US I am Adam Lanza's Mother (Lack of Mental Health Services in America)

[Calliegirl]

It must be hard enough just facing the fact that you have a child who is dangerous and needs help, but then to find there isn't any. So sad.
I'd like to think this shooting will change that, but I doubt it.

I Am Adam Lanza’s Mother

Liza Long

Three days before 20-year-old Adam Lanza killed his mother, then opened fire on a classroom full of Connecticut kindergartners, my 13-year-old son Michael (name changed) missed his bus because he was wearing the wrong color pants.
"I can wear these pants," he said, his tone increasingly belligerent, the black-hole pupils of his eyes swallowing the blue irises.

"They are navy blue," I told him. "Your school's dress code says black or khaki pants only."

"They told me I could wear these," he insisted. "You're a stupid *****. I can wear whatever pants I want to. This is America. I have rights!"

"You can't wear whatever pants you want to," I said, my tone affable, reasonable. "And you definitely cannot call me a stupid *****. You're grounded from electronics for the rest of the day. Now get in the car, and I will take you to school."

I live with a son who is mentally ill. I love my son. But he terrifies me.

A few weeks ago, Michael pulled a knife and threatened to kill me and then himself after I asked him to return his overdue library books. His 7- and 9-year-old siblings knew the safety plan—they ran to the car and locked the doors before I even asked them to. I managed to get the knife from Michael, then methodically collected all the sharp objects in the house into a single Tupperware container that now travels with me. Through it all, he continued to scream insults at me and threaten to kill or hurt me.

That conflict ended with three burly police officers and a paramedic wrestling my son onto a gurney for an expensive ambulance ride to the local emergency room. The mental hospital didn't have any beds that day, and Michael calmed down nicely in the ER, so they sent us home with a prescription for Zyprexa and a follow-up visit with a local pediatric psychiatrist...

http://gawker.com/5968818/i-am-adam-lanzas-mother

 

[mlp]

While there is great truth in this generally, the fact is that this is an upper middle class family with plenty of financial resources to get Adam help throughout his life. Since the divorce, Adam's mother has been receiving $240,000 per year in maintenance from her ex husband.

I think that this is a conversation that needs to be had, the Lanza family is not one which lacked financial resources.

 

[Freesia]

Also, the woman who wrote the article didnt have an arsenal of in-house guns there for her son to use. So no, she is not Adam Lanza's mother. She also seems to be trying to take attention away from the gun debate, which rubs me up the wrong way.

 

[ledboots]

Also, the woman who wrote the article didnt have an arsenal of in-house guns there for her son to use. So no, she is not Adam Lanza's mother. She also seems to be trying to take attention away from the gun debate, which rubs me up the wrong way.

It isn't a gun debate, Freesia, or it shouldn't be. Little innocent children and heroic women are dead because a sick man killed them.

 

[kibbleforlola]

It isn't a gun debate, Freesia, or it shouldn't be. Little innocent children and heroic women are dead because a sick man killed them.

A sick man with easy access to high powered weaponry. Adam Lanza is 100% responsible for his actions. What he did is reprehensible, and inexcusable. But if we act as if lack of gun control had absolutely nothing to do with this, or any shooting, we are deluding ourselves.

 

[Freesia]

^Agree 100%.

 

[Freesia]

From facebook:

 

[mlp]

It isn't a gun debate, Freesia, or it shouldn't be. Little innocent children and heroic women are dead because a sick man killed them.

Of course it's a gun issue as well as a mental health issue.

On the same day, a madman in China attacked a school, wounding over 20 people. There's the difference - wounding versus killing.

 

[mlp]

I am extremely angry at Adam Lanza's mother. She not only provided easy access to an arsenal of high powered weaponry for her emotionally troubled son, she raised him in a household where weapons were the accepted response to perceived societal issues. It's inexcusable.

Which is why I would like to address the mental health issues underlying some acts of violence, and, more importantly, the general abysmal state of access to mental health resources and let's not forget that a very small percentage of mentally ill individuals ever harm anyone other than themselves), but not in the context of the Lanza family.

I have a friend who is now 65. She has two sons, both adopted out of bad circumstances which resulted in lifelong issues. The younger was born with fetal alcohol syndrome and lives in supportive care. The older was also born to drug abusing parents and has suffered from lifelong psychological issues, the diagnosis of which has changed over the years and from professional to professional. fifteen years ago, he caused a car accident which killed someone. the judge threw the book at him; he has served fifteen years and is scheduled to be released in March. The medication he has been on the past year and a half has effectuated the best results his mother has ever seen - he is very functional on it. It costs almost $600 per month, and his mother is struggling to figure out a way to pay for it once he's released from prison. That's how short sighted we are as a society and as a nation.

 

[Freesia]

Another thing: People always talk about the mental health issues involved with these sorts of shootings. But one thing that leads to the violence is the fact that the person is socially isolated, for their entire lives even- no friends in school because nobody wants to be friends with the strange loner, and then in some cases the person goes over the edge. Nobody seems to know what to do with these sort of social loners, and psychiatrists are among them.

 

[Renee1]

A response.

I’m even more appalled that so very few adults seem to care about the potential impact on her son. She is either getting kudos all around for being so brave, so honest, so real, or she is being called out for being retrograde in her attitudes about mental illness and violence. But very few have commented about the effect on her son. It’s as though they’ve written him off. He’s just a talking point. A springboard for discussion. An avatar of people’s worst fears.
But not a child struggling.

 

[AspireToExpire]

How could she even be as bold as to claim to know a thing about those others mothers and she is assuming this child is so far beyond help and change that he will one day do the things these others have? I would never have the balls to say "I am so and so's mother." no matter how mentally unwell my child may be.

