This is a remarkable story about a mother who struggles with her mentally ill teenager. She cannot find medical help for him. Her story resonates in these post-Newtown days.
I am sharing this story because I am Adam Lanza’s mother. I am Dylan Klebold’s and Eric Harris’s mother. I am Jason Holmes’s mother. I am Jared Loughner’s mother. I am Seung-Hui Cho’s mother. And these boys—and their mothers—need help. In the wake of another horrific national tragedy, it’s easy to talk about guns. But it’s time to talk about mental illness.
December 16th, 2012 | 12:10 pm
I found this article moving and compelling.
However – I am also noticing a disturbing and familiar pattern – Where is the father?
Divorce also figures into the story of the CT killer.
As a public school teacher with 20 years experience I have come to expect divorce to be a part of the overwhelming majority of cases of dysfunctional behavior in children and teens.
In meeting after meeting I feel as if I’m living my own version of The Emperor’s New Clothes. The system scrambles to palliate the symptoms – but is too cowardly to address causes.
I am NOT saying that divorce causes mental illness. However, I do think that the correlation of divorce with many social pathologies deserves investigation.
When my father rants about things like gay marriage, contraception etc. I remind him that the Catholic Church surrendered when they backed down on the issue of divorce.
So for the next few weeks people will fulminate about guns and rights and the other usual subjects.
Is it just too hard for anyone to just ask the question?
If my experience as an educator is any indication, the answer – sadly – is “Yes.”
December 16th, 2012 | 3:59 pm
peter,
agreed. with all caveats in mind about personal responsibility, i think we pretty much have the answer to maureen dowd’s inane question of whether men (fathers) are necessary.
has the catholic church backed down on divorce? i’m not exactly sure that’s true. you’ll probably find on closer inspection that she is on your side and has always been.
December 16th, 2012 | 5:55 pm
Peter in NH:
Divorce has nothing to do with autistic children, however the stress of raising an autistic child often results in divorce.
These children deteriorate as teenagers, but medicating them is often frowned upon, and institutionalization is no longer an option.
And the reason people rant about guns is to question why the mother didn’t have a gun lock, or take the firing pins out of her guns when she saw her son’s behavior deteriorate and worry that acting out could result in dangerous behavior.
December 16th, 2012 | 7:02 pm
Andrew – Yes- I agree re: Dowd.
As far as divorce goes, in my lifetime I’ve witnessed it go from being seen as a moral failure and source of shame (exceptions of course) to just another thing people do – like selling a house, or choosing an insurer.
I find it absurd that people get so worked up about gay people getting “married” – a tiny percentage of the population – and shrug their shoulders about the divorces of their own and those around them.
When was the last time you heard divorce condemned from a pulpit?
December 16th, 2012 | 7:15 pm
tioedong -You drew an inference that I went out of my way not to make.
Of course divorce does not cause autism.
However, could divorce exacerbate things? I honestly do not know – but why not at least ask the question.
Additionally, the article and my post were more broadly about mental illness.
Again and again and again I deal with students who have a wide range of mental health problems. They are then “coded” and labelled as special education students.
What I usually see (but not always I grant you) is a kid who is dealing with selfish and/or bizarre behavior on the part of the parents – often divorce is a part of the equation. In my view, there is nothing “wrong” with a lot of these kids. They are actually reacting as one would expect a normal person – at a very young age -to react to psychological stress and trauma.
I agree with the writer of the article. We need to address the existing problems now and help these families.
However, I also think that we might want to ask some hard questions about how divorce is impacting our society.
I’ve seen gallon upon gallon of literal and digital ink spilled on the subject of gay marriage, contraception, and and other secondary issues in the conservative/religious press over the past decade – and barely a pencil scratch about divorce.
It doesn’t make sense to me.
December 17th, 2012 | 2:10 am
I have also taught public secondary school for a number of years in suburban middle class and urban “socioeconomically-disadvantaged” regions.
Divorce is the single greatest negative effector of adolescent psyche.
Girls who live in homes without a father are far more likely to engage in promiscuity at younger ages (which is damaging in more ways than I wish to recount and, in my personal educational practice, has led to the degradation and deterioration of more female students than I wish to recount) while boys are far more likely to end up having difficulty with authority (police, judges, administrators, teachers, etc.).
Of course, our societal response is to ignore that issue entirely. Instead, we will focus and quibble about gun regulations and mental health clinics.
If my son was in pain, I wouldn’t just give him tylenol or a bandage, I’d counsel him to stop hitting his head against the concrete.
December 17th, 2012 | 2:31 am
Peter- my interpretation would be that no one is actively campaigning for divorce as a good thing. It is accepted to some extent, but generally not encouraged, yes? Whereas gay marriage is being proposed as something that is in fact good. So that is draining the energy of the Christian political bloc.
Of course, divorce is not good, and no Catholic priest will ever advise a couple to get a divorce. This is something that more priests and “conservative pundits” should address. But it doesn’t look like too many of them have the balls (are we allowed to say “balls” in the First Things comment section?) to stir up that hornet’s nest, do they?
