MOTFL 024 JAM 018: Bipolar in the Teen Years and Beyond in Rural Iowa

Jill discusses caring for her son whose bipolar disorder surfaced during the teen years. She describes the lack of resources in rural Iowa, the criminalization of mental illness and how that affected her family. She explains how this journey as a mother makes you learn who you are as a person and how strong you can be. Transcription [music] Female Voice: Welcome to the Just Ask Mom podcast where mothers share their experiences of raising children with mental illness. Just Ask Mom is a Mothers On The Frontline production. Today we will listen to Jill, a mother from Iowa, share her story about raising a son with bipolar disorder. Tammy: Thank you for doing this. We really appreciate you being here. Jill: Absolutely. Tammy: Before we get into a lot of the content could you tell us a little bit about yourself before or outside of mothering, who are you? What are your passions? What are you interested in? Jill: It’s a great question. Well, first of all, I think I’ve known since I was five years old, probably or even before that I wanted to be a teacher. My grandmother was a teacher, my aunt was a teacher. I would have to say that was my focus through high school. I went to college, I’m a teacher and I’m very passionate about it, very passionate about early childhood education. I currently decided to personally take a step back and decided to work on my Master’s degree. Tammy: Wonderful. Jill: Yeah, between doing that and teaching full-time and having two children, let’s say two teenagers at home. [laughs] Tammy: You’re busy. Jill: It’s busy. When I have a free second to breath and if I’m not writing the research paper or discussion thread I am spending time with my family and friends. That’s very important to me. I like to exercise, I love to be outside in the summer in my flower garden. That’s kind of me by myself. Tammy: So you knew early on what you wanted to do? Jill: I did and I think that doesn’t happen a lot. Tammy: No. Jill: I I think a lot of children these days are just full of pressure. “I don’t know what I want to do. I don’t know what I want to do”, and I just tell my boys I hope it’s just a lucky one. So, 20-some years I’ve been in it and I don’t ever see myself do anything else. Tammy: Oh, that’s wonderful. You love it, that’s great. Jill: I do, yes. Tammy: It’s a gift when your passion can become your work. Jill: Yes, absolutely. Tammy: Absolutely. I want you to pretend that you’re talking to other parents. What do you want them to know about your experience as raising a child with a mental health condition? What would you want them to know? Jill: I would say number one, trust your instincts. If you see something maybe that is out of character for your child, maybe something that differs from what they have “typically”, how they’ve been acting. I guess just picking up on those little cues. I look back over the journey with my son it’s been three years. Three years and three years now has gone by and I look back at some of the things and say. “Wow, I wish I would have been– went with my gut more than I did”. Does that make sense? Tammy: It does. Now with your son, was there a clear before-and-after of an onset of symptoms, did it sort of come on at a certain point in his life or did you always see it his whole life, or? Jill: No. We did not see it early on in life at all. There was no signs or symptoms at all. Probably started seeing it at the age of 15, his hormones were really coming on. When we first started seeing signs like I said looking back impulsive behaviors and things that typically hadn’t been characteristic of my son, but because some of it we kind of blamed on, “Oh, he’s a teenager. Oh, he’s sowing his oats, he’s doing this”, but then he would be fine for a while. Then well, we’d have another as well, I say now an episode of just uncharacteristically behaviors. I should have went with my gut more than I did but I did try to get some help right away, but that was difficult and that probably will come next. Tammy: Yeah, tell me about that because let me just go back to one thing. Jill: Yes, please do. Tammy: You’re bringing up a really important issue because when you’re dealing with children’s mental health, there’s a whole gamut. Some kids have things from very young like Tourette’s usually comes around to age seven, for instance, but a lot of kids have conditions that surface during the teenage years. That’s when the conditions start to have their first symptoms. As you said it’s hard to know is it just being a teenager or not. Jill: It completely was because from birth up to that point he had been a straight A student. He had been an austere athlete. He had been the kid that never broke a rule, if there was a line he was going to walk it. That’s why I say trust your instincts because as mothers we know