Please help. Where can we get help for our son.

[ihatethecold]

My son is currently talking to objects in the house like they are real.
He thinks his step mum has had a baby and he will talk to it in the pushchair.
(She is due this week but she clearly hasn't given birth yet)
He lives with her and his dad.
He was a risk suicide until recently and was hospitalised 4 times due to attempts on his life.
He is now on quitiapin and Duloxitine to help stablelise him.
He has a bad cannabis habit that is getting worse.
I also think he's using amphetamine type drugs because he hasn't slept since Friday night.
He was discharged from the crisis team about 6 weeks ago and he only has the GP to help him.
His step mum took him today because of the hallucinations and they said it's not a psychotic episode and to take one of his prescription medications and to sleep.
We don't know where to turn anymore.
We called the crisis team and they said to call the police!

Hope your DSs GCSEs went well.

Thanks for the support guys feeling better today DH seemed a lot better last night and had a really good chat about things and how I've been feeling too.

Sorry to hear your about your DSs suicide attempts, been through this with DH many times unfortunately, we'd been through the A&E and crisis team route many times before getting any actual MH help, and that started with home treatment team who then refered on so don't despair. I've just realised that I don't really consider suicide attempts on their own crisis any more the psychotic crises are so much worse though often associated with them. Thats so bad that I've normalised something like that!

For DH the addictions were addressed after the initial crises had been managed as they needed to get him in the right place first. He couldn't have had a rational conversation with any one let alone followed a programme when he was really poorly.

Hope HTT have had more sucess with him this time.

Willberry I think it's really really important for the spouse of the person in crisis to feel heard as well. When this did not happen for us, the result was something that my DH described as a sort of "race to the bottom". Because a crisis is not really a thing, there can be an acute crisis for me and a sort of slow-burn crisis for DH for example and that is why I always say to the people asking for help for someone else that the thing that they can do is seek support for themself.

I come from a family where whilst I would not say suicide attempts are normal there are crises and psychiatrists and diagnoses and therapists and psychotropic medication so on and seeking help is normal, and in a way that is a positive thing, until you forget to do it in time and end up in a crisis which you did not see coming and a DH who is bewildered

Sorry DH

Maybe its an exageration to say I see suicide attempts as normal, their still bloody stressful to deal with just not as stressful as a full blown psychotic episode. I do have a key worker in DHs team who supports me as his carer/spouse so I get heard that way. Within our relationship it can be tricky but even when he's not particularly well DH will try to be there for me when I am struggling.

Erinaceus you sound like you have learned to manage things well. I think at the monent DH is struggling to accept that he has a long term condition he will need to manage. I think he thought he'd been ill but was now better and stopped looking after himself properly, therefore getting poorly again.

Sorry Ihatethecold, didn't mean to take over your post.

You haven't. I appreciate your input.

Yes. It is just life for me. I was away from services for years and years. Then I went back into the system with a crash. I have just been discharged back to my GP. I will change GP to one that is better connected to the MH trust in my area, because I did not find the GP I was under helpful. This is not against that GP in particular. Practises vary in how well they are connected to services. I feel fortunate in that where I live there are a lot of services and they are as joined up as they can There have been myriad diagnoses over the years. There was never a psychotic episode recorded in my notes, but there was an episode when I lost touch with reality for a bit, which I find frightening. I think it went down as "Erin is disrupting..."

My parents are still together, as are DH and I; they coached him through the crisis, having cared for me for years, and I am better supported now, as is he. But yes I have "disengaged from seevices" in the past only to self-refer back a month later. I remember doing that once it took a long time for me to understand that the system was not against me. It can be done. I hear positive things about the EIT in our area. Such a thing did not exist in my day and the notion of crisis team was a new one to me too.

Sounds like its taken time, sure DH will get there in the end, and hopefully OPs DS too, its still relatively new to us. You are lucky to have had supportive parents, I'm sure thats helped. DHs parents took him to Drs initially and were told he was just a difficult teenager so they ended up disowning him. He muddled through on his own and then with me for 10 years before we actually found out what the problem was and got offered help so we are only really 3 years into acually understanding things and learning to mannage them. DH and my experience with EIT have been brilliant.

Hows things going Ihatethecold?

Yes, my parents had to fight so hard to have their concerns take seriously. And I fought services for great stretches of them It is the getting into the system that is the difficult bit I think. It is as if you need to not be in a crisis in order to make sense of the crisis team.

Not bad. I'm away camping with friends at the mo with very limited wifi.
Until I get back it's hard to gage how things really are.

Glad you are getting a bit of a break for a while