The short story: Zac has atypical psychosis, which might be an evolving psychotic disorder. He desperately needs stabilization, the shrinks say not to care about education at all right now. He is standing on the edge, and we have to be very careful not to push him over. It was all very sobering. I mean, I knew things were bad, but hearing it verbalized by the psychologist still was hard to deal with. You know, when reality hits harder than one expects.
The long story: We had EVERYONE there who counts. Counselors, psychologists, my lawyer, placement coordinator, case managers, my support people. I was very happy to get everyone in a room together and get to talk about the current Zac issues. I got many valuable insights, and hopefully the school people did too.
His psychiatrist said she noticed the first paranoid thinking in December, and she thought it might have been triggered by a bomb threat at school. She also talked about his current psychosis as an evolving psychotic disorder. She mentioned that Bryan is developing an anxiety disorder as a result of Zac's bullying of him. Gah.
His speech pathologist told about an extremely strong reaction he had to the book "Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's " . He got very upset, she was surprised by the intensity of his response. He was rocking in a fetal position. This incident now explains to me why she is on his list of 'People who emotionally abuse me.' He could not deal with this book at all.
His therapist talked about last Thursday (the day after he got discharged from the hospital (oh yes, he is just fine, take him home!)) when he was, during therapy, cycling between being very agitated and crying 'My mom is interrogating me about school all the time! She is trying to drive me insane with her questions, so that I
will kill myself.'
The psychologist said 'So here we have someone who can't tolerate introspection. Someone who can't tolerate his Asperger's Syndrome. He can't tolerate people, because he is afraid that one of them will hurt him. His biggest desire in life is having a girl friend, but he can't manage the social communication necessary to even make friends. Adolescence is a time of identity formation, but he cannot handle
anything which has to do with his self image. His body is ready for many things, and he is having a developmental crisis as an adolescent. He is rejecting himself. '
'The difference between last year and this year seems to be that his differences have become inescapable. He is experiencing lots of fear and axiety. We can say that his ego has been fractured. He thinks his own mother is going to kill him, that is one of the worst paranoias, this kind of threat in the safety of his own home. There is no doubt we have to stablilize him. We don't want him to go over the edge.'
'He lacks social cognitition, inferential thinking. He cannot tolerate failure. He can't read other people's minds. He doesn't know the fundamentals of agreeing or disagreeing.'
'He is in an acute crisis right now. He needs stabilization in a therapeutic foster care or a treatment center. In a therapeutic foster setting someone should be home all day, it can't be a working family. We need to back off on the education part entirely till he has been stabilized. He could pose a danger to himself, to his siblings, to his mother.'
His psychiatrist feels that he should be a in program for Aspergers kids, giving him some minimal social and living skills. I guess the theme of the meeting was that things are very severe, and that he needs to be stabilized. Of course, it is not clear exactly how this stabilization would happen. His psychiatrist says she doesn't think the meds are going to do it at the moment. He can be pushed over the
edge very easily. We hoped the CHINS would open a way to stabilization, but it turns out that that is going to take more time than I expected (more about that in the next email after I eat something)
The psychologist also mentioned that he would most likely live at home for many many years to come. Yesterday so many dreams of 'normalcy' were shattered for me. It is not like I didn't know that things were very bad, but somehow yesterday made it hit home harder than it had before.
Still, I feel blessed that I got so many people together in a room to talk about all those issues, and make it clear to the school that this is more than the normal 'teenager doesn't want to get up to go to school' problem. Although the assistant principal doesn't seem to grok it, I think everyone else did. So it was a good meeting, I just wish that Zac's problems weren't this severe and that my biggest worries were whether he would break his curfew or have sex with his girl friend.
The good news is that I got to hang out with the psych's therapy dog Plato for a bit, who is a lovely and very calm 5yo black lab.
Anyway, I need food, and I am still reeling from this meeting, where the gravity of the situation was just a bit more than I wanted it to be. Thanks all for supporting and caring.
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