There’s this idea, fairly common in society, that mental illness is for teens and up. Children are happy little creatures, generally, right? Sometimes they’re abused and the trauma can make them mentally ill, but that’s not common.
There are two fundamental problems with this attitude. One, it’s incorrect to assume that trauma is the only reason a young kid can be mentally ill. Two, trauma is more common than people think. I’ll be covering the first problem in this post through the lens of my particular experience.
Where I live, you can be diagnosed with bipolar disorder at 18 years old. You cannot be diagnosed with bipolar disorder as a minor. This poses a problem because my age of onset was in first grade, roughly six years old. Because of the fact that I was very young and new to the world, this was also the age of my first suicide attempt. Thinking I wouldn’t be able to pass a spelling test genuinely felt like something worth trying to die over. So, I ate some hemlock, since I’d read about Socrates being killed with it. Luckily, I ate western hemlock, an unrelated species, and just felt kind of sick.
I’m not recounting that for fun or pity. I’m recounting it because children with mental illness are in genuine danger because they have little to no experience with managing their emotions, have little to no concept of the idea that their life can change and improve, and are dismissed by adults. I told a teacher that the test made me want to die, though not that I’d attempted to, and it was brushed off as little kid hyperbole. If I had used a method that was effective rather than one I thought would be, I would have been dead at six years old.
I would not receive medication that worked even a bit for another two years. I would not receive treatment for bipolar disorder specifically for ten years, and that required my PCP fudging the reason for the medication because she was afraid I would die if she didn’t, and diagnosis was still two years off at minimum. I received a formal diagnosis at age 19, thirteen years after onset.
But surely that’s uncommon, right? This story is a huge edge case, right? I actually have no idea, because age of onset and age of diagnosis are massively conflated for most disabilities. Policies like the one in my area that restricted bipolar diagnoses by age can artificially raise the age of “onset”, in my case by thirteen years. The general idea that children are somehow immune to mental illness can also delay diagnosis by several years, perpetuating the idea that young children can’t be mentally ill. The data on when people start experiencing mental illness is inherently skewed upwards, and I frankly don’t have a good estimate on how bad that skew is. If anyone does have that data, please chime in.
Listen to children. If they’re saying they’re sad all the time, that they don’t care about anything, that they don’t see a future for themselves, those are signs of depressive symptoms. If they say that tests make them feel sick, that they can’t do anything because they’re scared, that they can’t breathe and freeze up, those are signs of anxious symptoms. Many children talk about imaginary things, and that’s just fine, but slip in a question or two about them to make sure that the kid is just playing, and not experiencing psychosis.
Children are new to the world and vulnerable, and they don’t know what’s normal and what isn’t. They need people who are more experienced watching out for problems they might be having, and listening when they talk about having problems. If you can, try to be the person who perceives them, and tells them that things can be better.
These are just some of the tags on this post.
Even making this post, I honestly didn’t expect this massive of a response
None of us are alone in this. And that’s horrible. But it’s not as bad as thinking we are when we aren’t.
“So if little girls experience their menstrual cycle in 5th grade or 4th grade, will that prohibit conversations from them since they are in the grade lower than sixth grade?” asked state Rep. Ashley Gantt, a Democrat who taught in public schools and noted that girls as young as 10 can begin having periods.
The first ever suicide prevention hotline was created in 1935 bevause a man conducted a funeral for a 14 year old girl who ended her life because she got her period. She didn’t know what it was and assumed it was a STD. Learning about periods and sexual health is life saving. Republicans are unapologetically just evil.
You know, here’s a thing: I went to Catholic school from age 5 to age 16. (My family’s not Christian, but the local public schools weren’t great, so – )
In 4th grade, girls were given a clear, scientific, extremely bland pamphlet about menstruation. It was Boring and Educational. There wasn’t any class about it or anything – just the pamphlet, provided in a plain manila envelope for you to take home.
Starting in 5th grade, the school provided a small pack of pads to girls. This was probably so that anyone who unexpectedly started her period at school would have an emergency supply, but the thing was: this boring pamphlet, this pack of pads handed to you by a nun, made menstruation…so normal. It’s so normal that a nun hands you a pack of pads. It’s so normal that there’s a boring pamphlet. It’s just a thing your body does. (It’s so normal that you realize, oh, nuns have periods, huh.)
It kills me, KILLS ME, that this totally boring and bland form of education about human bodies is somehow Too Much, Too Scary, Too Sexy, for some people.
Some rando: You should think about stopping your prescription
Me: My pills make me not want to die tho
They: You shouldn’t want to die, that’s not normal
Me: Yeah that’s why I’m taking my pills
Again: But you aren’t the *real* you when you’re on your pills
Me: I’m the alive version of me
An actual doctor, once: “Relying On A Chemical Crutch For A Hormonal Imbalance Denies The Fortitude Of The Human Soul”
Me: Cool so like I’m agnostic
They: “But you might be on pills the rest of your life!”
Me: “So?”
Good! That means that I have a “rest of” my life to continue living!
Thanks to the pills.
Meanwhile, no person ever: “You should think about giving up your insulin/antiretrovirals/beta blockers/anti-rejection drugs/prosthetic legs/daily multivitamin, because using those your whole life is bad for some reason”
Oh no, they do that too.
I have a kidney transplant. A woman once told me she didn’t believe in organ transplants and that people should just die when they’re meant to.
Sounds like a great set-up for a murder
People who are fully healthy, fit and neurotypical seem to think they are that way because they’re doing something right that the rest of us haven’t thought of, and not just because they got lucky
Speaking of the luck of the non-disabled…I once terrorized a Karen who was using me to teach her entitled kid that disabled people are Other and should not be treated with respect. I told her (truthfully) that until I was twenty-eight, I wasn’t visibly disabled. Then a defective chromosome that I hadn’t known about kicked in. So my luck ran out. But until then, I had been normal–just…like…her.
The sheer terror on her face as the concept of “You mean I’ve just been lucky so far?” seeped into her brain was a thing of beauty.
People who are fully healthy, fit and neurotypical seem to think they are that way because they’re doing something right that the rest of us haven’t thought of, and not just because they got lucky
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
“You are one stroke of bad luck, common viral illness, or traumatic event away from being just like me” is honestly the most terrifying thing you can tell an abled person - and you should. I was healthy and fit and doing everything ‘right’ too - right up until some inner switch flipped and my body crumbled right out from under me.
Me when I manage to defeat Ambien’s sweet lull of slumber and I get to the phase where I feel all loopy and will require a second pill to actually sleep:
