Insurance

Today I get three emails from parents whose sons have stories similar to Colby's. My heart aches for them. For like me, over the years they each spent tens of thousands of dollars on medical and mental health treatment. These parents live in three different states, yet for various reasons their sons were not able to get the mental health help they needed, so instead, like Colby, these boys turned to drugs.

Colby first began counseling for mental illness when he was 8. He was in counseling again for another year when he was 10, and again at 12 and from then on it was a constant until his insurance benefits ran out when he was 18. When he was 14 he was hospitalized for two weeks with anorexia. At 15 he was diagnosed with obstructive defiant disorder and was hospitalized for 7 weeks. At 16 he spent 4 months in a group home. By age 17, in addition to the above, he had been diagnosed with panic attacks, paranoia, anxiety and depression. At 21, schizophrenia, a condition that runs on my grandmother's side of the family, was added to the list. When my savings and ability to pay ran dry my mother sold stocks and depleted her retirement. Every dollar we had went to pay for Colby's health care.

The other parents tell me that like Colby, while there was still some insurance to help cover the exhorbitant costs of testing, counseling, residential treatment, medication, outpatient treatment and more, their sons were able to function, to maintain, to be productive despite tremendous odds. One child was bi-polar; another, like Colby, had schizophrenia; the third suffered from paranoia. But once their health care stopped, all of them began making poor decisions, and each began a fatal downward spiral.

I recently went to a meeting of the National Alliance on Mental Illness and learned that more than 50 percent of people who use drugs have a diagnosed mental illness. So you have to think: which came first, the drugs or the mental illness? In talking with these parents, each boy had signs of mental illness before he reached the age of 10. And as the mental illness progressed and the health care lessened, each boy's ability to think clearly, normally, rationally, lessened.

There are some who wonder why those addicted to drugs often refuse help. It's because the mental illness is so pervasive, so consuming, that their brain does not function properly. Like any other organ that is ill, the brain compensates for its illness and the ability to think rationally is often decreased. Two very dear friends have children in their twenties who have trouble with various forms of drugs and mental illness. One has insurance and the other does not. I pray for both of them. I know the difficult road they walk very well, because I traveled it for more than 15 years.

I'm not sure what the details of health care insurance solution is or should be. But, I do know that other countries have found a way to solve this problem and allow each citizen access to health care, and I hope and pray our lawmakers will work together to give our citizens the same option. In the meantime, we're losing loved ones everyday. It's time for it to stop.