Suspended Sentence

by Janice Morgan

  As a parent with a teenage son in a detention facility back in 2003, I could only wonder: who will be the catcher in the rye to keep young persons with mental health issues today from eventually falling into the coils of the criminal justice system tomorrow? Who, if not our physicians, our therapists, our healthcare delivery? Surely, these services must become widely available to the many persons who so desperately need them. It couldn’t happen soon enough.

  During the weeks of Dylan’s incarceration, Mike and I researched possibilities for a residential school that he could attend and found a program that we thought could work. It would be hugely expensive, but my parents agreed to help out. We discussed it and agreed that each of us would pay a third of the total expenses. It was a tough decision, but at the time, Mike and I were too exhausted and frightened to consider any other possibility. We hoped that when Dr. Barnard’s report was given to Judge Cassidy in January, along with our proposal to enroll our son in a residential program, she would agree to release him to do this.

  Dr. Barnard had made it clear that Dylan needed to have some kind of medication to modulate his symptoms. He wrote about that in the report, too, mentioning lithium, but there were others as well, such as Depakote or Lamictal, for example. He said it might take some experimentation with a trained psychiatrist to find the right medication or combination of meds that would work for him. We made sure the school had a psychiatrist who could prescribe these. When I told Dr. Barnard that we were thinking of sending our son to a residential school, he remained pensive for a moment. He said that generally, it was better to keep the child in his familiar home environment and work with him or her through counseling. “But,” he added diplomatically, “an appropriate residential program could be a good solution, too.” After all, considering Dylan’s emotional conflicts within the family, he had suggested that alternate sources of emotional support from adults (foster parent, teacher, other relative, friend’s parent) might be explored.

  When presented with the report and our plan, the juvenile court judge agreed to permit Dylan to be released. It was January 5, a new year, and hopefully a new chapter opening in all our lives. Sending our son away from home to a residential school may not have been the wisest thing to do, but it felt like the only viable option at the time. Initially, Dylan experienced more stress, I know. It was yet another huge change for him to adapt to.

  Back in that cold January when Dylan was sixteen, we parents had a diagnosis and a plan, but we had no idea how much more there was to learn about our son’s mood disorder. We were only at the edge of that mysterious territory we would all have to cross.

  CHAPTER 17: JAMAICA

  When we saw our son again for the first time after his January juvenile court hearing and release, it was at a small facility in Jamaica. How did he get there? Well, the in-between steps had been rockier than we anticipated. Actually, Dylan had first gone to a different residential school in another state, but after he punched one of the staff in an angry outburst, his choice was either to leave altogether or agree to go to another, stronger version of the program in Jamaica. That’s where the toughest cases got sent. Dylan agreed to the transfer, largely because the alternative would be more jail time in Juvenile Detention. Though drastic, the event seemed to convince him he needed to take his next opportunity seriously.

  In fact, his new destination was a former resort hotel on the Jamaican seacoast that had been converted into a residential school for troubled teens—the most troubled. Almost all of the personnel who worked with these American adolescents were Jamaicans: they served as counselors, teachers, librarians, cooks, supervisors, monitors, and cleanup crew, although the teen residents (who saw themselves as “inmates”) did a lot of their own cleaning and laundry. Despite the laid-back island ambiance, this was a highly disciplined place with strict guidelines for behavior. Girls were housed on one side, boys on the other; the two seldom interacted. Everyone had a daily schedule of classes and activities. Teens could move up and gain privileges in the program according to how well they worked and followed the rules. It was old school, like something out of another century. Yet we parents knew that no young person was sent to that school lightly. You had to be desperate. We all feared for our teens’ lives back home. “This isn’t exactly a resort,” Dylan had reported in his first letter to me. True, if it was any kind of resort, it was a last resort.

