The Note

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brooks couldn’t bear to say it out loud. He was curled up in a ball in the corner of my king-size bed that was too big for my small room. He asked for a piece of paper to write me a note. After scribbling on it, he handed me the crumpled paper.

“I’m having suicidal thoughts” it read. Tears streamed down his face, and his eyes silently cried for help. Panic. Sheer panic. All I could do was cry and hold him tightly.

Who do I call?

What do I do?

What do I say?

Suicide prevention training as a teacher does NOT prepare you for your own child telling you this. I’ve helped dozens of my students through tough times and suicidal thoughts. Listen to them. Talk to them. Hug them. Contact their parents. Check in on them.

But my own child? How do I handle THIS? I can’t. I just can’t.

Why does he feel like this? How could a 10-year-old possibly even know the word suicide, let alone think about doing it? God, the things kids know these days.

“Sometimes, I take my multitool and rub my thumb on it like this.” Brooks made a motion like he was rubbing his thumb along the blade of a knife. These were the first words he had spoken to me since we were in the car on the way home from school and his mind seemed to go someplace far away while he stared out the window. I nodded in understanding and asked him why. He didn’t know. Of course he didn’t know. He’s 10.

“Dr. Kirchner, hi. This is Annie Howard, and my daughter goes to Goshen. I got your name and number from the counselor because Vivi was struggling with some anxiety. But I’m actually not calling about her tonight.” I choked, attempting to hold back fits of sobbing. “My 10-year-old son told me he’s having suicidal thoughts. And I don’t know what to do.”

The conversation continued through tears and trying to conceptualize taking my son to a psychiatric hospital for evaluation. The doctor who I didn’t know at all was calming and reassuring that this was what he needed right now.

Brooks was not surprised when I told him we needed to go to The Brook Hospital. It was 5:15 PM when we left our house. Luckily, Vivi was with her dad this cold December evening. The frost on the windshield seemed to take forever to thaw. The drive was cold and terrifying.

“Mom, I’m on my way to The Brook with Brooks. Will you please meet us there?” I managed to say through clenched teeth, trying to hold back tears.

“I’m on my way,” Mom replied. For once, she didn’t ask a million questions and she didn’t need an explanation. She was just there. She felt the gravity of the situation and was willing to drive almost an hour to be there for me and more so for Brooks.

***

The sign outside the door read, “No bags. No phones. No cameras.” So, I took my purse back out to the car and only brought in the items I thought I’d need: insurance card, driver’s license, and debit card.

The waiting room attempted to be warm and inviting with its couches and TVs showing wholesome shows like Full House, but it still felt cold and sterile like a hospital. There was a kid yelling that he wanted chicken nuggets, NOW. He was having a bad night, too. Brooks eyed him from the registration desk. I wondered if he was second-guessing his suicidal thoughts at this point.

We checked in and Mom arrived shortly after the paperwork was completed. I love filling out paperwork. I find it oddly calming. I know the answers to these questions. It’s a task I can complete successfully. So, the hefty amount of paperwork was welcomed on this particularly horrific evening. It was 6:47 PM.

Around 7:30 PM we all started to get hungry. We couldn’t leave because Brooks could be called back for his evaluation at any minute according to the receptionist. So, we sent Mom out to procure food for us. Brooks wanted biscuits. Mom returned shortly after with a huge Denny’s bag full of biscuits and cheeseburgers and chicken fingers. We feasted in front of the other families, surely also hungry from the long wait we had been enduring together. But so separate. Nobody really talks in these kinds of waiting rooms. Nobody wants to discuss that their child wants to die or that they are out of control. It’s not a normal waiting room. It’s like an antechamber to hell except you’re already in hell wondering why your child wants to die. We finished eating. It was 9:53 PM.

Brooks was lying with his head in my lap trying to fall asleep as an episode of Full House blared in the background. “Have Mercy!” Uncle Jesse exclaimed. We retrieved the key to the restroom from the receptionist. The toilet paper was on a special roll so that people couldn’t hurt themselves with it. They were stainless steel and had sheets of paper folded like tissues rather than an actual roll. The paper towels were specialized, too, small and soft and thin so that they would tear easily if anyone attempted to wrap them around any body parts. It felt like a scene out of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest except there was no Nurse Ratched… yet. I had to get out of there. I couldn’t leave my child in a place like this. How could I even bring him here to begin with? I was going crazy myself. Crazy isn’t a nice word. It was 10:19 PM.