December 17th, 2012 | 8:09 am
As the parent of an emotionally disturbed child (not a violent one, like this woman’s son), I can attest that she is 100% correct. There is very, very little help available for parents of these children, and what is available is often contradictory, difficult to obtain, and unbelievably expensive (my son had to be hospitalized for several days this year and before insurance the cost was more than $20,000). Almost always, the parents are told to take their children home and cope with them. How do you cope with a child who may at any time, and for the most unpredictable reasons, attack and try to to kill you? I have met families who have to have bolts on the inside of all their doors, so they can bolt themselves in if their child becomes violent. There are few beds for short-term hospital stays, and even fewer for long-term stays, and almost no permanent institutions for people of any age.
My husband and I are happily married and our older child is healthy and in college. Many, many marriages break up over mentally OR physically ill children — the strain of daily life with them is astronomical. The reason you see so many broken homes with these kids is, I think, that there are so many broken homes everywhere. Broken homes exacerbate normal psychological problems, and make it more difficult to deal with problems due to brain chemistry, but they do not CAUSE problems such as bipolar disorder, personality disorders, autism, and so on. Those are physical problems, and no amount of good parenting or stable family life can get rid of them… but they can wreak havoc on stable family life.
I agree wholeheartedly about the importance of marriage and the evils of divorce and out of wedlock births. But I know from hard experience that this writer is correct, and that marriage (or lack of it) is a separate issue.
December 17th, 2012 | 8:38 am
I think we went off course a bit. Yes, divorce can be a contributer to the elevation of an individual’s mental illness. But, coming from a divorced family, does not usually “make” a child mentally ill to the point of psychotic. Psychiatric studies and studies of the brain have been going on for many, many years. The difficulty, I find, is it nature or nurture (what came first, the chicken or the egg syndrome). A huge part of a child’s personality can be altered by their surroundings, thier parents, the conditions they grow up in, access to violence either in the home, neighborhood or even a video game, and the travesties, such as molestation and rape. But, studies of the mind have proven that some individuals are born with abnormalties in the brain, thought processes that are not found in “normal” children, not to mention heredity. Too many children, adults, etc. either get misdiagnosed, never get any diagnosis due to lack of medical care (expensive) or are just labeled “bad to the bone” or the “black sheep” of the family. So many suffer in silence due to the ignorance of society in recognizing the mental illness is a real disease. And, worse, families “hide” these problems for fear of being ostrasized by a misinformed/uninformed society. Although this latest dark event should never have happened, maybe it will bring to the surface the very real medical illness called “Mental Illness.”
December 17th, 2012 | 8:57 am
Patrick –
No one’s actively campaigning against divorce with anything like the same fervor as those campaigning against ‘gay marriage’, either. No state constitutional amendments proposed, for example.
December 17th, 2012 | 9:14 am
Divorce does not cause mass murder. Jared Loughner, James Holmes, Seung-Hui Cho, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold all came from “intact families.”
It is natural for people to want to take advantage of this tragedy to ride their own hobbyhorses. Blaming it on gun availability is at least slightly less bizarre than blaming it on divorce.
The problem of what to do with mentally ill young people is more relevant. But it is fundamentally incompatible with a free society to lock people up who have not (yet) committed crimes and are not a danger to themselves. The Soviet Union “hospitalized” thousands of people for the “mental illness” of disagreeing with Communist ideology. Do we really want to lock up and drug every teenager whose parents think he or she is nuts? Are there even enough locks in the whole country to do it?
Freedom isn’t cheap. The price of freedom is that every once in a while some nut will abuse it to take a gun into a school and blow away the kindergarten.
December 17th, 2012 | 12:08 pm
Divorce is not causal. But it can’t be any easier for a single mom to raise such a challenging child. In general, having 2 parents involved would probably be better.
December 18th, 2012 | 7:33 am
Hope that woman and many others have heard the words of The Mother , spoken to Juan Diego, almost 500 years ago , in the midst of the carnage of human sacrifices – ‘ Am I your mother , not here ? ‘ ; hope the worried mother and many others would trust and entrust and continue to entrust ,all in their lives and that of their children, including all from the past , to this powerful Mother , who is the enemy of our enemy , such that the powerful transforming presence of the Spirit takes hold of hearts , to bring in the grace of repentance on behalf of all, thus undoing the areas of idolatry of hatreds , instead being able to see many moments in life , to invite in the Spirit , into hearts of many !
Immaculate Heart of Mary , pray for us all !
December 20th, 2012 | 8:33 pm
Dear Ray,
There are those of us who are deeply opposed to the encouragement of divorce that goes on every day via the marriage tribunals and pastoral activities in the Catholic Church.
The Church has become a major part of the problem but the hierarchy are blind to this and they refuse to listen to those of us who suffer at their hands.
Read at Bai Macfarlane’s website:
http://www.marysadvocates.org/
of what is going on and how some of us are living witnesses to the tradition of Thomas More and Bishop Fisher, as the Catholic Church has taken over the place of Henry VIII and laid a frontal assault on marriage.
I do not, at all, speak for Bai. She is much more patient than I, but she has been at this for a shorter time than I.
God Bless.
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