Early Intervention and the "Relationship Chicken"
By Katie Linsky Shaw, August 22, 2022Helping a child with mental health issues can be scary and intimidating when little is known about the resources available. Families often assume the only help is a one-hour, weekly visit with a local therapist. But even that can be hard to find with lengthy wait times for new patients.
“Families who struggle feel isolated and often at a loss to help their children,” said Maggie Weaver (name change for privacy reasons) whose 12-year-old daughter has Obsessive Compulsive Disorder that developed at an early age. “Many providers aren’t aware or don’t share alternative options other than hospitalization. We wish we’d known earlier.”
Early intervention through programs like wilderness therapy and therapeutic boarding schools can help reduce hospital admissions for mental health issues and shorten the stay at intensive residential programs. But finding help when a young child is suffering is difficult if you’re unfamiliar with the mental health community. And schools, who should be well-versed in recommending help outside the classroom, are failing those families.
Weaver’s daughter started struggling with OCD in the fourth grade. (OCD is a disorder in which people have recurring, unwanted thoughts, ideas or obsessions which often lead them to do something repetitively to relieve that anxiety.) The disorder became overwhelming when her daughter was afraid to leave the second floor of their home. Therapy, with an emphasis on “exposure therapy,” and medication helped her return to school where she did well until the Covid pandemic. Virtual school was difficult and the center where she received therapy stopped seeing patients.
When school returned to in-person, Weaver enrolled her daughter in a half-day private school program specializing in ADHD in addition to the public school. She started out doing well but by October of that year, her daughter was refusing to attend the public school due to bullying there which made it difficult to get her to continue at the private school which she loved. She also wouldn’t leave her bedroom. Weaver said her daughter put up “defensive, emotional walls” and resisted help from others.
“One person described it as having a flat tire and just unable to get going,” said Weaver. “She loved her outpatient therapist but outpatient sessions were not enough to support her.”
The family considered bi-weekly appointments but they knew it still wasn’t enough.
In January, they decided to send their daughter to a wilderness program for three months where she thrived. From there, she transitioned to Asheville Academy - a therapeutic boarding school outside Asheville, NC, focused on girls ages 10-14.
At wilderness therapy and Asheville Academy, her daughter started to grow and make positive changes. She learned to self-advocate, listen to other perspectives, and rediscovered she can do well academically. She also had the “rigid thinking” of her OCD challenged and learned coping skills to get through future OCD-related issues.
“We recognized that she was struggling and needed more help than she could get in an outpatient setting,” said Weaver adding that few therapists specialize in pediatric OCD and are difficult to find. “Once we tried everything that we could to keep her home, we acted relatively early so that she could gain the skills she needed to be better prepared for high school."
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