Mom sat by me on the couch while Brooks watched TV a few seats over.

“So, what happened?” She was starting in with her questions, I thought. The unhelpful, incessant questioning that Mom always asks in the middle of a stressful situation. The pressing questions. The difficult questions. The questions I didn’t want to answer right now.

“I don’t know. We were at home, and he randomly started getting upset and when I asked him why he asked me if he could write it down because he couldn’t say it. Of course I said yes, so he did. And his note said ‘I’m having suicidal thoughts’. I called Dr. Kirchner, a doctor recommended by the counselor at Vivi’s school, and he said to come here or Our Lady of Peace. He said he thought The Brook would be a better fit.”

“I know how hard this is for you. I went through it with Ashley. It just sucks.” And Mom grabbed my hand and held it as I silently cried in the waiting room of the children’s psychiatric hospital. No questions. Just love and support. It was 10:47 PM.

“Brooks,” a nurse called from the door to the evaluation area. Brooks’ eyes darted to me in fear, and I returned his look with sympathy. I stood up and took his hand to guide him to the questioning room. We sat on the blue vinyl couch, even more sterile and hospital-like than the waiting room. The rotund nurse began with identifying questions that were easy for Brooks to answer. Name. Date of birth. Address. Parents’ names. Reason for visit… that one was a doozie. Brooks was brave and answered all of the questions thrown at him almost without any emotion at all. I worried that he was hiding his emotions and not being his true self. Then he opened up about his dad leaving him when he was four years old. He felt untrusting and unworthy. He felt like he didn’t matter. He felt sad all the time. He felt like he wanted to die. He didn’t have a plan. Yet.

At least I had that to cling to. No plan. They say as long as they don’t have a plan as to how they would kill themselves, the probability of them actually killing themselves is low. They say it’s important to ask if they have a plan. But what if you don’t know to ask? What if there are no warning signs? That’s what happened with Desmond, my student who killed himself last year. Nobody had a clue. We don’t even think he had a clue or a plan. He just got fed up, found a shotgun in his grandfather’s closet, and used it on himself. That is why I will not have a gun in my home.

Since Brooks had thought of killing himself, even though he didn’t have a specific plan, they decided to admit him to the hospital for an undetermined amount of time. Checking your kid into a psychiatric hospital is like giving up your left leg voluntarily. How do you function without them? It was 12:14 AM.

By the time all the paperwork was finished, I was completely and utterly exhausted. Brooks cried and begged me not to leave him there. Promised he wouldn’t hurt himself if I took him home. He clung to me as the nurse pulled him through the door to go to bed. Nurse Ratched had made her appearance to take my child away from me. This was after they had removed his shoelaces and drawstring from his pants so he couldn’t hurt himself or other patients.

“Mom, pullleeeaassseeee. I’ll be good. I promiiiiissseeee. I won’t kill myseeelllffff. Don’t leave meeeee heeeeeeerrreee,” Brooks wailed as they encouraged him to get some sleep and wake up rested in the morning. It wouldn’t be so bad, they lied. She’d be right there with him if he needed anything at all, she lied. She’d be sure he got the chewable meds instead of the pills, she lied. But I tried to believe her and so did Brooks. He let go of my body, allowing the nurse to guide him to the unit. I cried silently. It was 1:12 AM.

“You’re not going to school tomorrow, are you?” Mom asked softly as I came out of the evaluation room.

“I need to save my days for when he needs me to be here or home with him.” I let my head fall back in sheer exhaustion, both emotional and physical. “I can go tomorrow exhausted and make it through the day.”

“I know this is awful for you. I’m so sorry.” Mom hugged me and asked if she could spend the night at my house. Of course she could. She’d driven almost an hour to be here with me and sat here all night long.

***

The alarm finally pulled me from my groggy state of half-sleep in just enough time for me to throw on some clothes and brush my teeth to get to school just before first period started. I’m supposed to be there by 7:20, but I usually roll in at about 7:30. This day it was 7:35, and class starts at 7:40. My kids knew right away that something was up. I wasn’t my usual bubbly, outgoing self; I was somewhere else. My heart physically hurt.

