Roll Call.....#30

Congress Asks Why Foster Children Take More Mental Health Meds Than Other Kids | TakePart

Yeah a 20%+ rate of psych med use in foster kids that is super high but it's substantially higher than for other kids...I think about 4 fold but I can't remember where I saw that article...

But for me the delusions are more like of I sat on a Lego or something...short time no big deal....little longer you get an imprint that take a bit of time to spring back....long enough and it can grow to be a part of you...even if you get it out it can leave a scar...

For me a year or so after the initial episode I jumped back into the delusion completely literally because a sound woke me and my bird in the middle of the night but I never heard the mouse trap spring....I immediately knew my bird and I were psychically connected and my pdoc had been working with the devil to block all my powers...there was no doubt until I saw the mouse the next morning so using the yarn analogy...you might be able to unravel it with work but getting it retangled is even easier...all I had to do was doubt the pdoc and it could all be true again....so months of work undone by one noise in the night...

Yes, but none of the other kids of the families in the support group were foster kids, and they were all medicated.

I'll admit delusions are tough to work with. So, you feel like the medication helped get rid of the delusions? Would anything else have worked do you think?

My son had a bunch of delusions. Some were related in a group. Some were random. Like he'd suddenly "know" that someone had died. I'd get that person on the phone, and the delusion would pop like a bubble. He never claimed the person on the phone was a fake or anything like that. He always accepted that the thought he'd had was wrong.

Others were harder. One day he told me he "thought" his ex-gf was pregnant with his child. (He had no way of contacting her at the time, so this "knowledge" was like a lot of his knowledge at that time - just thoughts that popped into his head.) An hour later he said he "knew" she was pregnant. A couple of hours after that he said she'd given birth. He named his "son" and bought toys for him. I couldn't persuade him it wasn't true. I still have the toys. I think he named him Malachi.

Then he had some elaborate "bizarre" delusions he never told me (or anyone else) about - like he had 7 children with his 3 ex-gf''s and each was born with a dragon to care for it. (He actually told the intake person at one hospital that he had 4 children including a newborn baby, although he omitted mention of the dragons.) Obviously I can't challenge a delusion I know nothing about. But then even in his fog and confusion, he must have known that no one was going to believe the dragon stuff.

Obviously he came out of it, and quite possibly it was the medication that did it. He kept some notebooks during that episode. One day he pulled them out and started showing them to me and explaining them. Then he grew quiet and flipped through the pages in silence. Finally he said aloud but speaking to himself, "What was I thinking?"

Whether intended or not, both of your experiences make strong cases for meds when psychosis/delusions are involved. As for the over-medicating etc., there are good MH providers and bad ones. Ideally, it may be a combo of conservative well-supervised meds and therapy. I think the trouble with meds can be when people expect meds to just 'solve the problem'. Best case... Aloved one with psychosis will have their whole family on-board.

Costello.. You have always impressed me as a very committed mom. And you may have shared in the past, but if it's ok to ask, what happened to the adopted son?

That's odd, because that's exactly what people are pushing me to do- go outside. It's good to hear I'm not alone. Yes, Nobody seems to understand how difficult, almost impossible, it is. So when I do something they consider small like go to my local shop, they assume I can then go and do loads of other outdoorsy things. I think you're right, I just have to keep reminding them not to push me past my limits. Thank you

The voices kept telling me not to leave the flat today. They told me the spies are watching me closely. So, instead of going out to get a few items from the shop, I stayed in. My brother managed to get me out for a while. But I cannot shake off the feeling that I'm not alone.

For me yeah meds were totally the answer and I think most people should try them but they simply aren't effective for a lot of people....with a 30% fail rate doctors still try to keep you on the meds even if they are totally ineffective because it's pretty much their only option but then all you gain are side effects. In addition to meds I also received cbt for psychosis which is pretty new in this country...in my case cbt was being studied as an adjunct to promote medicine compliance...the results are not in yet but I have seen other studies that suggest people on cbt are more likely....up in the 90% range to stay on meds consistently. It's also nice to have someone pull apart the yarn tangle with you...

