My 22-year-old son has left university studies to “plan his future from home” This is the third time he has done so. Might he have a mental illness?
A story of a 22-year-old girl might be a good starting point in trying to understand your son. Some years ago, we saw a brilliant girl who had dropped off the rails just when all seemed to be going well for her in life. She had passed her KCSE, obtaining a straight A and won a scholarship to a prestigious university in Canada.
She landed in that country in October, just as the winter was setting in. The first semester went well but as she was to recall later, the darker it became that winter, the less energetic she felt.
That Christmas, she was alone in the hostel, all the other students having gone to be with their families, and a combination of extreme cold, rain, loneliness and darkness in the afternoon drove her to take her first alcoholic drink. This, she later admitted, gave her some warmth from the inside, and the following day she took another drink. A few weeks later she made her first attempt at suicide, by taking many tablets she had managed to accumulate for the constant headaches she had been experiencing.
In hospital, a diagnosis of SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) was made, and she was put on the correct treatment and slowly improved. On discharge, she was given some medication to continue with but because she felt so much better, she decided to stop taking the prescribed medication. Mistake number one!
When she got back to class, she was behind her classmates and had some difficulty keeping up with the lessons. This was a most unusual condition for her since all her life she had been at the top of her class. Soon she lost interest in classwork, and indeed in many activities she used to enjoy and once again as she told us later, she found herself in a deep hole.
The deeper she sunk, the more she felt alone and the more she drank. Mistake number two. This was the point she should have gone back to the doctors who had helped her.
After she stopped going to class, the school authorities panicked, informed immigration and before she knew it she was back home, in a state of shame, fear, and failure. She soon got better, went back to Canada and at first enjoyed her studies, only to fail yet again when the winter set in. Once again, she found herself in territory she knew nothing about, failure in academics.
Both she and her family turned to the church and things only got worse because the young pastor made sexual advances at her during the prescribed daily prayer sessions intended to remove the demons of failure.
Once again alcohol came to her rescue and by the time we saw her, it was obvious that she had been going through withdrawal symptoms, following a near-fatal accident she had in her mother’s car on her way from a drinking session.
She was in a state called delirium tremens in which she was actively hallucinating saying that she could see angels and elephants dancing over her head. She was frail in the extreme and had obviously lost much weight.
To what extent is your son behaving like this girl who had not met failure in her academic life?
It might be helpful to get him seen by a mental health specialist, just in case this turns out to be the case. There might be other conditions going on, but the expert will help you sort them out.