  From the beginning, parents and their son or daughter could communicate by letter as often as they wished. Kids were, in fact, required to write their parents at least one letter per week. Counselors who worked with the teens reported also at weekly intervals via phone conversations with parents. Despite the distance, we didn’t feel cut off; there were progress reports, and kids were relatively free to express what they were feeling. If they cooperated and moved to a higher level, the teens could eventually earn the privilege of phone conversations with parents once a week. Most Jamaicans—contrary to what employees at big resort spas in Negril, for example, might convey—believe in rules and strict discipline for kids in their family lives. Adults and seniors are respected. Each person works and fills a role in supporting the household.

  In my interactions with the Jamaican teachers and counselors at the school, I found them to be refreshingly direct and down-toearth. Still, it could be a very tough job. The two therapists who worked at the school were American women, and they each held a deep respect for their Jamaican colleagues as well as for the culture of the area. The school also had a psychiatrist—very important to us—also a Jamaican, trained in the UK, who came in every week from Kingston to consult with teens. I had to be assertive to make sure he met with Dylan, though, as he was in high demand. It took a few weeks before Dylan was on a lithium regime and meeting with Dr. Bishop regularly to monitor his symptoms. I remember feeling relieved that my son was finally getting the medication that the psychiatrist in Nashville said would help him.

  We parents had our own program meetings, too. In fact, we worked through a curriculum and performed many of the same transformative group activities with our peers as our sons and daughters did with theirs at the school. While I went to these on my own, Mike attended with Linda. Over the months, many letters were exchanged along with weekly progress reports by phone with Dylan’s counselor, Ms. Taylor. It felt like a big step up when we could finally have our own calls with Dylan, hear his voice. Then, after several more months, the counselors told us it was time for the first round of parent-teen visits that would take place at the school. Everyone was very expectant; we parents hadn’t seen our kids for a long time. What would they be like? We had letters from them to read, phone calls, but what would our interaction with them be after this transition? Occasionally, we parents would get to see a photo of our son or daughter. Is that my son actually smiling? To us, this seemingly everyday occurrence was a miracle, coming from a rebellious, exiled teenager. And most of us had never been to Jamaica before. We needed advice as to how to get to the location, where to stay. By the time our group arrived at the school and toured the grounds and classrooms, we were all slightly dazed and charged with emotions. The long-awaited meeting time was at hand.

  The event was choreographed in a structured way. First, groups of parents stood in circles within a large room. We were told to close our eyes and to face inside the circle. Next, counselors ushered in a group of teens who each scanned the room to find their parents. When each teen was standing behind his or her parents, we were told to turn around and to touch the shoulders of the person in front of us, still with our eyes closed. Finally, we could open them. Amid hugs, and cries, and tears, a great sense of relief and jubilation burst out into the room. Dylan’s face looked surprisingly radiant; he was relaxed and beaming. I hadn’t seen him this way for a long time. When Ms. Taylor, his Jamaican counselor, came up to us, she hugged Dylan, too, and I knew they had the kind of close relationship where they could joke around with each other. Sunlight streamed through slits in the window blinds, and for those first few mome
nts, I’m pretty sure we all felt we’d died and gone to heaven.

  The students could take their parents on a longer tour of the premises, and Dylan showed his father and me the room he shared with five other guys. He showed me the neat shelves where they kept their belongings, and I noticed an ordered assembly of shoes on the floor nearby. He showed me the beds, how they folded out at night and folded back up into the wall with a clip during the day to free up the space. Dylan pointed to a little cut on his forehead: “That’s where I hit it on a bed corner the other day when I was putting it up.” It was just a small mark in his smooth skin. I was happy that he looked healthy. The numerous windows of the room were wide open with sunlight pouring in. It seemed that the building was completely permeable to the outdoors—just like the resort hotel it had once been. “Well, you wouldn’t think it was so nice if you lived here like we do, Mom,” Dylan remarked. True enough. For him and his fellows, it seemed like international boot camp.

  “You should have been here when Hurricane Charley blew through here, Mom,” Dylan said. “It happened during the night. We didn’t get much sleep. Remember how I told you how the rain was blowing though the slats in the shutters? It was right here.”

