Parents of mentally ill adult children have few options.

[nolabear]

26. I'm so sorry. You're right, peoples' hands are tied and so are practitioners'. It's terrible.

Adults can be involuntarily admitted if they pose an imminent anger to themselves or others, but unless they are obviously dangerous it's hard to assess and impossible to make happen. And meds are frequently manipulated, as you said, without anyone knowing. It's damn near impossible to know what's actually going on with an adult who is operating under the privileges afforded adults. It's a tough, tough call. Do you remove individual rights because of diagnoses? When are they resumed? Is involuntary monitoring of meds a good idea as a condition for retention of rights? The effects of meds change; something that helped can stop helping. With personality disorders as you know, people think the problem is everyone BUT them and so don't take to therapy or intervention well.

I'm so sorry for what you're going through. We comfort ourselves with the illusion that we can somehow control what people will do and always be safe, but so far it is a terribly hard thing. I do hope that access and destigmatizing illness will help families to feel they can take action to help those who are ill, because the nature of the illness itself can make it almost impossible for the individual to do so.

And the loss of the dream of a child with a happy, fulfilling life is a cause for enormous grief. I am sorry you're going through this. I hope it gets better.