There has been a lot of grief about the latest school shooting in Parkland, Florida. Rightfully so. This is a horrific event that permanently changed everyone present and their families. Like Sandy Hook. Like Columbine. Like so many other places and times that it's almost commonplace.
I'm not writing this to rage about gun control. No matter which side of that argument you're on; I'm writing to you. I'm not writing this to say that a single person or multiple people failed. I'm writing to each of you. There is an issue here that is underlying so much of the dysfunction of our society, but we aren't addressing it anywhere I look.
As always, there is a lot of finger-pointing going on. Why didn't his parents get him help? Why didn't the school officials notice something wrong? Why do we have guns like these on our streets? Why didn't his friends (classmates/co-workers/etc) notice something off? All of these are responses to our overriding question in events like this: Who's to blame? Whose fault is it? Who can we put this on?
Our society is to blame for our repeated tragedies of violence, for our increasing domestic violence incidents, for the increasing dysfunction of our families. We have systematically dismantled the mental health system in our nation, pushing the mentally ill into nursing homes, prisons, and onto their families.
I speak of this with personal experience and with knowledge that comes from many foster families and birth families that I know. Please do not apply any of these words to our current foster or adopted children; my examples are from real families, but not necessarily my family, and certainly not of our current foster children.
A woman posted this today in a foster care forum, "Can we talk about the shooting yesterday? Because I need to and I don't feel like I can say these things to people close to me who would persuade me to make different decisions based on my fears.
That young man reminds me a lot of my foster son (7 years old) I hope to adopt after TPR (termination of parental rights) is finalized. His eyes. His anger. His intense loss. My heart is broken in a trillion pieces for that young man who killed so many yesterday. Why? Because I worry about the same thing for my son. I worry about another loss. I worry about the pain he holds inside. I worry about how much he hurts. I worry about dying. What if I died? What would happen to him? Would anyone love him like I love him? Would someone stand up to help him process his deep grief? Would someone fight tooth and nail like I have? And even more, is my passion for him and love enough to heal him? How can I give him enough?
That young man, he's our kids. Lost. Lonely. Hurting. Rejected. Angry. He's our babies. Keep fighting, mamas and daddies. They need us."
This hit home for many of the foster and adoptive parents I know. Even some birth families see themselves in this. I know families that have waited in the ER for weeks (yes, weeks!) to locate a bed in a psychiatric facility appropriate for their child. I know families that have traveled for hundreds of miles to transport their mentally ill child to the only open psychiatric bed in their entire state. In 1955, there were 339 psychiatric beds for every 100,000 people in the USA. In 2000, there were just 22. (Source: PBS Online’s “Timeline: Treatments for Mental Illness”.)
I am certainly an advocate for the "least restrictive environment" for the treatment of our special needs population. I would never advocate for limiting a mentally ill person's rights or freedom more than necessary for the treatment of their disease. However, when a teenager has to wait for months in a temporary mental health (?) facility (an ER, a hospital, a children's ward, etc) to finally receive the help he needs (IF it's received even then), there is something deeply wrong with our mental health services delivery. When the county or state social services refuse to locate appropriate services because of cost, there is a deep dysfunction affecting our families and our communities.
I know several families who are caring/have cared for their mentally ill children/teens... through death threats to the family... through suicide attempts... through attempted murder on their other children... while begging for help from every source. They are told things like, "There are no facilities that treat youth with such violent tendencies," (Hello?! You want my FAMILY to do that, then?) and "He doesn't fit the criteria for any of the available treatment programs" (So MAKE a program that can treat him!) or "There isn't funding for that intensive a program... If you can fund the treatment, he can go." (Seriously?! $12,000+ a month?!!)
These families love their troubled child. They advocate for her. They beg for help. They contact every social services organization, every possible doctor or therapist. They try every medication available. They accept intense physical abuse from their child. They receive condemnation from their neighbors, their extended families, their fellow churchgoers. "If only you would..." begins to trigger an internal scream that fills their heads.
These families often fear for their lives. They watch tragedies like the one in Florida and see their son's face on the killer. They don't dread the day a shooter comes into their child's school; they dread the day their child is the shooter. And they have nowhere to go for help. Access to high quality mental health care is essential, and they have nowhere to go.
Foster and adoptive families are particularly at risk for these parenting situations. The children they are raising have, by definition, come from trauma. Being separated from your parents is trauma, in and of itself. Many times, these same children deal with impairments from prenatal drug and/or alcohol exposure, making it even more difficult to deal with their issues. Often, there is a history of physical, emotional, verbal abuse. Even for those children who have "only" been neglected, there are lifelong ramifications.
And in the worst cases, Reactive Attachment Disorder robs children/teens of their ability to empathize in the most rudimentary ways, giving rise to severely mentally ill people. One parent said today, "We [must] treat RAD as the dangerous and terrible disorder that it is. It's difficult because they (the children) didn't ask to be abused and neglected. It doesn't change the danger factor though. There is little help, if any, and even if parents had hundreds of thousands of dollars to throw at it, there are few success stories."
Most parents raising RAD kids don't have significant training in dealing with the mental illness. Most birth parents of children with mental illness don't have any training, either. But all parents should have access to quality mental health services when they need them for their child(ren). This is not the circumstance at this time in history! There is a dearth of high quality mental health services, and the programs that exist are beyond the financial reach of most private citizens.
So, what can you do? Here are a few things:
1. Advocate for the mentally ill and for services for them.
2. Support parents when they approach parenting differently than you. Many times, they are struggling with issues you cannot see, especially if they are foster or adoptive parents. Children with attachment issues must be parented differently. Love doesn't "fix it."
3. Don't make these public tragedies solely about gun control! Bring mental health care into the conversation. And do it again. And again. And. Again.
4. Educate yourself about Reactive Attachment Disorder, especially if you know foster/adoptive parents. Be prepared to offer words of encouragement instead of words of condemnation.
5. Pray with and for parents of challenging kids. Step up in your church and community to support foster parents and adoptive families. Ask them what they need.
6. Look into volunteering for NAMI or another mental illness support organization. They do some wonderful work! One family speaks of a "Crisis Support Team" (from NAMI) that came immediately when their teenager had a mental crisis. They walked the family through the immediate crisis and aided them in planning for the longer term.
Carry the conversation beyond gun control and into the realm of mental illness treatment. Thank you for your advocacy!
