Parents Give Up Custody to Get Help for Mentally Ill Daughter - Get Help for Mentally Ill Children

Written by Spencer Hunt and Debra Jasper

Some children are sent out of state when beds aren't available locally. County officials say that social workers have traveled as far away as Missouri or Texas to check on children. In December, counties had 398 kids in out-of-state homes, including treatment centers, group homes and foster homes. .

"Finding beds is a huge issue. If a kid comes in at 5 p.m. on a Friday afternoon you can't leave him in the waiting room all weekend. You have to find a place for him and move him through," Saros explains.

"These aren't easy kids to help. Some have learned a lot of horrible behaviors, and everybody is trying to figure out what to do with them."

What to do?

Mathews, the Delhi Township mom, knows how hard it is to find help for her 15-year-old-daughter, Lauren, who has post-traumatic stress disorder, lithium-induced diabetes and bipolar disorder, which causes severe mood swings.

The teenager has taken 16 medications in the past four years, from anti-psychotic drugs to mood stabilizers. She also has been hospitalized eight times for her mental illness. Her mom, dad and teenage brother have been through extensive group therapy trying to find a way to help. .

Nothing's worked.

"She has no friends, no one to talk to and nothing to do. She is deeply depressed," says Mathews, who starts to cry when she describes Lauren's illness. "I have a 17-month-old baby at home and with my husband losing his job, the new baby and taking care of Lauren, I'm just exhausted."

Later, in a bare conference room in the psychiatric unit at Cincinnati Children's Hospital, Lauren shows little emotion when her mom talks about the problems. She slumps in a chair in her oversized jacket, her short brown hair pulled into tiny pigtails.

"I'm bored," she says finally.

She pulls back a jacket sleeve to reveal a line of scars running up her arm and smiles a little. She got them after repeatedly cutting and burning herself with knives and cigarettes. "Her anxiety has been so horrible that she has cut and picked at her entire body," her mom explains.

Lauren just shrugs. "People talk too much," she says. "It annoys me."

Mathews, 36, desperately wants Lauren sent to a long-term facility for treatment, but not if it means relinquishing custody. "My child has a mom and dad. She has a family. Why would I put her in foster care?" Mathews says. "I don't want her to think we're giving her away."

She would pay for care herself but her husband is laid off from his truck-driving job. "We are a middle-class family. "We don't have $8,000 to $10,000 a month for care. What are we supposed to do?"

Last month, Mathews had one hope left. She was trying to persuade the county to pick up the tab for her daughter through a local mental health program called Hamilton Choices. But Lauren had waited more than six months for an assessment, and the family didn't hear from a Choices official until mid-February - the day after the Enquirer called the agency to inquire about her case.

The agency met with Lauren that same week, and told her the county hadn't contacted the agency about Lauren until three weeks earlier. "If the paper hadn't gotten into this, I never would have heard from them," Mathews says. "That's what it takes to get someone to pay attention to you in this system."

On March 12, Lauren was hospitalized again after she started hearing voices in her head and acting out at school. So Choices agreed last week to pay to send the teen to a treatment facility in College Hill.

Mathews is thrilled her daughter is finally getting treatment, but hopes it's not too late. She recalls that Lauren got so violent last fall that she threatened to kill herself with a steak knife and the police had to handcuff the teen just to take her to the hospital. Next time, Mathews worries, Lauren could actually hurt someone or end up going to jail.

"She's going to be 18 in three years and she will be out of the system. If someone doesn't help her, she'll either be in prison or pregnant, and either way they'll have to support her then," she says.

"Why not help her now?"