The day was a blur. I went through the motions of talking to my students, not sharing with them the trauma I had experienced the night before (as if it were my trauma and not Brooks’). I just gave the students the day to work on a long-term project, not what was on the calendar, they pointed out to me. I didn’t care. All I could think about was getting back to The Brook to see my baby. Finally, it was 2:20 PM.

I flew out the door to go see Brooks. Only to be told upon my arrival that I couldn’t see him.

“No, no, no. They told me I could see him today because otherwise it would be three days before I could see him again during normal visiting hours. I have to see him.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but they told you wrong.” The receptionist said coldly, not caring that I was locked out here and my son was locked in there. My 10-year-old son. Who wanted to die. This bitch clearly didn’t have kids, I thought.

“I need to speak to the nurse from last night. She said she’d be here until 4 PM today.”

“I’m sorry ma’am, but she’s already left for the day.”

“But it’s only 2:44!” I exclaimed incredulously. “Who else can help me see my son?” I was starting to talk louder now, but I didn’t care. The tears streamed down my cheeks, and I quickly wiped them with the back of my hand. “I have to see my son,” I said quieter after a moment.

“The intake nurse is here from last night. She’s getting ready to start her shift. I’ll go find her.” The receptionist finally looked as if she had a heart and gave a shit.

“Thank you. Thank you so much.” I nodded my head in approval of her new plan, the tears still pouring from my eyes. I sobbed harder and pulled tissues from my purse. Shit, my purse. I can’t have it in here. They won’t let me go back. I looked around panicked that I would miss my only opportunity to see Brooks. The intake nurse stepped through the same door she had late last night and said my name. I walked around the corner to meet her. As she waved for me to follow her, she looked at my bag as I held it up sheepishly.

“My purse,” I said gasping, trying to catch my breath and stop crying. She smiled in response and said there’s a locker I can put it in. She led me back to another cold, sterile evaluation room and said the nurse who was here last night had to leave early but she would have another nurse come see me. I sat there waiting for the nurse to enter the room that looked completely familiar after the amount of time spent in one just like it the night before.

The new nurse finally came in, and we talked about Brooks’ night and day so far. Apparently, he had been forced to take a pill of Benadryl, not the chewable that was promised. Brooks told me later that he thought he was going to throw up when he had to do that. It took him several attempts to get it down. Also, the nurse that had promised to be by his side at any moment she was needed had left just a couple hours after Brooks had been admitted, so she was not there at his side when he was awakened at 6:30 AM to have blood drawn—yet another traumatic experience for him due to his extreme fear of needles. So far, I was NOT pleased with The Brook. We had waited hours and hours in an awful waiting room for this? Are you kidding me?? Nothing that was promised was delivered, and I was irate.

“I want to see Brooks now, please,” I requested through gritted teeth. “Can I please see him?” The nurse obliged and went to retrieve him from the unit. Great, another anxiety ridden waiting period, I thought.

“Mommy,” Brooks said as he walked in the room, not looking like himself. He looked older somehow as if he had aged in the past 13 hours. He was just as exhausted as I was (once again, as if this trauma were solely my own). I stood up and hugged him tightly, pulling him back to me when he tried to release. He hugged me back, harder this time, and I knew I had made a mistake.

How would I have kept him safe if I hadn’t brought him here?

What if I had kept him at home and he had hurt himself, or worse, while I was asleep?

How could I ever forgive myself if anything happened to him?

I couldn’t. But I still knew that this was not the right place for him.

***

Mad in America hosts blogs by a diverse group of writers. These posts are designed to serve as a public forum for a discussion—broadly speaking—of psychiatry and its treatments. The opinions expressed are the writers’ own.

20 COMMENTS

  1. I wish all kids had a parent like this. Such a phenomenal, impactful, and important read — for parents and guardians, and for young ones at their most vulnerable. This essay is a sincere reminder of how important it is to be an active listener and open communicator, offering a place of refuge and a voice expressing unconditional love and support. Timelier than ever.

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      • What a tacky, mean-spirited question. I’m referring to parents/guardians who take their children seriously. I lost a friend this young one’s age when his suicidal ideations were written off by his parents as a teenage whim. He might still be alive if his parents had taken the route this author chose. This essay brings considerable value and perspective to mental health and the state of resources available to us, and it can’t have been easy to share so much vulnerability. It’s certainly much easier to be snarky in the comments than to process and share our heaviest chapters.

