QUOTE (LDS_forever) |
How would a compassionate community of brothers and sisters in the gospel respond to children with serious behavior problems and their families? |
As I was reading this tragic story, I could not stop thinking in the pain and suffering this family went through. Having a child with a mental illness is a very difficult challenge but having a child with a mental illness who is constantly trying to kill himself is another story and something I cannot possible imagine. On top of that, the son was not alone in this journey...his own mother also fought her own "demons". What a tragic story.
QUOTE |
On a sunny Sunday morning in early fall, Mesa police Lt. Kevin Kazmaier drove his wife and youngest son home early from church, before 12-year-old Zack could disrupt the Mormon service and embarrass his brother again. Zack had been spiraling out of control for weeks, but no hospital would take him. Years of psychiatric medications and advancing puberty were buffeting his mind and body. He was manic, attacking brother Mike with a paper-towel rod and threatening to kill himself at every turn. Sixth grade at Field Elementary School began with such promise, but now his teachers were saying they just couldn't handle him. His longtime psychiatrist adjusted Zack's medications three times in September, then told Pam and Kevin Kazmaier to get used to their son's bizarre behaviors. The family would learn later she was battling her own demons. Pam was spiraling, too, but in the opposite direction. Her bipolar disorder, undiagnosed for most of her life, was banking dangerously low. The family's one solace - a small cabin in Taylor where the boys rode all-terrain vehicles - was threatened by neighbors complaining about the noise. As Kevin drove back to join his older boy at church, Pam started changing into more comfortable clothes. She moved slowly, methodically. Like she was pushing through a fog. Her obsessive-compulsive side, along with the mania of her bipolar illness, accounted for her neat-as-a-pin house and had served her well as a detail-oriented obstetrics nurse at Banner Mesa Medical Center. She meticulously charted Zack's medical, school and social progress, filling a 5-inch binder with legal and medical documents, notes and photographs. A little mania would have come in handy now. But it had abandoned her, leaving only the black hole of depression. She looked up as Zack walked into the bedroom. "Mom, let's kill ourselves," he suggested, grinning from ear to ear. He had tried so many times before. In fact, the boy had been trying to end his life for most of it. He'd put ropes around his neck, cut himself with knives, leaped from moving cars and nearly threw himself off the roof of a parking garage at Fiesta Mall. His mother kept a blue suit handy for his funeral, fully expecting him to one day succeed, like his 14-year-old cousin before him, just a few months earlier. He shot himself with a gun that Pam and Kevin had given to his father. Now, as she considered the burly, brown-eyed boy, it seemed like the only choice they had left. "OK," she said. Together in death, Pam thought, they would be free. Released from the tangled web of the mental illnesses that bound them, that they couldn't escape and that consumed all of Pam's time and energy. Drugs, doctors, therapy sessions, teacher conferences. None of it was working. Zack was getting worse. Pam was drowning, neglecting her own mental illness and shouldering the burden of caring for Zack. She hadn't worked since he was born, or slept much either, in the same house with a boy who had night terrors and regularly threatened his life and theirs. She had dedicated her life to her family, her Mormon church and, most of all, Zack's illness. She had completely lost herself. Zack had become her reason for living and, it seemed now, her reason for dying. If they were gone, Pam thought, Kevin and Mike would be free to live their lives without the burden of a mentally ill mother and son. No more calls from school. No more worries about how their "crazy" family looked to Mike's junior high classmates or the neighbors or Kevin's colleagues at the Mesa Police Department, where he commanded the bomb squad. No more of Zack's outbursts at their Mormon Church ward and at Boy Scout meetings.... |
Mental illness is not a sin, its just a trial in the life of the one who is mentally ill and its a test for the family members. Mental illness is no more a sin than being born blind is a sin. Some people become mentally ill because of serious accidents too, thats not sin.
Depression can be a mental illness right? I wonder about if past stupid mistakes make me depressed or if I'm just born that way. I get really depressed just thinking about it and I don't want to see anyone. I find peace and quiet in my room.
QUOTE (CutieCTR @ 24-May 09, 10:21 AM) |
I wonder about if past stupid mistakes make me depressed or if I'm just born that way. |
No, don't feel that way! You don't have to be "bad off" in order to do therapy! People do it all the time for lots of reasons. I did it when a very close relative committed suicide and doing therapy was a tremendous help in my life.
Name: Jacob
Country:
Comments: Mental illness of itself cannot be a sin. The sin comes from knowingly breaking the commandments. I guess it would have to depend on the degree of mental illness since there are mold to severe cases.