MENTAL ILLNESS, CHILDREN, ENABLING PARENTS: Dangerous conundrum
With the U.S. mental health crisis growing by the day, the narrower issue of parents as enablers of mentally sick children is a dangerous issue that is not being addressed sufficiently.
Consider these following associated with real life experiences:
Schizophrenic offspring with established record of violence
Parents do their absolute best to get their violent schizophrenic son off the hook after three arrests and one conviction for assault and attempted grievous harm. His behavior guarantees continued violence with possible homicidal episode waiting to happen. Courts, social workers, and the police at cross purposes. Parents exploit the confusion and expensive legal assistance to keep this violent individual in the streets endangering innocent people.
Children under 18 in "mainstreaming"
"Mainstreaming" refers to philanthropic laws that allow parents to enroll their mentally sick children to any school they like, with often disastrous effect for the rest of the children in the class. Tourette's syndrome sufferers are the most common examples of how classrooms can be constantly disorganized by children that may not stop causing upheaval with cries, foul language, and attempts to harm other children. One such child assaults repeatedly classmates and showers teacher with profanity. School is unable to do anything unless parents agree to withdraw the child.
Bail them out
Mother cannot reconcile herself with pushing mental son who is also a crack addict to therapy. She bails him out repeatedly. Mental son harms mother, neighbors. Mother refuses to testify against mental son in court. She states he "will turn around," she is "sure" of it.
Blaming "inhuman society" for illness
Divorced parents lash out at neighborhood because there have been efforts to contain mental daughter breaking and entering homes not to steal but to vandalize and urinate in bedrooms. Mental daughter ends up assaulting two elderly people, sending one to the hospital. Divorced parents hire expensive lawyer to defend offspring, succeed in evading detention.
The "one more chance" cycle
Mental son is in and out of jail for theft and vandalizing parked cars. Every time parents "read him the Riot Act" but conclude he deserves "one more chance." Son is into his eight incident. Police guarantee he will soon graduate to something much more serious.
Parents of bullies
Mental health is strongly associated with bullying, which has devastating effect on the victim. Parents who shield mental bullies cultivate criminal and violent behavior and are "moral instigators" of crime. Even in cases where there is no mental diagnosis regarding the bully, enabling parents aren't innocent.
Enabling parent behavior expands a serious problem by effectively transferring much of the criminal burden to other people who wish to be left unharmed. More often than not, enabling parents are combative and abusive when challenged.
It is imperative that a shift in legislation should apportion greater responsibility to such "parents." Principally, the law must remove the eternal excuse of the mental person being an "adult" and thus beyond the authority of a parent. Indeed, in cases where the courts release a mental repeat offender to the cognizance of family, parent or parents must be held criminally responsible for junior sending an innocent morning walker to the hospital (or worse).
Enabling parents should be recognized as a bona fide category of offenders and treated accordingly.