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        • Would anyone read this article whether it’s making an excuse for doing “SOMETHING” regarding a situation that seems critical, one can hardly say that the word “abusive” is used incorrectly to describe even here, would one read how this “resort” is described. You can go on about the state of resources available, and this article bringing value and perspective, but this doesn’t change the statistics that in reality it’s exactly such resources in the state of the present mental health system that correlates and is in collusion with causing MORE suicides. More of the problem, more need to enforce what says it’s healing the problem while being in correlation and collusion (statistically and scientifically) with causing it. The more of the problem, and you can chastise anyone not being brainwashed to be “heroic” and ignore what’s really going on. Bringing up anecdotal information regarding an acquaintance and their loss doesn’t change such data either. It might even really only show bias, as in this system given perspective causes more of the problem, but I know someone who lost their child, and it might have helped. So goes getting points for advocating mainstream approach what’s “available,” what’s considered a “resource,” what’s a promoted “route,” what’s considered to be of “value,” and deny the results in the end, but get rewards from who is giving them for taking their “route,” with “value, available resources.” And then use the word perspective to again in reality deny perspective. Perspective doesn’t involve actual perspective, you have to separate result and method and add the method that doesn’t get results or exposing what that really does is lack of it [perspective]. Same as the rest: say there are resources available, when in reality the resources that don’t correlate with more of the problem are not really promoted, and then bring up anecdotal grievances again. No one here is promoting anyone losing a loved one, or suicide, nor are they negating your lose, we are sharing statistics. It’s also quite mean-spirited, to use such a loss to deny statistical and medical reality, to let alone the words snarky and tacky from use. Denying that an abusive situation that in reality correlates with causing more of the problem is supposed to be excused by what!? I understand you know how to use the words “perspective,” “resources,” “route,” “meanspirited,” “tacky,” “snarky” the same as coloring an article as something normal one does peppering it with descriptions as if it’s a travelogue along with descriptions of some of the undesirable inhabitants working there, an article where in the end the author says she knows he doesn’t belong……..

          I HAVE TO DO THIS BUT I KNOW HE DOESN’T BELONG THERE!

          And then somehow, the mother of the author responding with: “I know how hard this is for you. I went through it with Ashley. It just sucks.” ” to me points out again anecdotal input, as if this is just how it goes, regardless of perspective with statistical cause and effect. Or whether other methods are being promoted. Who is Ashley, also, what’s her story?

          Note: I’m not really writing this as a response, it’s more for the other people reading this who have had it, and when simply responding with what’s left in them to respond, they get labeled as such, because they aren’t ameliorating or apologizing for what they have EXPERIENCED as being highly traumatizing. And it’s them actually that are given no chance to process or share their heaviest chapters. As in: “Don’t actually point out extreme contradictions, because then if your heaviest chapters involve trauma from such lies as: “the place that will help you makes things worse statistically, so we need to treat you more rather than see what we’re doing, while the savior is profiting from this?'” don’t actually point this out or you’re snarky, meanspirited, lacking perspective and value, and……….. oh yeah, DO bring up “unconditional love,” when such abusive contradictions are ignored….
          (!?) I hate to point this out, but when someone had lost their father when he was four, since then felt: “Then he opened up about his dad leaving him when he was four years old. He felt untrusting and unworthy. He felt like he didn’t matter. He felt sad all the time. He felt like he wanted to die.” and never had the outlet to talk with his mother about this, this story told is advertised as what!? “This essay is a sincere reminder of how important it is to be an active listener and open communicator, offering a place of refuge and a voice expressing unconditional love and support. Timelier than ever.” Somehow, I think some opening for communication was missing, and as time goes…… what it too late when it finally came out!?
          Note number 2: Again I’m not really writing this as a response, it’s more for the other people who have been accused such, when they simply respond themselves with what they have left, as if after everything they have been through they can’t express their trauma, but have to act like “politicians” or advertising agents with euphemisms and platitudes enough to go with such superficiality, image and “heroic morals.”

          It really easy to turn words around like that, because such and such is supposed to be seen that way….. But what is one describing? I wouldn’t even necessarily want to call that magic……

          Might be more like partisan business practices or politics…. and then “faithfulness.” or “religion” of such…..

