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Originally Posted by Skeezyks
I've been hospitalized twice. Both times were following major suicide attempts. So, going in, I really wasn't in any kind of shape to think about what was happening. As a result I can't comment with regard to that. However what I wanted to speak to is the question of coming out.
Following both of my hospitalizations, I was discharged to home & simply returned to the same day-to-day life I had prior to going in. The first time around, after a few days, I realized nothing had changed (except for the fact I had tried to get rid of myself & been hospitalized.) Anyway after a few days of hanging out at home, I made arrangements to attend a partial hospital program. I wouldn't say it was a great experience in terms of what I learned necessarily. But it gave me a place to go & people to be with who were experiencing similar struggles. And I think that was valuable. The second time around I just went home. It was tough for a while. But at least I had the memory of the previous experience to work from.
So I'd like to suggest you consider the possibility of having your son attend some kind of post-hospitalization day program for a while. I suppose, perhaps, your son is still in school. And I don't know how you work around that or if you can. However, at least based on my own experience, having him simply return home & go back to everything as it was prior to going in may not be the best idea. My best wishes to you all...  |
Skeezyks -
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I was discharged to home & simply returned to the same day-to-day life I had prior to going in. The first time around, after a few days, I realized nothing had changed
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I made arrangements to attend a partial hospital program. I wouldn't say it was a great experience in terms of what I learned necessarily. But it gave me a place to go & people to be with who were experiencing similar struggles.
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So I'd like to suggest you consider the possibility of having your son attend some kind of post-hospitalization day program for a while. I suppose, perhaps, your son is still in school. And I don't know how you work around that or if you can. However, at least based on my own experience, having him simply return home & go back to everything as it was prior to going in may not be the best idea
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We are on the same page completely. Exactly, in fact. Thinking back over the years, I've begun to realize that our son's Opposition personality (not ODD in the classic sense, he never got into trouble at school or was destructive,etc) has been, by far, the most difficult aspect of living with him. I suppose its true that we learn to adapt to the white elephants in our lives as a survival/coping mechanism but the other side of being able to function as a family, have something resembling a marriage and trying to parent his non-spectrum sibling required a lot of picking and choosing which battles to fight - and he was ready to 'fight' each and every battle to the last man, the last shell, the last round - each and every day - an unbelievable resilience to renew afresh, any engagement that we'd thought we'd won.
So there's been a good deal of 'cross-conditioning' where we've conditioned each other to respond in certain ways and its human nature to fall back into the familiar and the dysfunctional.
It is as much us as it is him in that regard.
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I realized nothing had changed
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Yeah, I can already see those thoughts going through his head. Everything from his SnapChat to the bad elements that seem to predominate the intervention program at his school are going to conspire to make very short work of any progress that may have been made over the last week. I understand that for those attempting to break from heroin addiction, for example, all that is required to bring on a relapse is the smell of the street-block where they lived. Associations are so strong.
We spent much time over his hospitalization grappling with this reality. Unfortunately, in our area, the facilities for providing appropriate partial hospitalization/Intensive Outpatient for our son, with his particular needs and age, are non-existent. He just falls between all of the cracks. The acute facility that treated him does not think him to be in need or a good candidate for their residential program - and from what we saw, we have to agree - the residents we saw there were in far more dire straights than our son - broke our hearts to see some of them.
The problem is all the other facilities are for drug rehabilitation. If not directly, there has to be at least a dual-diagnosis. It seems to be all there is! They used to talk about the military-industrial complex...yeah, well there's another cottage industry that's taken its place. Doesn't seem right, but I'll leave it at that.
Anyroad...so the acute treatment center DS was in did set up in home therapy - ABA type. The facility where the therapists are coming from looks like a top-notch professional org - so that, at least, will be there. We wouldn't have been able to find or access that resource on our own, so I do appreciate the people at the hospital doing that.
The problem with our son is, and if there is anything that threatens to capsize all of this, he doesn't really want to change. You had some pretty tough things going on in your life at the times that you went in - and I'm sure hospitalization was just the end result of bad things taking their form over years - but the thing is you - and I feel confident in saying this - you and everyone else on this forum have something that my son does not - its the ability to see how things are and how they should be - how they could be - and you took steps, maybe faltering, but you took steps to try to change - even through the fog of the troubles you were in, you had enough clarity to see that it wasn't the world's fault. Just taking the initiative to get on an online forum to seek help means there is some kind of ability to see oneself in relation to something else, which is a basic requirement for improvement.
I'm not expecting miracles or easy-outs for him or us. I know what the odds are, I'm just hoping that his resistance and stubbornness have lessened enough to at least let him have some positive therapeutic experiences - maybe it will snowball from there. The bad things sure have no problem snowballing, do they?
Skeezyks - I really appreciate your thoughtful comments. More than you know.