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Mental issues. SUPER important. Help please.
AnnonyMouse
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This is an alt, because a friend of mine wishes to keep everything anon. A good friend of mine recently befriended a girl. Strictly platonic. Turns out she has a series of mental disorders, ranging from Schizophrenia, to Multiple personality disorder. She's also very suicidal. He's tried to help her with this, but she REFUSES to get any sort of professional help. She claims that she's been raped twice. Everything seems very sketchy, and she's becoming obsessed with my friend. He's recently told me that now she thinks they're dating (not true), and is constantly asking him if he loves her. She's becoming obsessed, and is now guilting him saying "I needed you. I needed you last night and you weren't there" after she claimed that she was raped.
I'm not saying that she wasn't raped, I'm saying it's sketchy, and we don't know what the heck to do. how do we help this girl. how the heck does my friend get out of this situation with out causing her to commit suicide?
Edit: She's 16 and still in HS. We're out of HS.
I'm not saying that she wasn't raped, I'm saying it's sketchy, and we don't know what the heck to do. how do we help this girl. how the heck does my friend get out of this situation with out causing her to commit suicide?
Edit: She's 16 and still in HS. We're out of HS.
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Then he realizes she isn't his responsibility, if he's only just befriended her, and let the authorities help.
Probably the best he could do is inform the girl's family and cut off contact.
If he doesn't want to cut off contact (which is a valid option IMO), at the very least he needs to be upfront with her about where their relationship is when she brings it up (It's a friendship) and when she tries to guilt him, he'll have to not let himself be manipulated. If he was out with friends tell her he already had plans and couldn't be there. If he was relaxing at home but didn't want to go because she's a mess, well... tell her they're just friends and he can't be her shoulder to cry on like that.
How does one contact a professional or a doctor and...bring this up?
So she was raped, then the next day tries to guilt trip him about it? He should call the police for her.
I'm sorry if I sound like a dick, but I'm sure if he picked up the phone and started dialing she'd change her story.
Most public schools these days will either have a school psychologist or school social worker, or at the very least one per district. This is the person your friend would want to speak to. A school psychologist/social worker is more than capable of handling things from there - I coordinate with people in those positions regularly on behalf of the psychiatrist I work for part-time, and they can pull a student from school and force them to be seen at a hospital or at least evaluated by a psychiatrist or outside psychologist if they believe it is necessary.
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This. From the story it sounds like she is becoming a serious risk to herself and maybe those around her.
Currently painting: Slowly [flickr]
She's 16, she's in highschool. She's probably lying. Even if she isn't, it's not your responsibility to "fix" people with problems. She needs professional help, you aren't a professional, and she refuses anyway. Cut all ties to her.
You must have missed the part where the OP mentioned the girl is suicidal and obsessed with the OP's friend. That's a dangerous combination.
Currently painting: Slowly [flickr]
So is Coke and Mentos, but people live and learn.
Echoing earlier comments - this is not your responsibilty.
Deal with it in an entirely hands off way. If she commits suicide it is because she is mentally unstable, and even if you devote the next 4 years of your life to meeting her every whim it is STILL plausible that she would do it.
Contact a medical proffessional. Pass on the details you feel are needed. Explain that unless she gets help you cannot continue to associate.
Step away and insulate yourself. Looking after a long time friend who is struck down is one thing. Walking into this and staying there even though the person refuses help, is just self destructive.
Borderline folks are VERY hard to deal with. Your buddy is honestly in for a riugh ride. With meds, she might be able to deal, but if she's not wanting help, its not gonna be good. My advice is to continue to advocate for her to get treatment.
(Reading Rainbow voice) If you'd like to learn more about Borderline Personality disorder, pick upt "I Hate You, Don't Leave Me" by Jerold Kreisman at your local bookstore.....or Amazon.
You can't just call up a doctor and get this girl hauled away to some asylum. If she is as messed up as the OP says, yeah she needs a doctor but you can't force someone to get psychiatric treatment.
There's a ton of people who need help in this world but you can't save everyone. Unless your friend is a doctor, he shouldn't feel obligated to deal with this girl's mental issues.
I'd say the best thing he can do is talk to her parents and tell them she needs psychological help and then walk away from this mess. THEY are the ones responsible.
This was before the rather critical information about her being in high school, which changes my opinion to that of Cognisseur.
2.) Tell your friend he should call the school and ask to talk to their psychologist about her.
