Doing the Impossible - Hospitalizing Someone You Love Against Their Will[Episode 4]

11/30/18 • 19 min

Due to popular demand, Tom jumped into one of the hottest (translation: painful and confusing) topics for parent and family caregivers: having to use a mobile crisis team to get a loved one into the hospital against their will - all in the interest of keeping them safe.

While this topic requires A LOT of coverage, Tom gives his listeners a primer on the things that really matter: first, who are the players, what are their roles, and what are the rules of engagement. Secondly, what does the parent or family caregiver need to know, plan for, and expect in this otherwise highly chaotic, overwhelming event (that usually concludes with helping the cops handcuff some you love and take them to the hospital). And why is this necessary? Because the family or mental health providers have concluded that their psychotic thinking or despair makes them a certain risk to kill themselves or endanger the community.

Tom wants this episode and its content to be a digestible “how to” about dealing with this most dreaded of all interventions for families dealing with a mental illness. He reviews his crisis care checklist and rules of engagement so the event can be as tolerable and as successful as possible. From knowing the law, to dealing with the police, and managing their thinking and stress, Tom walks his listeners through this most painful and courageous act of love.

Previous Episode

How Does a Psychiatrist Do Their Job? [Episode 3]

As a caregiver, you are practically trained by the mental healthcare world to be an outsider in the treatment process for someone you love. You didn’t ask to be marginalized, and you weren’t told your participation is unwelcome. This just happened; but how? Because the mental healthcare world does a poor job explaining how it does its job AND that includes explaining how you can actually help them do their job. And it doesn’t help that you, the family caregiver, are so overwhelmed watching someone’s life fall apart that you don’t even know what to ask or how to participate. I think we are also trained in life to defer to doctors and the medical profession (there was a time in this country when nurses all stood up when a doctor entered a hospital nurses’ station; imagine that.)

But your job is to “pierce the veil” and understand how they think, assess, and formulate their opinions. So I asked a national expert who trains psychiatrists, Dr Paul McHugh at Johns Hopkins, to explain how he trains psychiatrists to think and validate family caregivers as meaningful participants in treatment planning. Your knowledge and “front line” experience caring for or parenting that patient is relevant and necessary to the psychiatrist’s assessments. And you are a valid partner in that process. But behaving like a valid participant starts with acknowledging yourself as a relevant, necessary reporter to the people providing care for your family.

And it is critical for your own welfare to be able to practice objectivity and distance like the doctor or therapist does. Being emotionally overwhelmed hurts your quality of life AND your ability to be a quality participant in helping the mental healthcare providers do their best work for someone you love.

Next Episode

A Trauma Treatment Primer for Parents and Families [Episode 5]

Trauma - What does it look like? ...Someone I love is suffering and it’s tearing me apart . . . How do I help?

In todays’s episode Tom dives into trauma, treatment, and recovery...what it is, how it happens, and how you, the parent or family, can do everything in your power to understand it . . . and help someone recover from it.

Tom introduces his listeners to Family Psych Consumer’s resident trauma expert, Dr Debbie Orr, and taps into her 30+year history as a trauma treatment expert to explain how trauma changes the person and the brain. With her quiet, deliberate manner, Debbie walks you through what to look for - and how to cope - when a loved one’s traumatic event completely overwhelms their life.

Dr Debbie describes in detail how a singular or series of traumatic events slowly change the psychological, emotional, and physical health of a loved one. Tom and Debbie delve into how trauma experts approach and treat trauma, and the characteristics of quality care in this most intimate and complex area. Most importantly to his listeners, Tom discusses how family recovery can happen as part of the treatment for the traumatized person.