Could really use advice for my young adult son with emotional issues

In My Humble Opinion
41

This 19-year-old sounds a lot like me. I started thinking about suicide around the same age and made an attempt a few years later. My brain will start wandering and can go down a dark path if I don’t keep myself occupied; my computers and video game systems help with this. I’ve had a meltdown when my computer wouldn’t work but I eventually calmed down and worked out the problem + how to fix it.

I had enough trouble keeping my grades up during high school that I knew college would be a problem. I tried to get an education via enlisting but that didn’t work out. Ended up living with my brother the Army vet and managed to land a government job in a mail room. They let me go shortly before I finished out the year, partly due to my having slipped on a patch of ice and wrecking my back. Unable to continue renting rooms like I had been, I ended back in my brother’s apartment. He came home early after a really bad day, caught me misbehaving, and kicked me out.

Being in a homeless shelter for ~9 months turned out to be a blessing. I was able to go from there into a group home program, which led to an adult day program and work rehab. One part time job I landed via work rehab led to being hired as full-time permanent in a different office. I’m still with the same employer 27 years later.

TL/DR: are there any group home programs in the area which would take this young man and would he be willing to go?

42

It also has to be understood that some forms of mental illness are life-destroying for a parent to try and manage. OP has come here because, IMO, they’re starting to see the early symptoms of that? I don’t think it’s a very extreme situation by any means, but these situations do tend to evolve over time. I was in the behavior health field for five years and while no expert there’s an issue where people don’t have the ability to deal with someone.

When I was w/the behavioral health bureau in Virginia we had a lot of parents who had raised MH/ID children to a point, and eventually couldn’t handle it anymore. OP’s situation is definitely much more mild than most that I saw processed through our system, but at the end of the day if you as a parent cannot fix the situation, and it is degrading your quality of life, I think it is going to cause accumulating mental harm to you as well.

In many ways mental health is much harder because of the structure of the laws. With a combination of State and Federal programs, if you have an adult child with an intellectual/developmental disability, there are a lot of options to either keep them in your home but with significant amounts of support, or to arrange for them some sort of group home type living where they will live in a mostly normal “house” where several caregivers are always around, and they will usually have the ability to attend daily activities at places that can train them with occupational skills etc. We don’t have the best safety net in the United States, but we also don’t turn those people out on the streets if you can navigate the Byzantine government process of getting them help.

The issue with mental health diagnoses is the law treats them very differently for a number of reasons: 1) the mental health diagnosis isn’t automatically considered a disability (it certainly can be, but a finding of intellectual disability immediately opens up a ton of programs, a diagnosis of say, bipolar disorder or OCD does not immediately do so) and 2) the “consumer” is usually considered intellectually capable/competent by the courts, while an ID consumer is presumed not to be so (in fact most individuals with ID are put in legal guardianship/conservatorship at some point in their early life and remain in it for the rest of their lives), a mental health consumer is presumed to only be incompetent during specific episodes in which it can be demonstrated so through the civil commitment process, and then their status will be continually evaluated and they have to be given the option of leaving the moment they are considered competent again.

None of that is strictly speaking bad, because most people with mental health diagnoses are obviously competent and should be afforded full rights, but because of how we structure treatment benefits, that person who might need just as much treatment and help as a person with an intellectual disability, will often not be able to get it unless his mental health diagnosis has reached a point where you can get some sort of permanent disability finding, which isn’t the immediate norm (it’s estimated something like 50m people in the United States have a diagnosable mental health condition, but only a small fraction of those would qualify as disabled.)

43

OP, I feel for you. I’m going to tell you about a relative of mine–I’ll call him Don–who has severe OCD. I think the parallels would be helpful.

Don’s OCD is expressed in part as germaphobia. He washes his hands dozens of times daily. He can’t bear to touch garbage, so he doesn’t take it out. He can’t touch dirty laundry, so…you get the picture. He can’t live with anyone because of the OCD and can’t work due to the same, so his mother pays for his modest apartment, ancient car, etc. Someone comes in once a week to dispose of the trash so Don doesn’t get evicted. His bio father refuses to help and says Don needs to suck it up. Don is somewhat manipulative, but determining where that ends and the illness begins is difficult.

