It’s instinctive: no matter how old our children, we parents are driven to keep our kids safe. It’s the mother bear instinct. To imagine our children’s physical or emotional safety violated is a source of primal fear.
If you are a parent of a child with mental illness — a range of biological brain disorders that can affect behavior, school performance, and physical health — you face down that fear daily. Sue Abderholden, the executive director of the Minnesota chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), sums up every parent’s nightmare: “No one understands my kid, and no one likes them.”
According to NAMI, 4 million children and adolescents in this country suffer from a serious mental disorder that causes significant functional impairments at home, at school, and with peers. Serious disorders include early-onset schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and clinical depression. Other mental illnesses include attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, conduct disorder, eating disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety disorders, and Asperger syndrome.
More sobering statistics: 21 percent of our nation’s children ages 9–17 have a diagnosable mental or addictive disorder that causes at least minimal impairment. Half of all lifetime cases of mental disorders begin by age 14. And mental illness is present in 90 percent of child and adolescent suicides; suicide is the third leading cause of death in youth ages 15–24. While awareness and treatment of mental illness have improved during the past two decades, obstacles remain to effective diagnosis and treatment.
For example, families with limited insurance coverage may face daunting red tape to get their kids treatment through county systems. While mental health care parity is improving, Minnesota still “has one of the worst ratios of child psychiatrists [to patients] in the country,” Abderholden notes, “thanks to the legacy of poor managed care in the 1990s.” Furthermore, for adolescents in poverty, the juvenile justice system is usually their entrée into the mental health system: 70 percent of kids in the juvenile justice system have one or more mental health diagnosis.
When children have mental illness, they may be perceived by peers, teachers, or even parents to be “difficult,” “unsociable,” “weird,” “angry,” “spacey,” “lazy,” or “deliberately disobedient.” They may become uninterested in school or unable to concentrate on work, disregard previously pleasurable activities, and spend more time alone. They may cut themselves, binge and purge, drink or use drugs, drop out of school, or attempt suicide. And they may hide these behaviors well enough to stay under the radar.
Because her family has a history of mental illness, Sheilah Seaberg of St. Paul was alert when her son, Dan, showed symptoms of anxiety and intermittent anger in the 5th grade. Through a combination of medication and talk therapy over the years, Dan, now a 20-year-old college student, is maintaining his health. But Seaberg, a science teacher, says finding and keeping the right treatment protocol is a delicate balance: “It’s like an ongoing chemistry experiment with way too many variables and no control.”
Abderholden says parents should monitor the intensity and duration of potential symptoms. “Your kid hides in her room for a week, maybe that’s okay,” she said. “But a month?” Several years ago, her daughter Eva, then 13, stopped smiling, cried a lot, stopped calling friends, and her grades dropped from As to Bs and Cs. Abderholden was upset that teachers failed to communicate concerns about Eva’s marked change in school, but grateful that a school psychologist administered a screening tool and told
Abderholden, “Yes, you should be concerned.” Eva, a talented violinist, eventually received effective treatment, and recently graduated from Southwest High School with an International Baccalaureate diploma.
Abderholden is proud of NAMI’s recent accomplishments, including the first state law in the nation to require training for teachers so they can recognize and work effectively with children with mental illness. “As soon as teachers understand this is not willful behavior but biological, their approach changes,” she says. “It makes school much friendlier for kids with mental illness.” A new initiative involves outreach to the African American community. And, in conjunction with other organizations, NAMI’s successful legislative campaign has resulted in $34 million new dollars to improve and expand Minnesota’s mental health system, including funding for school-based mental health services respite care, crisis services for children and adults, and culturally specific mental health care.
But mostly, her organization wants to support parents through education and peer connections. NAMI offers support groups and a lending library and encourages parents who are able to tell their stories and become advocates in their communities. It gets back to that mother bear thing, Abderholden says: “If your gut tells you that this goes beyond teen behavior, you have to push.”
Kris Berggren is a Minneapolis writer.
NAMI Minnesota
NamiMN.org
651-645-2948
888-473-0237