3.) Tell your friend he'd better hope she doesn't say he raped her when she gets pissed off that he narced her out for being so mental.
4.) Tell your friend to stop fucking hanging out with underage girls.
So he's supposed to stick around for this without being able to do anything anyway? Which, in turn, could lead the OP's friend to emotional troubles? This girl isn't his responsibility. She's clearly a danger to herself and others, and if she isn't going to get help, then the OP/OP's friend have done as much as they can, and they should get the fuck away.
Just? Mental institutions aren't jails for crazy people, they're hospitals. Ideally, they're run by people who know their shit.
Hence why the OP needs to speak with a doctor or medical professional qualified to get the girl the help she needs, forcibly if need be. Cutting all contact with the obsessed girl won't make her magically get better, it'll likely make it worse.
Currently painting: Slowly [flickr]
The girl's parents would have the right to involve a mental health professional, and teachers and counsellors at her school might be able to do so (but probably not without involving the parents). If OP and his friend should do anything at all then, it's inform either the parents or staff at her school of the situation, particularly any statements intimating suicide. Then cut off all contact. They have absolutely no business doing anything more than that, and anything they do above and beyond that is only likely to dig them in deeper.
As people have said, you need to tell your friend to try to distance himself out of this relationship. People like this are black holes and your friend is acting as an emotional crutch which is enabling her to keep acting like a nutcase.
Here's the deal: if you contact a professional or the school psychologist, your friend is going to keep getting latched on to. There is only so much that an outside professional or a school psychologist can do. The key point here is very suicidal. Your friend needs to call the police or 911 and tell them that he believes that this woman is in immediate danger of committing suicide. What will happen from there is:
1) They will take an ambulance or send a patrol car out to her home to evaluate the situation
2) They will take her to a hospital emergency room will she will be forced to talk to a psychologist
3) The psychologist will then make an immediate evaluation about whether or not she needs help. The psychologist may also offer her the option of getting help by getting committed to an underage mental institution
Here are some of the potential outcomes, issues, etc:
A) If the girl is smart and doesn't want help, she will lie to the psychologist and get sent home. If this happens and her parents didn't know she had problems before, they will know now and may keep a better eye on her; however, this could cause more problems and may make her more suicidal.
C) Your friend needs to say, "I thought you were in danger of hurting yourself so I called the police." If the girl is being overly dramatic and just wants attention, she won't use "I might kill myself" with your friend anymore, and she might stop torturing him because he can call the police again and if they get called out more than once on her she's going to have a harder and harder time justifying it to the shrink.
The reality is that talking to a professional or the school psychologist about this girl isn't going to have a huge effect, because there isn't a lot they can do. This is particularly true if the girl doesn't want help and just wants attention. If what she says is true and she does have multiple personality disorder/schizophrenia/etc then she will receive immediate help with that when she gets pulled in to a hospital and that is the best place for her.
Either way, the best thing your friend can do is put her in a situation to get help and then break off contact and let her work it out.
Edit: Just an additional piece of information, it might vary by state but in my experience if the shrink at the hospital decides that she does need to be committed because she's a danger to herself she will be able to put in her 72 hours. The part that isn't undertaken lightly is that if she tells them she doesn't want to be there a 72 hour timer starts. She has 72 hours to change her mind and after 72 hours then the issue goes to a court where it's either decided that A) she's mentally competent and they are forced to let her go or
If you would like more information/have questions on how this actually works or your friend wants to know what it's really like or is concerned about getting her put into one, please feel free to PM me and I can probably help.
okay so restraining order might be wrong, but essentially, you want to have some sort of record with the authorities that you re afraid she might make up some story about you doing illegal things to her, so that if she does decided to make up something about you and/or your friend, you'll have at least some kind defense.
Ok, so speaking again as someone who works for a child & adolescent psychiatrist and has been coordinating the care of multiple students in crisis over the past two weeks (back to school time? worst time of year; even worse than Christmas and end of the school year) the person in the best position to help in an official capacity is a school psychologist or social worker. I admit, I'm not certain what power someone in that position has in a different state, but in the Chicago burbs that we typically work with I can think of two different school psychologists who have sent students home in the past two weeks and have the authority to prevent them from returning to school until they have been medically evaluated and have a written note from a medical doctor authorizing their return to school. In both of those cases, the school psychologists contacted our office to coordinate things and ensure that the students would be evaluated, even though in one of the two cases they actually had police take the girl to the ER for immediate evaluation as well.
