Op-Ed: My daughter fell off the mental health care cliff, and I have to jump after her (via latimesopinion)
Our mental health system has failed my daughter. Again. Actually, that’s not true. There is no system, no real help for her.
This latest horror with my daughter isn’t a surprise. There were years of red flags. As a toddler, she stiffened if you hugged her, could focus for hours on something like a handful of rocks. She was clearly wired differently, but at first her eccentricities seemed harmless, even charming.She started cutting around the same time she started to grow breasts. Our search for help began.
In early November 2020, a few days after she turned 20, my daughter locked herself in her room and stopped eating. She destroyed her possessions and wiped her laptop. Didn’t want to leave a trace, she told me later. By mid-April, her meds needed to be refilled. I know, because I was giving them to her. But since she is legally an adult, only she could get the prescriptions renewed. The bottles ran empty.
That evening a doctor from the ICU called. My daughter was in a coma and on life support. I could see her.Three days later, she wiggled her toes. She was seizing, and her fever was 104. High, but not brain-damage high. When she could, she asked everyone, nurses, doctors, me, her boyfriend: Why am I here? What happened?
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