She should look at herself and consider why he is crying out in the way he is. The way she speaks to him is so clinical.

I hope she gets contacted by these mothers she claims to know so much about and put in her place as being just another person using this tragedy to talk about herself, gain sympathy and put down "her child".

ETA I have a hard time even believing the scenario or the people in this blog. She claims "he missed the bus because he was wearing the wrong color pants"... he missed his bus because she decided to go head to head with him. So what? Let him get sent home and in trouble is it really worth escalating a situation with an explosive personality over pants? He calls her a stupid ***** when they are arguing about the color of pants she talks to him as if she were a pamphlet on parenting then they get in the car for school with no resolution? What happened? Was he turned away from school for the pants? Do you see what I am saying? For someone recalling a story that is so "terrified" she never really wraps up some of the basic stuff and leaves tons out, especially her own role. This sounds more like an overactive, delusional imaginations version of what home life might be like. Sickening.

 

[RabbitLuvr]

My local news station did a piece about mental health awareness that was aired a couple times over the weekend. It started out with a long segment about how much funding for mental health services has been cut in this area. Then they finished with short bit about how everyone has to keep their eyes open to identify signs of mental health issues with their friends, neighbors, relatives.

I was left wondering what I was supposed to do, after I personally identified people with issues (they didn't give any guidelines, so I guess I just get to decide on my own??), since there's no funding for people to get help.

The whole segment was just a huge

 

[Calliegirl]

This is one of the replies to the original article. He has another comment farther down the page where he tries to describe what it's like living with his illness.
It's frightening how many people have commented on this reply and the original article, saying their small kids are just like this. Equally as frightening is the number of people commenting that their sibling could have easily been the one shooting up a school (on the link in the op).

As someone who was like Michael, who could have been any of of those kids you mentioned you could be the mother of, thank you for writing this. This is where people need to turn their attention to, to care, to help, to keep things like what's happened many times, from happening again and again. I've been in and out of the system for years, because, like what you said, 'a paper trail' needs to be started. I've forgiven my mom for not understanding, for disregarding what was taking place in me. I hated everyone for not even acknowledging I had a problem when it was so blaringly obvious, I'd go off about that too. But there just isn't even an acknowledgement of certain things, a blind eye, a 'hoping this isn't happening' reaction with a lot of people, it's no surprise that one of the hidden problems going on today is families coping with very real, very painful, sometimes very deadly, mental issues.

I wasn't the only one. I always met others who were going through the same thing, like some perverse support group. And one by one, I got to see them taken away for things, drift into institutions, or far, far worse. If anyone thinks this is an appeal for sympathy, no, it isn't. It's almost shaming to admit to anything close to this in society. In those moments of clarity, the last thing anyone wants to be is like that. Wishing that we all lived in a world that no matter how awful or distorted things are to share, they could be, and with help something could be done.

Slowly, over time, and seeing one too many other people get destroyed, I coped. I reconnected with my family, though they might as well live on another planet still. I don't blame them. There's the rest of life ahead of me, but I wish so many years had not been lost. If we lived in a society that supported families.. if we even acknowledged that some people need very serious help (and their parents).. if we stopped with the pill popping mentality or waiting for people to commit crimes before sending them off to places where they could be around other people just as bad off.. if.

I hope you can navigate through this with your son. I hope a lot of people reading your story stop living in a fog and reach out to others who need help, or help to bring more attention to the fact that there's no safety net out there for some. Things don't need to be as stark as they are in some people's lives. Living through this is no joke, and surviving it is an tough accomplishment.

Original article.

 

[Freesia]

And it is now not "we should get rid of the guns" but "look, there are people who have mental health issues, or people with autism, lets harass them and imply that they are potential serial killers. We will just kick the AK-47 under the bed and focus on the fact that the neighbour is bipolar."

 

[Calliegirl]

And it is now not "we should get rid of the guns" but "look, there are people who have mental health issues, or people with autism, lets harass them and imply that they are potential serial killers. We will just kick the AK-47 under the bed and focus on the fact that the neighbour is bipolar."

I hope that's not what you got out of my post. I wanted to show what this person has had to deal with, parents not listening or helping, and how hard his life has been. Not to blame him, but show they aren't all killers and that you need to help people when they ask for it. Hopefully, this shooting will force the government to add more funding for mental health services and make it easier for people to get help, and also to create stricter gun control. At the very least, ban auto and semi-automatic guns, limit the number you can own and the amount of ammunition you can possess.

As for the parents with the troubled kids, I found it frightening that these parents were calling their 8-9 year olds future killers. If they're already treating them as psychopaths or even thinking of them that way, what hope do those kids have.

 

[das_nut]

The picture above is my big brother Jesse. Jesse was the handsomest, funniest guy in the world. Where the rest of us were awkward poorly socialized nerds, he was popular, golden, built like two brick walls. Once he wore girls’ boots to high school, thinking they were unisex. Nobody said a word.

Then he called my mom, from New York, where he’d gone to live after high school. He’d gotten beaten up by a guy for staring at him too long. He didn’t sound right. He came home. He was 19, and believed he was the reincarnation of Brian Jones. He was textbook, classic, immediate diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia.

He rarely talked, just rocked back and forth on his heels. In one of the few conversations he had with my mom where he told her what he was hearing, he told her it wasn’t fair: my little brother, then just seven, got to be Brian Jones now.

We believed this meant my little brother would have to die so Jesse would get to be Brian Jones again.

- Sorry everyone, now we aren't allowed to talk about mental health.