Don’s messed up in other ways. The OCD, which first manifested 20 years ago, has kept him from socializing, so he has very unrealistic ideas about people. His father and late stepfather were both self-aggrandizing and emotionally cruel to him, so he’s had issues due to that. He refuses meds because the OCD makes him question the ingredients. He’s been going to therapy for years. Progress, such as it is, is glacial. And his mom (rightly) can’t know anything that’s discussed without Don’s permission, which he refuses, so she’s in the dark there.

Don’s mother is in the same vise you are: he can’t survive on his own, and she can’t support him forever. She’s very worried about what will happen to him when she dies. We’re very worried about what the prolonged stress is doing to her.

Like Don, your son’s illnesses have kept him from the learning that comes from socialization. And how does someone with an explosive anger disorder hold down a job? How does someone with OCD manage his own behaviors? If you evict him, you know he won’t survive on the streets. If you don’t, the strain on the family is crushing. And what happens when you and his mom die? Will his brother shoulder this enormous emotional and financial burden?

(BTW, IANAL, but it’s not true that adult children can’t be evicted from the home. How depends on a variety of factors. An attorney can explain.)

Therapy just for you and your wife is a great idea if you can swing it financially. Make sure it’s with a therapist who’s experienced in treating OCD and explosive anger disorder: you don’t just need to de-stress; you need guidance. There are also online support groups for parents of adult kids with OCD. I’d also urge you to consult an attorney who can help you determine your legal rights and how to set up your will so it’s fair to both your sons.

You’ve had a tough row to hoe. I wish you the best.

44

I acknowledge it is far easier to give advice than to deal w/ a situation as you describe, and I am very happy I never had to deal w/ such a situation.

But 2 main thoughts. 1. You are enabling him. 2. By giving birth to someone, do you allow them to dictate your life forever?

Either you force him to move out and figure some way to live on his own - and deal with the emotional challenges that may result, or you let him hold you hostage until you die. Tough choice. I think I would be able to make what I think the better choice, but I’m not sure.

Good luck.

45

The sad thing about brain disorders is so much of what we value in humans comes from the idea that we have agency to go along with our sentience and concept of self that when the organ that governs those attributes has issues we tend to think there is more choice involved than there may be. Your son may have some personality issues that exacerbates the underlying problem but the underlying problem is the result of brain structure and body chemistry and that needs to be treated as well as the behavioral issues. It’s tragic but modern medicine doesn’t have a cure for OCD and treatments from what I’ve seen with those who suffer severe OCD aren’t that great.

You are correct that he’d be back in a few months. My best advice is to set boundaries and expectations and do your best to ensure compliance while helping him seek treatment.

46

I see. Well, unfortunately, this runs into the Great Wall of mental disorders: A thought, or insight, or realization that occurs to the mentally ill patient himself, on his own, carries 100x as much weight or power as those same words coming from a secondhand person, like you. Unfortunately, no amount of talking by you may ever achieve the effect of him coming to an important realization himself; in fact, you or others may only repel him away from the truth. Sad but it’s human nature. It’s not just “you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink,” it’s that you need to somehow convince him that he’s a horse who voluntarily discovered the water on his own. That requires an almost Inception-level of thought-planting that even the best counselors or therapists often can’t pull off.

As for him being right-wing: There are some…right-wing colleges he could go to. They’re all Christian, though; see if he likes being in a religious school.

47

@solost,

I don’t want to sidetrack this thread with an argument with other posters. But, please, I am begging you (and any readers who might find themselves in a similar situation), please don’t pay any attention to the posters assuring you that your only options are 1) being your son’s enabler and caregiver for the rest of your life or 2) kicking him out of your house.

Let me be clear. I don’t know you. I don’t know your son. I don’t know all the details of your situation. It may well be that you wind up in exactly that spot, where those really are your only two options. But there is a whole universe of possibilities in between those two extremes.