our children better than anyone else in this world. When he was behaving some of these behaviors I’m like, “This is– Okay, I’m not sure. Are we this pushing? Or a teenager–“. Like I said we even went with were there drugs involved because drugs are so rampant in the high schools and things that I was not aware of. I guess maybe naive and I had to open myself up to that and wow, what started were these outbursts, I say outburst because it was the change of behavior. His grades started slipping a little. Socially he started secluding himself from his friends. There would be days maybe even weeks he would just stay at home on the couch and he’d want the curtains closed, and he just wants to watch movies with me. You know, “Okay, well, honey” and his friends would come over and say, “Come on, bud. Let’s go.” Typically before this kind of came on sure he would go. He’d love it, very social kid. Then there’d be times where we get over of laying on the couch. Then we would– he particularly, I remember, got in his car asked could he go to the mall to the nearest city and I said, “Sure, okay”. Called me, got a speeding ticket, was going almost a hundred miles an hour. Tammy: That’s so dangerous. Jill: Yes, and this was just a few days after we’d been laying on the couch for a while. Then I got him home and said, “Okay”, had the whole typical teenage speeches, had the whole, “We’re going to take your car”, and then two days later gets another speeding ticket. He was going 95. It was just so mind-blowing because my whole mommy gut, I call that, what’s going, “What is going on”, and so that’s when I’m like, “Okay”. Started in with therapist number one. Tammy: Talk about that. Why was it hard to get help at first? What was difficult at that time? Jill: I will be completely honest and people probably don’t want to hear this but I know as a mother I wish somebody would have told me, Iowa is horrible for mental health. I had been born and raised in the state and I will probably live in the state for the rest of my life, but I am highly disappointed with the services and help that we have. From just doing some readings I think we’re one of the worst states in the United States of America. Tammy: We are. I can feel what you’re saying  – because if I hear what you’re saying  –  this is where I’m at –  me– I don’t want read this in –  but I love Iowa. There’s so many wonderful things about our state but this is so disappointing. Jill: It is. It’s – it’s heartbreaking. Tammy: It’s heartbreaking, yeah. Jill: It’s sad and the first thing I did was say, “Okay, I need a professional” because I am a teacher. I am not a doctor. I just told my son, “Hey, I think we need to talk to somebody to figure out what’s going” because he was talking to me but not really. I think he was not sure, I think, what was even going on with himself. That’s where I was like, “Is this his hormones? Is this puberty has set in?”. He has a later birthday so he is a younger one for his class. I went and got a therapist number one, I say because it’s a long…. So went and he just– it was very difficult. He wouldn’t open up. That’s what we tried first. Then, unfortunately, he attempted suicide. Tammy: I’m sorry. Jill: Oh, yeah. It was hard. I can talk about it now because it’s been long enough but I think it was more of a cry for help like I’m stuck in my own body and I’m not sure what’s going on. I came home and he was wanting to sleep, he wasn’t sleeping at night. That was another mommy gut thing where the kid that always slept at night wasn’t sleeping at night. He decided– I saw this package of pills and I’m like– he’s like, “Mom, mom” because just he’s so smart and he’s such a wonderful kid.  And he’s just like, “Mom, I didn’t know what else to do but I took all those Benadryl and I went”. “Excuse me?”. He’s like, “I just can’t do it”. “You can’t do what?”. He’s like, “I can’t not sleep and I can’t, my head is racing. My thoughts are racing”. Tammy: He’s suffering. Jill: He’s like, “I just need some rest”. I’m like you know the mother, “Oh, my gosh”. He admitted doing it. We went to the hospital and then they once you go to the hospital with an attempted suicide then, you kind of get a little more help. Unfortunately, we had to go through an episode like that to get a little more help. We moved on to therapist number two which also involved medication. He hadn’t been on any medication until that kind of botched attempted suicide or just attention-getting. I’m not even sure what do we call it now. Tammy: Clearly he was in deep pain and needed help. Jill: He did. I think that’s– Tammy: We take it all so seriously. We need to. Absolutely. Jill: Yeah, we need to and there was no way, and I wasn’t going to take him to the hospital because his father had said to me, “Well, does he really need to go to a hospital?”. He took several Bendadryl and I t...