Troubled Children - Off to College Alone

Troubled Children - Off to College Alone, Shadowed by Mental Illness

Listmates,

Excellent real life stories of youngsters with mental health disorders (bi-polar primarily) transitioning to college life. This is also a critical point where the stressors of this period could cause substance use disorders to emerge (co-occurring). The article speaks to resources available at many colleges and universities. The MH professionals treating these youngsters have played major roles -- particularly with the bi-polar disorder and the need to be so medication conscious. Increasingly universities and colleges are developing support systems for those with both MH and SU disorders. It sounds as if material may be available. Don Excerpt: "Active Minds, a student-led mental health advocacy organization founded in 2001 at the University of Pennsylvania, now has 56 chapters at schools including Georgetown University, Columbia University, the University of South Florida and the University of Maryland. The National Alliance on Mental Illness has 30 campus affiliates, with 18 more in formation, groups that are set up as student clubs and are financed by school activity budgets and fund-raisers. Programs like the Jed Foundation, a suicide prevention program, and National Depression Screening Day, held each October, offer additional resources." December 8, 2006 Troubled Children Off to College Alone, Shadowed by Mental Illness By LYNETTE CLEMETSON - NY Times Her mother called it a negotiable proposition. But to Jean Lynch-Thomason, a 17-year-old with bipolar disorder who started college this fall, her mom’s notion to fly from their home in Nashville to her campus in Olympia, Wash., every few weeks to monitor Jean’s illness felt needlessly intrusive. “I am so totally aware of the control you have over me right now,” Jean said, sitting in her parents’ living room one evening last June, before coolly reminding her mother of her upcoming 18th birthday. “In a few months the power dynamic is going to be different.” For Chris Ference, 19, who is also bipolar, the fast-approaching autonomy of his freshman year held somewhat less appeal. His parents had always directed every aspect of his mental health care. Last summer, over Friday night pizza at his home in Cranberry Township, Pa., he told them that assuming control felt more daunting than liberating. “If it was up to me, I would just have it so you could make those decisions for me up until I was like, 22,” he said. “I mean, you’ve raised me well up to now. You know me better than anyone.” The transition from high school to college, from adolescence to legal adulthood, can be tricky for any teenager, but for the increasing number of young people who arrive on campus with diagnoses of serious mental disorders — and for their parents — the passage can be particularly fraught.

Don Phillips
daphil15 [at] hotmail [dot] com