Source: Facebook

HOW TO TELL A CHILD ABOUT THE TRAGEDIES THAT RESULT FROM MENTAL ILLNESS

CHILD: “What does mental illness mean?”

PARENT: “That’s a great question. I’ll try to do my best to explain it.

“So, do you know how when you first wake up from a dream that you aren’t sure what’s going on? And how you can’t tell whether the dream or what you are seeing is real? and how the mood from the dream stays with you for a long time after you are awake? Well, mental illness is sort of like that. There are ideas like dreams in people’s heads and they can’t make the dream or the mood go away. Sometimes they can take medicine to help the feeling go away. But not always.

“Do you know how, If you get sick that you will not always think the same as you do when you are well? This just means your body is not working right while you are sick, and when your body doesn’t work right it affects your brain. For people with mental illness, they are usually sick in some way or another that affects their brain. Some of this sickness they are born with. And some of it they develop over time because of illness or an accident.

“Do you know how when you are tired, or sick or have a headache that you have no patience? And then you get angry at things that would not make you angry if you felt well? People with mental illness feel angry and have no patience like that all the time, and it never goes away. So, just like you might be frustrated or angry because you’re tired or don’t feel well, they become very frustrated and very angry because they don’t feel well, and they can’t make the feeling go away.

“And do you know how you can even get made at people you love, like your mother when you are sick, or tired, or frustrated, and how you say things you don’t really mean, or do things that you feel bad about afterward? People with mental illness say and do things to others because they are tired, or frustrated or sick and they want to fix their pain, and because they aren’t thinking the right way, they often choose bad ways of trying to fix their pain.

“For some of these people, medicine can help them. For other people we don’t yet have medicine to help them. And for many people they don’t like the medicine so they don’t take it.

“We decided a long time ago, back in the 1960’s, that it was’t right to lock people with mental illness in hospitals. Partly because it is very expensive to care for them. And when we did that we decided that it was better to risk having a few tragedies than it is to lock people in hospitals. But we still aren’t sure we made the right decision.

“Does that help?”

CHILD: “…..um… I think so. They are sick, they are tired of being sick, and they are angry, and they aren’t’ thinking right, so they try to stop the pain they feel the wrong way”. “And we don’t want to put them in hospitals so it’s expensive. So we let them kill children in schools to save money…..”

PARENT “Now, go explain it to some adults. They don’t get it either. :)”