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  2. This is indeed hair raising, especially for those who have been through such. And THANK GOD that when one does a search for something like “putting someone in an asylum increases the chance of suicide” you get the following hit: https://www.madinamerica.com/2019/06/involuntary-hospitalization-increases-risk-suicide-study-finds/ which was the second time I did such a search after reading this blog, the first on a tablet where writing a response is difficult, the first time with a similar statement the hit came in the first five I think, the second was further down the page with number 8.
    With the stringent effort put into portrayal of concern and then horror, is one allowed to be objective, or is this seen as cruel to point out that look here, according to statistics shared here you could be making the matter worse. Or is this then again labeled as being insensitive, in blocking something being done, in not showing concern etc?
    I think I have the same reactions as MANY of the people attending this site that my heart race increases, I myself start feeling anxious, I wonder whether I can say anything given the experience I’ve had with the mental health system, given the data I know, given the people I’ve talked to, and given the way most people respond when you share any of this.
    Yes, this article is peppered with many descriptive notes, what the asylum looked like, the couches, the people there, the nurses responses, the grandmother going to get food while waiting for intake, the horror of experiencing what’s going on, the contradictions etc. etc. all very well fulfilling how one writes a blog creating a scenario, most English teachers won’t say that it lacks that, but in the midst of it all we read: “Then he opened up about his dad leaving him when he was four years old. He felt untrusting and unworthy. He felt like he didn’t matter. He felt sad all the time. He felt like he wanted to die. He didn’t have a plan. Yet.” Which only happens after the child has been made ward of the asylum. After the child has begged not to be put there, promising not to hurt himself.
    Suicidal thoughts are suicidal thoughts, and like any other feelings, you try to push them away, this misses why they are there, and at that point they are just feelings. Feelings expressed however they can at that moment. Feelings have an intelligence that the conscious mind with all of its attempt at finding the answers might never reach. Dowsing them with disabling drugs what is this going to do, and what does it do to those people who would have been able to give legroom to such feelings so natural intelligence emerges and they become feelings one was trying to express: simply because anyone could have them, given a situation, and then being allowed perhaps answers can emerge? Somehow “I feel suicidal and that’s a dangerous disease so turn it off for God’s sake, and that’s going to take care of the feeling,” this just isn’t working for me, as if simply given room for WHY this feeling is there is dangerous. And how is any solution to be found if the very reason one looks for a solution is made out to be a disease!?
    I was going to go to the farmer’s market before I read this, one of the one places somehow I can feel at home, given the paranoia that can build up against anyone showing signs of what could be labeled as a psychiatric condition. People start acting like attack dogs but you can’t say it might have something to do with brainwashing. Something must be done, and looking at the true results is pushed to the side. Imagine knowing something is going on with you, and you want to find an answer, but you know or have experienced that most people have been brainwashed to believe that doing what has made the situation worse is what needs to be done. All that along with wanting to find an answer, when in reality you know there’s this result of: “so and so just won’t do what he’s supposed to,” or “won’t behave the way he should. ”And then when one gets anxious or infuriated which would be the normal response, this is again made out to be……… is this a further attempt at mind control? Overloading someone!?
    Have I again not said or done what needs to be?
    Do I again take on the visage of a reporter that reports or witnesses or describes something that’s going to be censored, you know these reporters, the ones reporting stuff going on on the wrong side of some moral war……!?
    Am I being disruptive, is there something wrong with me: this feeling of anxiety doesn’t just go flying away, given what I’ve seen, heard, read and experienced given what such a situation does in an asylum?
    Will it all go away would I take a pill or be compliant with my belief system!??

    I find that I go and meditate, rather than thinking I’m supposed to “do” something…..

    After meditating for maybe 5 minutes, if even that, in the nick of time to add this before the edit option times out, I remember that when I was around 18 or 19, probably 18 and working really hard practicing piano and fitting into a college setting while staying at home, that when my parents left to go out, trying to make sense out of how I felt (it might have just been a bit of uneasiness I didn’t understand), I told them that I was scared I would commit suicide if they left me alone. They both have beautifully passed on (I’m 65 now), were both psychologists, my father teaching at a University, and I think my mother simply said that people my age often feel like that, and indeed I never had that feeling come back. I could go on about what was missing perhaps in expressing feelings, trying to work that out, the whole psychological scenario, but really it just went away. Thinking what my life would have been had they……………. I don’t even want to think about it, perhaps I might do it anyway, and my imagination regarding what would have happened MIGHT be more accurate than what anyone mostly can read in mainstream media as being the result…………

