Family Counseling to Help Understand Mental Disease

Right off the bat, parenting a child with a mental disease or illness is one of the hardest things a parent will ever have to do and accomplishing this with other children, who have “normal” brains, is even more difficult.

One of the biggest pieces of advice I can give to parents of children with any type of mental disease is counseling. Not only for the child, not only for the parents, but for the entire family.

I knew growing up that there was definitely something wrong with me, I did not know it was a chemical imbalance in my brain. Chemical imbalances in your body can cause so many problems, from causing seizures to weight gain. Many people will accept a thyroid problem, but gawd forbid serotonin levels are so whacked out you start screaming scary things that you have no recollection of later.

The issue though is when a child with a mental disability has episodes and siblings do not understand what is happening and adults put the episodes down to bad behavior, siblings can become resentful, bitter and sometimes hostile.

They, as well as the adults, scold the child with the mental disability for the “bad behavior” when the adults are not around. This leads to the child with the mental disability having no support. The child can start to feel picked on, mistreated and neglected.  The friction that develops between siblings because of the lack of education can grow and soon no relationship is left.

Counseling for everyone in the family will help.

This would not just be for the benefit of the child with the mental disease.

While this would show your mentally ill child that they have your love and support, it is would be to help the children that do not have the mental disease learn coping skills. Instead of becoming bitter, angry and thinking that their sibling is “just acting out” they would learn how to deal constructively with their sibling.

So much more is known about mental illnesses and diseases than when I was growing up. Parents now have an advantage.

Where my parents and brother had no clue how to deal with the outbursts and bouts of depression…where I refused to get out of bed for days to my severe mood swings…we know now how to help our children through a panic attack/outburst of tears/“temper tantrum” issues, which teach mentally ill children coping skills for the future.

And there is a difference between a child that is spoiled and a child that has a disability. The outside world may not know the difference but they do not matter. However, family and friends should know the difference and learning how to cope is a responsibility.

These coping skills my generation and older generations of people with mental diseases have had to learn these skills by hit or miss. 

The biggest reason is because no one knew back when I was growing up how important counseling is for people with mental disease/illness and the families of people with the disease.

I did see a psychiatrist once or twice growing up, but that was because of the death of my father. I did see a counselor a few times after I was strong enough to report that I had been sexually molested. I did seek counseling off and on over the years but really never understood how to utilize counseling properly.

When I was growing up and I was seeing a counselor after the abuse, my counselor would tell me to ask my family to seek family counseling, that it would be good for the whole family. The answer was always no, I was told I was the one who had the problem, not them.

Remember earlier I said “love and support” family support is very important. Sibling support is important, these are a child’s very first friends in life, when these “friends” do not understand and start pulling away from them because they do not know how to handle the behavioral issues that the child with mental illness/disease has, it can be devastating. This child can become worse in many respects.

We can help brothers and sisters understand that an illness or disease can cause their siblings to make poor choices by allowing them to talk to a counselor of their own. This person can help them realize that their sibling is not behaving badly because they want to, but because there is something wrong with their brain that makes it difficult for them to make better choices. This is helping all of our children, in the long run, have happy, healthy relationships with each other.

Yes, we make choices, but what many people do not understand is that when our brains are not working correctly we actually believe that we are making correct choices.

To a lesser degree, you might believe that a shirt looks great on you…it may be ugly and no one is willing to tell you that, but you think it looks great.

With my brain I can think something is an amazing idea, and if someone doesn't say, “Lana, don’t do it, it’s a bad idea and you will regret it.” I will probably do it when I am in a Bi-Polar state. Problem is, not many people know how to deal with me when I am in a Bi-Polar manic state and many people are not willing to “get involved” to say “Don’t do it”. This, in the end, leads me to believe they don’t care enough to stop me from doing “dumb” things after I do come down from my manic state.

Seeking counseling to support and learn how to cope with your loved ones mental disease has so many immense benefits for the entire family. From showing the mentally ill child they have the love and support to teaching the other family members coping skills the benefits out weight the loss of the minimum mount of time you have to put into learning these valuable skills.

I am not trying to bash my family in this blog. This is about showing that had a different approach been taken when I was young maybe things would have turned out a lot differently. However, times were different we did not know as much then as we do now about mental disease and illnesses and while there is a lot more that needs to be learned and talked about, there are coping skills available now for families to take advantage of so that relationships do not have to suffer.

**It has been a long summer. I have been going through a depression this summer. My writing has been on some depressing topics and many have not been worth posting. I am trying to learn to control which are worth posting and which are accusatory, full of self pity and not really helpful to anyone but me. I kept busy keeping tears away this summer by writing my “yucky” stuff, gardening, canning and taking care of the dogs. Now its time to harvest all those potatoes!