Please. Contact your health insurance company. It may be that they won’t cover the kind of help you and your family need, but a lot of plans now cover mental healthcare, far more than they did even a few years ago. There may be some resources there. Contact your local health and human services department, or the local equivalent. They won’t necessarily be able to provide you with direct help or contacts or resources, but it’s at least a place to start. I have a good friend who worked for an NGO that provided free social services and in-home support for families that dealt with problems very much like yours. Look around your local community - there may be organizations and resources you’re not aware of.

Even if you can’t find direct help for your son, please at least look for a support group for yourself and your other family members.

And, please, don’t take a radical step like kicking your son out because some know-it-alls on the internet assured you that was your only alternative to your current situation.

48

To add to what gdave said, although there are times for “tough love,” I’ve often found that people who endorse that approach do so because it gives satisfaction to the person proposing the “tough love”, not because it’s actually necessarily the suitable approach for the situation.

49

Putting a mentally ill individual out with no support system would be unbelievably cruel.

This thread is a good illustration of the status of mental health treatment in this country – little understanding, compassion, or resources.

50

I don’t have any guidance to offer the o.p. but I just wanted to reinforce this particular statement. As a society we’ve long stigmatized legitimate mental illness as at best laziness and too often as moral failing to be corrected by punitive action and amplification of distress, the result of which is prisons full of people with untreated emotional problems and homeless who could be at least marginally functional with a modicum of social support. The o.p. does need to care for himself, his marriage, and the emotional well-being of his other son, but that doesn’t mean a total abandonment of the older son insofar as he isn’t posing an immediate threat to the household.

Stranger

51

Another question: What’s the longest and furthest your son has ever been from home? Sometimes, it can be very beneficial for a mentally-ill patient to spend a few months in a totally different environment than what they grew up in; can do a mental “reset” of sorts on them. Away from you (the parents) and the familiar same old same old.

(But it can also backfire spectacularly, too…so there’s that as well.)

52

I’ve actually talked with a friend who has a son who has similar issues, who looked into that for his son at one point. Apparently you need to be ‘in the system’ for it to be a possibility, having a track record of your child’s negative behavior and a history of trying to help them with therapy and such. Which we had at one point, but he was doing so well for so long, all through high school and his vocational training, that we really thought the had turned a corner and was going to be ok. We even stopped the therapy. His school took him off the IEP list. But the lockdown hit just after he graduated and I think that really exacerbateed things.

Thanks for the kind words both of you! And I appreciate you sharing your story, nelliebly.

I have to say, you’ve all made me feel a lot better. Thanks again to everybody.

As for my son, he’s in much better spirits today and he’s even been extra nice to his mom and me. But he’ll do that the day after a major meltdown-- he’ll either act very ashamed and apologetic, or be on his best behavior. It won’t last, I know. The next manufactured crisis is always around the corner… :roll_eyes:

No, this is a very good idea, though I’m not sure how that could play out. At one time he considered joining the military-- he was looking at the National Guard. If he hadgone through with joining it would have gone either very badly, washing out quickly in an ugly way, or if he could get past the adjustment period he would really take to the order and regimentation, I think. I even started a thread awhile back about how to best support a son with emotional issues who wanted to join the guard. But apparently his past mental issues would have likely kept him out anyway.

53

Yup yup yup. I have seen firsthand . . .

Also, “tough love” is over-rated and waaaay over-prescribed. It can be effective in certain carefully selected situations but it too often fails to help anyone involved to any significant degree.

54

Very true. We’ve tried differing degrees of ‘tough love’ with varying results-- pushed him to do things that are outside of his comfort zone, as in some above examples with his networking vocational training for example, and after a tense adjustment period, he takes to it and likes it, it’s good for him. But we’ve tried giving him certain ultimatums, and those just backfire-- he gets ‘cornered animal’ syndrome and just shuts down or has yet another meltdown. It’s very difficult to calibrate.

55

I don’t know I have much advice, other than to echo what other people have said: find professional help. I do want to say that I see you, and it is hard. Talking about things on a message board, or to a therapist, can make you feel better. Just getting the words out there can be helpful.

My daughter is on the autism spectrum, has anxiety issues, and is also pretty smart. The frustration meltdowns are extremely common with her. She’s only 8, so she’s a bit easier to control than an adult. We are trying very hard to help her learn to persevere through trouble. Fortunately she seems more resilient than your son. A meltdown may be very bad in the moment, but once it’s over, she can bounce back to “normal”.

