Skylar's story: 'We're crying for help'

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article by website known as Pal-Item, not mine

In the tiny emergency psychiatric evaluation room, Skylar Harris began jumping up and down on the hospital gurney.

The 10-year-old cursed. She laughed.

She took off her clothes.

She urinated in the closet. She vomited on the floor.

Clawing, biting and kicking, she attacked her mother and her aunt.

Four male police officers responded in an attempt to keep her and those around her safe. They handcuffed her at the wrists and ankles.

Hours passed. Eventually, Skylar received calming medications.

As the little girl lay on a mat on the floor, naked and crying, her mother, Amanda Harris, was able to lie down at her side and cover her with a coat.

"I'm just wiping tears from her face and I couldn't make it stop, I couldn't make it go away… I felt helpless. I didn't know what to do to help her," Amanda Harris said.

Skylar and her family have been dealing with more than a dozen mental illnesses and disorders since she was an infant, including bipolar disorder, autism spectrum disorder, Asperger's syndrome, impulse control disorder, mood dysregulation disorder, ADHD and epilepsy.

She can be her true self, a sweet little girl with an infectious giggle, a wry sense of humor and a great love for Disney princesses and animals.

Or, with the flip of a switch in her brain, she can become a danger to herself and others. The mania of bipolar disorder combined with her other illnesses leads to excessive energy, rapid thought processes, sleeplessness, aggression, anger and irritability.

Amanda Harris of Richmond and her sister, Katrina Harris, ended up in the emergency room of an Indianapolis hospital on Feb. 3 seeking in-patient psychiatric treatment for Skylar after months of escalating problems. The family and mental health professionals had been seeking for some time to secure a residential placement for Skylar without success.

Turned down at multiple centers because she is too severely ill, too young, too old or too aggressive ... Skylar and her family ended up in a crisis situation.

"I'm sharing Skylar's story with the hopes that maybe things will change to the extent that there won't ever be another child shackled to a hospital bed … in a small locked room, and kept in that small locked room for up to 14 hours," Amanda Harris said.

"My hope is that other parents don't have to go through what I went through, what our family has gone though and what Skylar has gone through.

"Look at how broken this system is — here's a little girl left in hard restraints, soft restraints, handcuffed to the bed. ... As a mother, you should never have to learn the perfect position to have to put the handcuff so it doesn't hurt … or leave marks," Amanda Harris said.

One in five children affected

Skylar might not fully understand her challenges, but she is aware of them.

One day, the family visited a mall with a fountain. Skylar was given a coin to toss in to make a wish.

Her dream: "I wished my brain was like everybody else's."

The National Institute of Mental Health reports more than 20 percent — or one in five — children, either currently, or at some point during their lives, have had a seriously debilitating mental disorder.

"So, Skylar's not the only one, and I just can't imagine all the families that are having to go through all these horrors to try to get their children the care that they need," aunt Katrina Harris said.

"It's not just (one hospital) failing our kids… It is a systemic problem," Amanda Harris said.

Research conducted by the George Washington University Center for Health and Health Care in Schools said in 2013 that "from significant disconnects between the multiple institutions that serve children and their families, to chronic financial instability, the children's mental health system is fragile and at-risk."

The report also concludes that during the past two decades, modest progress has been achieved in the capacity of children's mental health but systemic challenges remain that often lead to significant disparity and gaps in care.

Amanda Harris doesn't understand why it has been so hard to get the proper care for Skylar, just because she has a mental illness instead of a physical illness.

"I don't think there would be a child with cancer anywhere in America that would get turned away by different hospitals because they had too many recurrences of cancer," she said. "Do most hospitals set a limit for how many times you relapse and end up not in remission anymore before they say you can't have chemo again? Because I don't think they do.

"So, if you put it like that, it's ludicrous, because frankly her problems are no less severe. She could seriously hurt herself. She could seriously hurt someone. And you know what, God forbid, if she did something impulsive and she really hurt someone, I would have every politician calling for change to the mental health care system, because it's happened before, we've seen it.

"I think this is ground zero," Amanda Harris said. "I think this is where we need to change the mental health care system, expose this and just say, 'We're crying for help.'"

Living under siege

The entire Harris family had done everything they can to maintain Skylar's well being since she was first diagnosed with seizures and epilepsy as an infant.

Severe tantrums and aggression got her expelled from several day care centers as a toddler. In kindergarten, Skylar spent 47 documented hours in the locked time out room and experienced her first hospitalization that year.

Skylar's rages sometimes last hours. She doesn't sleep. She needs constant entertainment and distraction. She has trouble managing her emotions, especially anger and frustration.

"There have been a lot of different things that have been destroyed," Amanda Harris said. "We've both been hurt. Everyone in our family bears at least one scar… as a direct result of Skylar's aggression."

She's been hospitalized for acute and long-term stays nearly a dozen times in her short life. She has had weekly therapy, case and medication management and sees a psychiatrist regularly.

"If love could cure it — if love, if structure, if all these things could fix mental illness, she would be cured," Katrina Harris said. "It's just that's not how it works."

the full article is at http://www.pal-item.com/story/news/local/2015/04/04/skylars-story-crying-help/25290475/

How has it been possible to manage the behavior, short of extreme, physical measures or miracle cures.

In other words, what is a humane, constructive win-win. Realistically speaking.

I am glad the family was finally able to get her help. Lot of families still suffer with these kinds of kids and it's very hard to get them hospitalized due to laws and it's like no one take sit seriously when a kid is violent or dangerous. I also think the laws are to keep parents from placing harmless kids into hospitals just to get rid of them because they are too much of a inconvenient or a burden and because they are not the way the parents want them to be. But then the innocent ones have to suffer because there are kids out there who truly do need it.