@Former-Member
Thank you for your kind supporting message. Yes its a difficult situation we face with my son and uni and also hospital. We are speaking with the Senior Disability manager this afternoon. After I sent a pretty strongly worded email, I started to get a bit more of a receptive response from the faculty concerned and now they are exploring whether my son’s knowledge of the learning can be assessed in another way. Let’s see what their response is, hopefully it will be positive and he doesn’t need to withdraw like before. I’m just trying to be there for my son and provide the most support I can so he can make and informed decision after his 2 pretty long hospitalizations, where the specialists are trying to get the right medication for his correct symptoms, so he doesn’t completely give up feeling he’s loosing the whole year of his studies which will greatly impact on his confidence.
Its interesting that because my son’s mental health illness has a mood component and when he has severe or acute symptoms that often those around him who love him the most get affected. I have been told to bring him straight back to hospital for his leave periods if his moods dramatically change towards the more risky direction. Members such as @Bunniekins have been particularly supportive and she’s a real darling. I often find myself borderline venting here because I find you get quite close to members with very similar shared experience.
My current thoughts about medication which you rightly say is one of those tricky ones! My son couldn’t unfortunately cope with some of this medication even though my wife wants to explore more holistic natural cures in Asia, I have seen him psychotic without them when it was undiagnosed schzo affective and it was scary and that was when our family had our first and hopefully last run in with the Police. We are trying to get it down to the bear minimum with less side effects as possible. My daughter is managing her depression without medication with regular therapy on a GP supervised mental health plan and I saw her spiral out of control when she was trying antidepressants. My feeling is they are too easily prescribed by GPs and should only be monitored by specialist psychiatrists. My son is finially finishing being weaned off them today on to medication which treats his biopolar symptoms more directly and also help mitigate his suicidal idealations.
By the way, love the Totoro on your profile, it reminds me of my daughter who has a range of different sized Totoro’s on her bed and a Totoro powerbank for her iPhone.
Thanks again for your ongoing support. This forum with mensline and my carer therapist has helped me get through some of the really dark clouds we have been through recently. We are now moving towards the silver lining which every cloud has and I anticipate that things will improve in the near future. I’m trying my very best to live mindfully in the present moment and next week I’m off to an international conference where I am presenting my experiences learning from old 88 year old enlightened monk.
I wish you a sunny day wherever you are.