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      • Annie, I do understand having been or being a teacher how your can’t say certain things, as little as a politician could even suggest that the pentagon spend even 1/4th of its budge[t] feeding those it’s set to bomb, despite protest from those believing in “the bombs bursting in the air.” This would suggest you considering what is more important. Then there’s this rather peculiar statement you make: “Suicide prevention training as a teacher does NOT prepare you for your own child telling you this. I’ve helped dozens of my students through tough times and suicidal thoughts. Listen to them. Talk to them. Hug them. Contact their parents. Check in on them.” Well…. It would be interesting to advertise a suicide prevention training, but have it state: “this method doesn’t work for your own children…” What does it in reality say about the training!? WHY wouldn’t it work for anyone’s children? Where does suicide prevention start then? Suicide prevention doesn’t involve teaching parents how to do this? Or should it say: “don’t try this at home!?”

        SERIOUSLY!

        It’s also clear your son would have been around this process you say doesn’t prepare you, and then the ax falls, so to speak, or not to speak but to type. What’s the difference when it hits home? And what does this say about following instructions, in contrast to the human condition, and how easily we are programmed to feel good when we follow set “instructions.”

        That bond that was there unspoken, as far as we know in your story above, until your son was in the process of being imprisoned where you yourself say he doesn’t belong, that bond hasn’t gone away. The challenge wouldn’t be there to open up the bond, otherwise. Even from the other side, there is stuff regarding my own parents that perhaps remained unspoken that I recently realized isn’t over with, have they both beautifully passed on. To sound completely crazy, I realized this listening to someone play violin, who I spoke with about HIS supposed suicide, before he reincarnated. Obviously he was in spirit. Then. He had been discovered and was forced to, or he would be exposed, and all the music he had written then, already, might have been compromised. Russia now again suppresses this information, when the world isn’t so…………..

        Crazy as it might sound, I’m simply stating this, as being related to knowing that bond doesn’t go away. It’s “spiritual,” it’s perhaps what life is about. And then there’s nothing said regarding why his father left, which says there’s something missing there. Why would anyone leave his own child, a new life, a blessing from, to use an overly interpreted word: “Heaven!?” Why would someone do that, what caused him to on the inside and the outside…..? Impossible things to try to understand, for a child…..

        I recently have been working on cadenzas for Mozart concertos. Mozart as a child already thought that such virtuosity (aka “showing off” in a cadenza) expressed the impossible: miracles. One particular concerto, I had touched upon, when someone mentioned how Mozart tried to get some financial help from a certain noble family; simply reading someone bring this up on a blog, I began crying, and saw Mozart walking past what one can still see is a large body of water by this castle ( I had to look it up to see if it really was there), and experienced Mozart having the association of throwing himself into the water to drown. It’s not like none of us haven’t heard of such being a reaction, a response to life’s difficulties. There seriously was no plan to do such, a simple association. But I heard the beginning of this concerto, such. The concerto was written, before this, it seems. Where was this from, from Mozart being so irascible he left the place he was supposed to be another aristocrat’s puppet, and then how does one get away from all of it!? Just an association, a momentary blip. And after the concerto being completed, so quickly that there was no rehearsal for the last movement, and Mozart’s father was there to hear it, after this there’s the role of the Contesse in the Marriage of Figaro, where her first aria is her expressing that SHE is suicidal. I had forgotten about this, and then someone recorded this concerto, and looking into the manuscript, practicing and studying it, I started writing a cadenza; when a run, I saw could do things that then might be considered inappropriate, but still fit within the expression. And the last movement gets really crazy to release the energy, in the cadenza I had quite a few variations of this theme, already, and then another was there, up in a cloud, and would have remained in a nebula, because I thought it was too much, but then I came upon an angel amongst us (later realizing who it was, who was considered the master of variation), who said just one word having to do with what was there for Mozart to give him the space for such that otherwise would be called “silly” what his father did, and then I did open the door for this variation, and….. it did drive me crazy, put me in a vulnerable state that might be called psychotic, or “schizo-effective,” but it worked. I learned to understand such a state better, the whole phenomenon. What really is non violent disinhibition….. It’s quite remarkable how paranoid and alarmist people respond, and get whole communities, and societies involved, in reality causing an extreme riff between THEM and their own humanity.