A school psychologist is in position to monitor this girl closely over the remainder of the school year - something that a medical professional will not be able to do without the voluntary participation of the girl herself - so ensuring that they are aware of the situation will see to it that whatever happens is hopefully more than just a temporary intervention or fix like you will get with a 911 intervention. If the school psychologist believes it is necessary, they will arrange that 911 intervention or ER evaluation, but they will also be in a position to follow-up throughout the rest of this school year, and the next one as well.
As far as everyone advocating contacting a doctor directly - not a good idea. Even if you had the name of her actual GP or psychiatrist, contacting them directly would do little other than get them to call the girl or her parents and ask them to bring her in for an appointment. Best case they speak to the parents, corroborate your friend's opinion of the girl's state, and direct the parents to bring her in immediately to them or to an ER. More likely though you don't have the name of a specific physician, and contacting a medical professional with no connection to this girl whatsoever isn't going to do anything - they aren't going to get involved in something like that for liability reasons, and would just direct you to 911/ER evaluation in all likelihood.
You've never been in one, have you? I've been in several, and they have uniformly sucked.
Ideally was a key word there. I've known people who have gone to them, at least for the short term, and they helped. Full disclosure, they were all there for suicide protection, but again, the idea of an institution isn't just to have a box to place nutters in.
Just to offer a different opinion on this, they don't universally suck, it's just that the amount you're going to get out of it is very dependent on the person. If you don't want to be there or if you're smart/self-aware enough to not want to put up with their formulaic approaches then yeah, it pretty much sucks and isn't going to help; however, if you've got some chemical imbalances, severely traumatic psychological issues, want help, and are willing to put 100% into their way of doing things then they help and can be the safest place for you to be.
Ketar: My opinion on the school shrink's ability to help is based purely on my own observations and experiences. I'm willing to say that things might be different in your school (or some schools) but I'm unwilling to make a blanket statement on that which is why I think the 911/police is the way to go because it is a more guaranteed result.
Edit: The suckage of mental institutions can also depend on the age at which you go in, if you're under 18 and go to a childrens/adolescents one I'd hazard to say that it's run a bit differently than one for adults (never been in one for adults before so I don't know)
1) Ask girl to stop contact, tell her it's over.
2) Stop all contact.
3) If contact persists, obtain restraining order.
4) If restraining order is violated, alert authorities.
It's that easy. Her mental and physical well being is not your problem, nor should it be. This isn't some sort of righteous cause you are supposed to pick up, nor should you worry about her health. If she has parents, that is their job.
It may sound cold, but my group was in this sort of position back in the good old days, and it led to bad things. Just walk away.
Notifying parents or school counselor is probably as far as you'd want to go. Even then the amount of responsibility that rests on your friend is questionable.
Mental Health Units in hospitals are sometimes only equipped/intended to deal with 72 hour holds while others can be more long term. Their quality can vary greatly dependent upon the state and even the county in which they are located. If you live in or near a major city, I would lay odds that at least the facilities have enough of a population to service that they don't have any major ethical violation problems.
Doing a quick google for your state or county and mental health should turn up some resources if you're that gung-ho about getting really involved.
1. Its up to the child's guardian if they wish to have inpatient hospitalization, not the kid.
2. Our usually critera boils down to "are they a threat to themselves or others?" If yes, we would possibly hospitalize them.
3. A lot more kids get hospitalized then you think. At an agency with 2000 open cases in a city of 150,000, I'd estimate we hospitalized an average of 3-4 kids a week on average (not discounting"frequent flyers")
4. I'd bank if even half the crap this girl is shoveling is true, someone is aware, either at school or at home. I'm not saying its not impotant to report this stuff, I'm just saying it may actually not change things.
5. Fun fact: Medicaid will assist you fully with counseling and hospitalization services. Insurance usually gives you 10 sessions and a hospitalization cap that works out to about half of a one-week hospitaliztion.
6. FYI: Hospitalization does not equal Commited. In the 1970's the vast majority of long-tern psych services were scrapped. To be a kid and be, for lack of a better term, locked up and have the key thrown away your folks need to petition the state for assistance, and you pracitcally have to stab the folks who assess you EVERYTIME or love eating your own poop.
7. Psych treatment is not the end of the world. You'd be surpirsed how many kids need help and are getting it, and even more by the number that aren't.
8. Parents do more to derail kid's treatment than anything else. When you go get your hair done rather than come to your kid's counseling appointment, don't look at me when i have to come out cause he's threating suicide again.