The problem is that I just don’t have the training to know what to do. I’ve figured out some tricks to try and short circuit the meltdowns before they happen, mostly humor related. But there’s no appealing to reason or logic. She knows when she calms down she’ll be able to figure out why her redstone construct in Minecraft isn’t working, but right now she’s “NEVER PLAYING MINECRAFT AGAIN” and “THIS IS SO STUPID” and kicking and banging.

I don’t entirely understand the meltdowns, but from what I’ve read and been told by experts it’s like a storm in the brain. I’ve read first hand accounts from people, and they say that they can feel it coming, and they don’t want it to happen, but they can’t control it. Without tools to deal with it, the emotions take over.

Anyway, finding the professional help can be incredibly difficult, and I’ve ranted about it on other threads. I think the insurance companies deliberately make it difficult. They are required to provide mental health coverage, but they can not bother to keep the list of in-network therapists up to date, and they can pretend like something isn’t covered until you threaten them. This is a test of your ability to persevere.

Have you looked at local universities to see if any of them have clinics that can evaluate your son? Insurance probably will not cover that, but many of them charge on a scale. That’s what we ended up doing with my daughter to get the autism diagnosis. Now at least we know what kind of help to look for.

56

I think your read of this thread is pretty poor, frankly. It seems like maybe you’re just looking to express a holier-than-thou attitude, but I saw a grand total of one poster who suggested OP kick his son unceremoniously out of the house. OP specifically mentioned he was considering giving his son money to move out of the house, so he introduced the idea, not the thread at large. A number of posters presented pros and cons of both approaches, and the vast majority were advocating for a balanced approach, taking things slow, developing a plan, getting therapy etc. Other than like one poster who posted at the very beginning of the thread, I see very little of what you’re scolding people for going on here.

Also, helping an adult move out on their own is not the same as kicking someone out of a house. Approaching it as a process allows the son to acclimate to the idea–which OP is our only source of information on his son, and he’s indicated that things they really work at convincing and cajoling him to do, he often will end up doing and frequently to his betterment. OP is very unlikely to outlive his son, and most adults actually thrive and enjoy moving out of their family home. The OP’s son has even expressed some (albeit it fanciful) desires to move out.

You’re also living in a dream world on health insurance and health and human services, that’s literally the equivalent of where I worked in VA for 5 years after I retired from my first career–and I was exclusively in the administration of funds (I have no therapeutic/medical background), people who function at the level of his son would be extremely atypical in my experience to receive significant state or Federal funding, would be unlikely to qualify for disability, and OP’s self-described “very bad” health insurance is unlikely to cover any kind of serious ongoing mental health treatment.

I don’t know how it was in other states but we were driven quite a bit by the DSM and ICD9 diagnostics codes, and as far as I understand from OP’s post, we’re talking about maybe an OCD diagnosis but a person who is gainfully employed, graduated high-school and completed post-secondary vocational education, is likely able to communicate well and drive a car, as well as complete daily tasks like buying items from a store. I can’t pretend to know exactly how it is in the other 49 states, but in Virginia at least no one in government is going to be opening a big bag of money for this kid.

At the end of the day the OP has to decide what future he wants for himself, his son, and for the rest of his family. There were many families in our programs who had kept seriously intellectually disabled / developmentally disabled adults living in the family home, and who intended to continue to do so for the rest of their lives, and who had made trust arrangements to cover their care when they passed away. There are people who can do that and who will be happy to do it, but that isn’t everyone. OP’s son is nowhere near as dependent as those people, but the same decision matrix exists. Is the OP’s goal to help the son establish a normal, semi-independent adult life for himself? Or is it to mostly just make him behave better inside the family home? Neither is right or wrong, but if he wants to try to help him establish adult independence it’s something he’s going to have to invest time and effort into working towards; that isn’t “tough talk” or the same thing as throwing all his belongings out onto the street and changing the door locks.

57

It sounds like the issue is the “meltdowns”, right? If not for them, would you be cool with him living in the backroom, working part time, and doing his thing for the next 10-15 years or so? (Which would be fine! I am not saying there’s anything wrong with that). It seems to me that he still has lots of maturing to do, and a stable situation/place might be what he needs. He’s still very young.