        I would think it seems impossible for a child to understand why his father left him, but that bond to try to express this hasn’t gone away. All of the arts are there also. Perhaps, in writing down how he feels, your son could write a poem. Or just, in the beginning why he felt that way, I would think that there’s more to such a note as simply trying to express how he feels with those bleak words. Unfortunately, that seems to also happen with suicide prevention, in general. You can read several stories here on this site, what suicide prevention lines really do, and how they often can make things worse. What does this say about a society that even given this response, this association with how one would respond, that there’s lacking perspective as to WHY anyone would take such a road, instead it’s made out to be a disease.

        No one is supposed to feel this way.
        Nothing is wrong.
        How could this happen, this is just impossible… rather than seeing someone is trying to express something, and giving that some legroom will allow them to see there’s an outlet. Miracles do happen beyond what anyone has been brainwashed to believe is the limit,

        When someone thinks life is impossible it there something wrong with pointing out that it isn’t, or are they supposed to accept limitations their soul was already trying to reach beyond in order to grow?

        Maybe I’m “lucky” early on when this all started, and stuff I knew that could be called psychic wasn’t accepted by my parents, although all they had to do is ask the neighbor lady. Stuff I needed to talk about. Then I got diagnosed, but I ran into a real healer. Not a psychic, not a new age person, not a spiritualist, but a real healer, where it just happened. A Filipino man, times prism is also amazing, how such comes together, not the first time, stuff regarding other “times” I had forgotten, actually, seeing the amazing poetry now, but after seeing him, and the impossible happen, as happen with the real Filipino healers, because it does, and forever exists, I realized 20 years had been added to my life, the amount of time that’s statistically taken away from someone with my “condition” when “medications” are implimented……

        Instead I learned miracles exist, and that’s the natural state of art, actually. Beyond being “entertaining” and “deadlines…..”

        It’s possible. Have a talk with your son, or give him a piece of paper and writing utensil, now a days a computer also can work…….

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  3. It’s completely understandable to be worried about your child when they are in the hospital. I’m glad he had the courage to talk about his father. This is a great start for his mother to help him heal from that experience that deeply affected him.

    Parents having heart-to-heart talks with their children about what’s really wrong is so vital for their well-being. It’s also so vital for parents to take responsibility for any harm they cause their kids. It could literally change the course of their lives for the better. Nobody is perfect so nobody can ever be a perfect spouse, parent, friend or anything.

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  4. I lost my son Tues. bc 2 pychiatrists 100% indirectly treatment to his death. and the cm ha system . Same story as this story at first but got worse many times it by too many times to count. . Forced court ordered medication using my son’s health records and another with same name by error. and he didnt harm anyone just suicidal thoughts and attempts bc of taking their med and later on forced med . Many crisis bc of side effects including his heart stopped bc of one med. Someday I will tell his story this is the first part. My son is with Jesus

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  5. Would someone besides an employee of the drug companies tell me why it is a good idea to ever take your child to a psych ward…..this whole mental health system is not so different from the nazi’s eugenics program which they stole from America;s psychiatric associations handbook.

    Can anyone imagine that a pill will solve the problems of our society?

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  6. It’s just unnaceptable. If a kid brokes his leg, his mom (or a relative) will stay with him in the hospital full-time. And he/she will take pictures and send to the family, so everybody will be confident that the kid is being treated.

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  7. This disturbing post raises a number of questions:

    The child is called Brooks and they went to The Brook Hospital. Interesting coincidence.

    What an extraordinary thing for a 10-year-old boy to say, ‘I’m having suicidal thought.’ Where did he learn this? Is it not more likely he would say, ‘I want to die,’ or ‘I feel like killing myself’?

    What did the mother expect or hope would happen if she took the child to hospital? It’s a fair guess that he would be involuntarily admitted and drugged. If admission was thought to be unavoidable, why was the mother not allowed or encouraged to be admitted with him?

    The mother’s panicked reaction is understandable, but it’s sometimes forgotten that the best ‘psychiatrist’ is the mother herself.

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    • Good point. I also note that most apologists for the System will say, “The reason this person committed suicide is because mental health services are underfunded and unavailable.” But most of the time, they’ve had years of “services” before the event. So how is a lack of services the problem? It sounds like the services FAILED TO HELP!

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