancer...he would be nurtured, cared for and a customized treatment plan for healing would be quickly established. He would receive immediate attention.
Not for mental health.
THIS IS THE MENTAL HEALTH SYSTEM IN OUR COUNTRY.
So when you hear "Mental Health Awareness week".
Think of this teenage boy. Sitting at home right now, paralyzed by his own thoughts, slowly deteriorating, his name on many waiting lists to get treatment. The family left alone to find their own way. Stigma preventing them from sharing their crisis with friends. Feeling lost and hopeless and scared.
And if you feel moved....please donate to this GOFUNDME. Be the force that helps this mom locate and afford the treatment for this disease as well as provide her the ability to be with her child while he heals.
Instead of scrolling through the mental health awareness posts...Please take action today.
Let's heal one child. And then another. Then another.
And become AWARE of the broken system by advocating for MORE RESOURCES and MORE FUNDING.
We can't afford to leave one more child waiting.
Feel free to share and stop the waiting and start treating!
If we want to get real about mental health awareness...here is a true life situation happening right now that will give you some perspective on what needs to change in the system. This is happening here in Bend, Oregon to a dear friend of mine..but is happening in every city around the United States.
1. Healthy teenage boy starts feeling picky about food, clothing, routines, decisions. Over time he begins getting agitated and moody. He starts to isolate himself. He starts to think that his food "Just isn't right", or "something is wrong" with his schoolwork so he can't complete it. Fast forward 4 weeks and he is completely debilitated by newly acquired OCD. He can't eat because food is contaminated, he can't leave his room because "the house is covered in germs", he can't do schoolwork because "everything is wrong" and he is trapped inside a brain that is obsessively telling him that everything will harm him. His hands are cracked and bleeding from washing and he has lost 15 pounds in a month from not eating. He can't even hug his family.
2. Mom is devastated. She tries to look for how to help her child. Psychiatrists have month long waiting lists. A doctor tells the boy to try and take a new medicine. An OCD crisis creates delusional thinking so the boy doesn't want the medicine because it is contaminated. The Exposure Therapists have 6 month long waiting lists. After son threatens to run away and harm himself, mom takes son to Emergency Room.
3. Emergency Room admits the teenager. He is put in a special "code gray" room (reserved for combative patients). He has to wait for a bed to open up somewhere in the state that is a psychiatric hospital reserved for pediatric patients. The boy and his mom are in the Emergency Room for 5 days. The boy won't eat any food because it is contaminated. While in the ER there is NO TREATMENT happening because there is no pediatric psychiatrist on staff. Staff threatens to hold down the patient to administer drugs to keep him calm. He is a BOY WITH EXTREME ANXIETY living in the ER witnessing daily commotion from shooting victims, gang stabbings, patients screaming in pain, and distress. His door has to be kept open for safety reasons so he has to SEE all of the trauma all day. After 5 days of waiting he is told a bed won't be open to treat his OCD until JULY. Another boy has also been waiting in the same ER since APRIL 10th (almost one month). The few beds available around the state are constantly FULL.
4. Mom can't stand watching her son suffer. She can't justify being caged in a room with no treatment for the next 60 days. Brings son home. Son continues to decline. He is in crisis and is dying. Mom has NO OPTIONS. She works full time and if she misses another week of work she won't be able to afford her rent. Her son will need an intensive inpatient/outpatient program for OCD. This treatment to try and heal him will take at least 3 months and require her to leave work and accompany him. It will cost tens of thousands of dollars that isn't covered by insurance. Plus travel and hotel rooms (because there are only a handful of programs and they are spread all over the country). The waiting lists for these programs are still many months away.
5. This sweet boy did not ask for this disease. This disease is no different than any other health problem that is newly diagnosed. Yet the barriers for treatment, the inhumane way mental health patients are treated, and the lack of timely, targeted resources available is INHUMANE AND INEXCUSABLE!
If he had a broken arm, a heart condition, even cancer...he would be nurtured, cared for and a customized treatment plan for healing would be quickly established. He would receive immediate attention.
Not for mental health.
THIS IS THE MENTAL HEALTH SYSTEM IN OUR COUNTRY.
So when you hear "Mental Health Awareness week".
Think of this teenage boy. Sitting at home right now, paralyzed by his own thoughts, slowly deteriorating, his name on many waiting lists to get treatment. The family left alone to find their own way. Stigma preventing them from sharing their crisis with friends. Feeling lost and hopeless and scared.
And if you feel moved....please donate to this GOFUNDME. Be the force that helps this mom locate and afford the treatment for this disease as well as provide her the ability to be with her child while he heals.
Instead of scrolling through the mental health awareness posts...Please take action today.
Let's heal one child. And then another. Then another.
And become AWARE of the broken system by advocating for MORE RESOURCES and MORE FUNDING.
We can't afford to leave one more child waiting.
Feel free to share and stop the waiting and start treating!
Organizer and beneficiary
Andrea Rosenzweig
Organizer
Bend, OR
Karri Albin
Beneficiary