But yeah regarding meds....for adults yes...I'm pretty pro med in low doses for short less than two year terms because I personally could not sort the delusions at all without them...the hallucinations I knew were a little off and within help I could have recognized them as foreign but the delusions they simply were fact there was no question..I'm not on meds now because the pdocs don't think I need them and they have actually been shown to be harmful causing a greater number of relapses with long term use...people who get off entirely within two years have a few more relapses early on but far better long term prognosis so this isn't a take meds forever kind of situation they simply aren't a long term solution...also the first episode psychosis programs do not medicate everyone. Hallucinations are really common in preteens like a 17% rate but they grow out of it down to the 5% rate in adults. I think that's why it's important to get a good doctor there are tests called sips and sops that can determine whether someone should be medicated or not. The medications are in no way benign and since the brain is still developing at that young age you might do more harm than good. The long term recovery statistics for third world countries are far superior to our own...these are places where social support rather than medicine is used.

I guess my feeling is this can be a developmental stage for some people much like having an imaginary friend is a normal developmental stage but would be frowned on in an adult...in that regard I would much prefer seeing a doctor who could monitor the severity and determine whether medicine was needed or not and a therapist who could teach me how to reduce stress and how to deal with things when they didn't mesh with other peoples realities.

I had dragon stuff but for me it was just as real at the sun rising every morning...it just happens...I had a whole 'nother world the spirit would which coexisted with our world and there were paths you could go between the worlds while driving but also it could just happen and I was supposed to be able to control it at some point but the temperature would change between worlds...this was somatic hallucination. Anything that was a little off clearly happened in the spirit world and not the real world which is why no one here could see it. How would you rationally work through that...by default no one would know unless they were part of the secret club and we were only allowed to talk about it telepathically....everyone irl must deny is existence or be kicked out of the club. The problem is if you are actually experiencing things feeling hearing etc that others cannot it makes perfect sense that you are experiencing something real that others cannot see...if it were standing next to a blind man. And he didn't see something I would not be surprised. How do you make sense of your own eyes and ears telling you things....you take it for granted that the world you experience is reality. If a purple cow walked by it would be odd but you would be like wow purple cow cool...what's up with that rather than my eyes or in this case my brain must be broken as there are no purple cows. The actual input system is glitchy. They delusions try to explain the glitch...they are actually the most rational thing your brain can come up with to explain what's going on.

If something happened outside your normal system of belief...aliens landed in the field outside your house...would your first response be oh wow aliens I should do something about that or would you just sit there and go back to surfing the web because you know aliens don't exist...the things that happen tend to be big and flashy like that where you can't just go back to surfing the web so you go well aliens probably have better tech than us so they can make it long interstellar distances that we cannot. So now you believe in aliens and have added delusional info about their tech because of the conflict with your knowledge base. The delusions are the most rational thought you could have given the experience. I could not think though them because they already were rational although they don't seem so from the outside. Meds though some of the lesser delusions like the leprechauns who made spirit plants were kind of new and went away within a week...others took like a month or so.

So for me for the delusions I needed meds to even get to the point where I could deal with them at all. Nobody can prove to me that the spirit world doesn't exist especially considering that religion is considered non delusional. No one can prove telepathic communication doesn't exist. If someone said my brain wasn't working...why would I believe them...they probably just wanted to hide the truth and this is how you get paranoia and conspiracy and persecution. All you have to do is believe the person telling you is "with them" and it can be your mom...perhaps "they" knew all along you were special and replaced your real mom with someone who was working for them. Why not there seemed to be no universal laws. With meds and therapy though it's like you can see the logic of you being special is less than the logic of 2.5 billion other people being right. Are the odds better that I am immune to brainwashing that affected the rest of the planet or am I one of 1% of the population that sees the world a little differently?

I still have problems with this stuff...it took me like two months to send a computer to be repaired because I didn't want to go to UPS to get it shipped. When I was a teen I was terrified to go to a fast food counter to order food. These days I still can't call for a pizza delivery....once I've done it it gets better the next time for that one place and at some point it becomes effortless but new stuff I really have to plan for weeks until I get the nerve up...

i feel their eyes watching me.

I am so aggravated.

For a reason or is it more of a symptom?

For a reason. Just needed to say it somewhere without getting a generic and useless response.

By way of checking in here I'll share my facebook status. I'll add for this group: No wonder I was feeling uncharacteristically weepy about my sister excluding me from her fireworks show. I think I was just sleep-deprived!