I’m saying this because if that’s the case, it’s not your son that’s the issue, it’s the meltdowns. You’ve been vague about them. Is he a danger to himself? Others? Does he destroy property? Is it mostly just deeply unpleasant and terrifying?

I’m suggesting you work with him to make the meltdowns bearable. Eventually they need to stop, of course, but in the meantime, is there a protocol to make them better? Can you change your reactions in a way that keeps them his problem, not yours?

58

One option might be to build a standalone suite on your property. That might be a good use of the college money. He would have his own place, but it would be close by. If he doesn’t stay there, it still helps your property value and you can rent it out .

59

Hey, even to echo others with your reply is appreciated :wink:

Seriously, I really appreciate you sharing your story with your daughter. These personal stories remind me that we’re not alone in dealing with these issues.

@Martin_Hyde, you’ve given some great advice in this thread but I appreciate @gdave’s advice as well, and I think gdave has a good point about not listening to some of the more extreme opinions. That said, I am able to determine what among these opinions works best for my son (although I’d be lying if I said that putting his belongings on the front porch and changing the locks hasn’t crossed my mind at times).

I do have some understanding of what my son is going through on a certain level. OCD runs hard in our family. My dad was also formally diagnosed with it, one of his cousins I think, and his mother was a major hoarder (at least my dad’s OCD manifested in super organized neatness, maybe in subconscious response to Grandma). I know I carry that OCD gene-- I was a very anxious kid and teenager, suffering a lot of panic attacks. The difference between my son and me at that age and younger is that I would suffer in silence and he lashes out. I managed to help myself through a mix of changing or learning to ignore my bad obsessive thoughts (what’s now called CBT I guess) and desensitization training-- pushing past my anxieties and getting over them rather than avoiding things that cause anxiety.

I think the best course for my son and our family going forward is to (1), get some therapy or join a support group for me and my wife. This thread has shown me how important that is. And (2), continue to gently but firmly push my son to try new things and push past his anxieties so he learns to become more independent and not a shut-in. It’s so easy to get complacent when he’s doing his own thing, shut in his room and just enjoying the peace and quiet for as long as it lasts. But everything good in my son’s life has come from him pushing past his anxieties, often with our or his teachers’ help (and he had some really good teachers and school counselors along the way-- I think they helped him more than any of his many therapists).

It’s actually crossed my mind to buy a recreational trailer, park it in the backyard and say here ya go! But it would really amount to just moving his bedroom from the house to the backyard. He’d still be in the house a lot. As much as he acts like he hates us at times, we’re all he has for real human interaction. He likes talking to his brother too (his brother doesn’t always like talking to him though).

60

I worked with an agency that helped disabled people find housing in the community, and also provided respite care for families with a disabled member who required a lot of care.

I am not trained to diagnose autism; however, I am trained to make referrals for it. While it’s true that evaluating someone over the internet is dicey, and I think it’s a waste of time when it is unsolicited, the OP, on the other hand, is asking for advice.

From what the OP has written, concur with the people who have suggested that the son may be on the autism spectrum. He should certainly be evaluated for it.

Getting any kind of diagnosis gives you this option: getting guardianship of him. Think hard before taking this step; it is reversible, but it is still something that can damage your relationship with him. If it has good results, though, he could end up thanking you.

If you have guardianship of him, then you can make him see doctors, go to therapy, live in a certain place, and so forth-- you make such decisions as though he is not yet 18, albeit he still is over 18, so he can work full-time, and live in his own apartment, if you make those choices.

You can look for programs that assist people who are generally high-functioning, but need help making sure they get the bills paid, and other such things. You could move him into a place like this if he has some kind of diagnosis.

If he has a diagnosis, he can also qualify for SSI.

Everything I’m suggesting is pretty radical, but you (OP) sound like you are at the end of your rope. Maybe I’m way off, and you want to discard everything I have said. That’s fine; I’m not there, and can’t actually observe the situation.

Whether anything I have said is useful or not, I wish you luck in finding a solution.