LookingForAnswers
New Member
Hello all! I am new here and I guess I will start by telling you about my son. My son's (MH) current diagnosis is mood disorder, depression (pretty severe; it manifest as anger), and ADHD. His doctors don't really say Bipolar...I have heard them say it a couple of times but I honestly am not sure if he has it. I really don't know why I want to put a label on it other than I would like to know what I am dealing with. I sometimes wonder if he has the correct diagnosis. We knew something was wrong as early as 2 but we didn't take him to the psychiatrist until he was 7 when he said that he wanted to kill himself. His diagnosis then was Anxiety, Depression (as a result from the ADHD and he would grow out of it), ODD, and ADHD. When he was around 11 things changed and he got worse. The diagnosis changed to what it is now and his psychiatrist also told me that the depression was clinical now and it will be a life long battle (That was hard for me to accept!). He developed some tics last Summer and his doctor took him off all his medications (not all at once) to figure out what was causing it. That is when we found out just how bad the depression is. He was EXTREMELY angry and he would fly into a rage over nothing. He would accuse people of talking about him or plotting against him (paranoid) and he had extreme hate for his little brother. At home we had to put locks on our doors so that his brother would have a safe place to go if MH got angry when we were at work. This was a very scary time for us. During that time he was doing some really impulsive and bad things (like stealing from my job!). Since then we have been struggling to get his medications right.He is still extremely argumentative and disrespectful and we never know what is gonna set him off. His rages have reduced but he still gets really angry over nothing and refuses to accept responsibility for anything! The last rage was about 6 weeks ago and he broke our pedestal sink by punching it!! If you tell him an answer he dont want to hear he will get very ugly. He is very disrespectful, unmotivated to do anything, thinks that rules dont apply to him, extremely impulsive
I could go on but I wont. The point is that our house is always in chaos and there is always arguing. The school is always calling me (He has an IEP in place and is in an EBD Self Contained class setting). He is also additcted to any type of games (computer, Ipod, game system). This has been a serious problem in our house for a long time. A couple of weeks ago an incident happened at school that really scared me. MH was having a bad morning because he got mad when his Math teacher was going to give him a zero for not doing his work (He had copied the answers out of the book.). MH called us to TELL us to come get him because and I quote I dont want to be here. My teacher is giving me a zero for work I did. Well, we got that situation calmed down and then we got another phone call because MH had drawn some violent pictures on his class work that suggested suicide. His teacher told me that This is a warning sign and he felt like I may need to take him to a hospital. This terrified me. The pictures that he drew were of a stick person with a gun to the head, a stick person with a sword across his throat, and a stick person jumping off a building. I have never even imagined that I would be on the phone with my insurance company getting the name of the hospitals that I could take him to but that day I was. As it turned out we didnt have to take him to the hospital. We had a long talk about it and he admitted he did it to get attention
.plus his psychiatrists didnt think it was necessary. Since then he has been in ISS at school 2 times for refusing to do his work, being argumentative and disrespectful. His psychiatrist tells me that he really doesn't know what to do because MH is so unpredictable....I have really lost confidence in him and I am starting to wonder if MH's medications are the root of his problems right now. We are taking him to a new psychiatrist to get a fresh diagnosis and medications. If that doesn't help then we believe our next step is sending him to some sort of OTP
..we are looking at Summer Camps or possibly a therapeutic school. I know that this will be the hardest thing we ever do if we have to do this but I believe in my heart that it will give MH the best chance at a good life. I feel like if we dont get him the help he needs then he will have a difficult life or could end up in jail
.and that is not the life I am willing to let him have. I will do everything in my power to help him! So I will hush now...sorry for rambling!