"Wow! I slept until 11 a.m. this morning. That's like 6 hours later than usual. The basement chickens were clustered around the door eager to start their day, and all the chickens, indoor and outdoor, were staring at empty food troughs. Well, the outdoor trough wasn't quite empty. This time I added pumpkin seeds and lentils to my homemade chicken feed because of recommendations I'd read on the Internet. So, the outdoor chickens had access to quite a bit of uneaten pumpkin seeds and lentils - which they've turned their beaks up at. Apparently not even missing breakfast persuaded them to change their minds.

"The tiny Sussex still isn't growing. She's 4 months old and still the size of maybe a 2 month old. I was glad to see she was out milling around the with the others and was the first one to the feed when I put it out. Normally she's hiding, so I feared she wasn't getting to the food. Not so, I guess."

So wait...you didn't want some to say thanks for sharing?

Always good when you get it sorted out....

Which color of Sussex is she? Wikipedia says 8 different colors and they are quite different...maybe she's a dwarf or something? You could start your own breed of minis?

He's 22 now and currently in prison for two violent crimes - he choked his gf's mom and stole her van, then while on probation for that he attempted to hold up a McDonalds with an air soft gun.

He'll be in prison until January 2017, and given that he's taken no responsibility for his actions, I suspect he'll be in trouble again shortly after that.

He also has an infant son with a 15 year old girl who was born after he was incarcerated. She was the friend of his then gf - also 15 - and was helping him circumvent his gf's parents prohibition of their relationship by carrying messages between them - and managed to get pregnant by him. None of them are particularly honorable people, I think, but at least the girls have the excuse that they're very young.

Currently I'm the only one - from all his friends and his bio family - who maintains a relationship with him. We talk when he calls me. (I can't call him, of course.) And I email him occasionally. I send him a little money, but really he needs to work for money I think. Maybe I'll visit one day. I think when he first got there he thought he'd have lots of visitors, but so far no one has visited.

I have no access to information about his current mental health treatment, if any, but if I had to label him, I'd say he's a sociopath.

I think it will get easier with time, but only if you're not overwhelmed. Keep reminding them that you're doing your best but they have to back off a bit. They probably really don't get how hard it it. And keep in mind, and remind them, that recovery isn't a straight line up. There'll be days when you just can't do it, you can't leave the house. That's ok, as long as you go out the next time you have the strength. Don't let it go for too many days without going out.

Another thing my son does is to remind me of how well he's doing. Tell them - calmly, if you can - that you're trying very hard and doing well. My son tells me that he does not ever want to go back to the hospital and therefore he's doing everything he can to stay well and get better. It helps me to hear that. He's made me believe him, so when I get those whisper-y little fears I can quiet them.

Oh my ****ing God. I just got falsely accused of cyberstalking on another website. Some drama went down on there a few weeks ago and unfortunately I did get tangled up in it. I made some mistakes, but I have certainly not been cyberstalking the people involved, I've just been getting on with my life. I am not happy.

That sucks...like you don't have better things to do than cyberstalking people or something....

She's a Specked Sussex. I have three. They were all supposed to be pullets, but one turned out to be a cockerel. They're all dramatically different in size. Huge cockerel. Medium-sized pullet. Tiny pullet.

Maybe she's a bantam? Here's the thing. When I bought them, there were only three left in the store - two in one bin and the other was in a neighboring bin amongst a bunch of yellow chicks. I assumed someone had taken it from the Sussex bin and put it back in the wrong one. So maybe I got something different than I thought. They're all colored roughly the same. I think it's a Sussex. I should submit their photos to the backyard chickens site and get some opinions.

If she doesn't grow, she's going to lay tiny eggs.

Exactly. I'm sitting here amused and more aggravated than I already was, this is so out of left field that it's truly laughable. I have other things to do. I do not care about the people that were involved in that altercation. Why would I waste my time stalking people that I had gotten in a fight with? Seems pretty pointless to me so obviously I have not done this, but everyone always wants to make me the bad girl.

There is concept about people's perceptions that they way they think says more about them than it does about the world. If people think you're cyberstalking it's probably because they are the kind of people who would do that and they can't understand people who just don't have that level of interest.

Sorry to hear that Aypical Disaster. Some people are unbelievably petty. Hope it gets sorted out.