When Children Have a Mental Illness

How Parents Cope with a Lack of Support, Insurance and Understanding

By Anne Chappell Belden

Samantha Waters’* son Brad was in third grade when he first told her that he wanted to die. He said he was going to get up in the middle of the night and stab a knife through his heart.

“It was so out of the blue,” says Waters. “He acted so normal, like he was always having a good time.”

Waters notified the school and took Brad to a therapist; he seemed to improve. But in sixth grade, with the added social and academic pressures of middle school, Brad’s talk of dying intensified. Though he was a smart kid with plenty of friends, he told his mother that he was stupid, worthless and didn’t like himself.

Usually, the episodes came at night. Waters tried to protect her son by watching him around the clock. At one point, she slept on his bedroom floor. “I would watch him breathe all night,” she says.

“The worst was when he was asking, begging, pleading, demanding for me to kill him. I told him, ‘No, I can’t do that. I love you too much.’ He wouldn’t even believe that I loved him.”

*Names of the children who have struggled with mental health issues and their parents who we interviewed for this article have been changed to protect the families’ privacy.
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A psychiatrist diagnosed Brad with depression stemming from a chemical imbalance. The diagnosis and subsequent treatment is not unusual for a child. In fact,an estimated one in 10 children and adolescents in the United States suffers from a mental illness severe enough to significantly interfere with daily life.