  He showed me the large window facing the sea that was outfitted with pull-down blinds inside and, on the outside, shutters. I recalled the night he’d described; it sounded frightening. They’d stayed at the school for Charley, but when powerful Hurricane Ivan approached a short while later, they all evacuated to take shelter further inland, away from the coast. I recalled all too clearly how worried we parents were that Saturday; a number of us communicated by e-mail, straining for news. Then, finally, we heard about our kids by satellite phone from the school director. “Everyone’s OK,” he said. “The school will need some repairs, but thank God, everyone’s safe.” A collective sigh of relief filled the airwaves.

  Later on the grounds during our visit, Dylan pointed out the trees and shrubbery we passed. “You wouldn’t believe it, Mom,” he said, “but the hurricane blew most all the leaves off these plants. By now, though, they’ve grown back and you can barely tell it happened.”

  I found out the Jamaicans in the surrounding countryside were just as resilient. When hurricanes blew the metal roofs off their houses, neighbors got together to help locate and reattach them. Afterward everyone swept up the debris, rounded up their chickens and goats, tended their gardens, planted new rows of callaloo. Hurricanes were just part of the usual drama of living on the island. That was another reason Americans on the staff admired their Jamaican coworkers.

  After casual tour time, we parents had scheduled meetings with our teens and the counselors, to talk about their progress in schoolwork and in the program. We could visit their teachers, too, but mostly Mike and I spent time separately and together with Dylan, talking. He was seventeen now and I couldn’t believe how much more relaxed he was. The rebellious wild tension that used to course through him was gone. He was expressive, as he always had been, but under control. I knew from Ms. Taylor’s reports that he still had outbursts, but they were minor in comparison to those before. They had discussed anger management, and Dylan said he’d seen enough of peers being out of control to know that he didn’t want to be in that situation. He was working on it.

  What he wanted more than anything was to come back home, return to high school, have a normal life. But Mike and I had talked about it from our respective places; we also heeded advice from the program directors. We felt that Dylan was doing well there, and we thought he would do better if he graduated from the program, which would mean slightly over another year. In retrospect, I’m not sure at all we made the right decision. Were we shaking the fragile bond of trust we had just built up with our son? I do know Dylan was upset when we gave him the news. It was a terrible letdown for him, the likes of which I can only imagine. A year is a long time to a teenager. At least the three of us were all together at the time we told him; we could share the tears. We could be there to reach out and touch his arm, look into his eyes, tell him it would be hard, but consider how far he had come already. We wanted Dylan to be ready to start a new life, not go back to the old one. The old one scared us too much.

  All the times when Dylan was playing football in middle school at Croftburg, and I was sitting in the stands with other parents under the glow of floodlights on autumn evenings, I took for granted that I would be doing that for years. That he would be playing sports or playing in the band, he would be going out with girlfriends, attending the prom in a tuxedo—all those teen stops on the road to adulthood, all those cozy, hometown bonding experiences. Instead, I’m sure he felt exiled in this Jamaican school so far away. We felt exiled too. That whole nostalgic chapter of teen and parent life together had been ripped out of our book forever. It was a different kind of hurricane.

  On our second day at the school, Mike and I had the chance to visit one of the program classes my son was attending, presided over by Ms. Taylor. I thought I would be sitting on the sidelines listening, but after a while, Ms. Taylor introduced us as Dylan’s parents, and we were both given the opportunity to address the assembly. There were probably about fifteen young men there, sitting in their khaki shorts and shirts before us, cross-legged on the floor. Because of the tan uniforms, they looked like a troop of budding French Foreign Legionnaires. As I later found out, some of them probably were destined for the American armed forces. That was a popular career choice for guys in the school, and their families thought military discipline would be a good fit for their wayward sons. When I stood up to speak, I remember their faces—so young, so vulnerable, so open and attentive too. It was hard to believe that these teens had been stoned out of their minds with street drugs, had probably stolen money from their parents, had maybe been violent or at least disrespectful, had destroyed property, broken laws, been out of control. They must have been, or they wouldn’t be there at that school.

  Maybe I thought of the French Foreign Legion because I had once visited a Legion base in Nîmes, France. I knew that the recruits came from everywhere, and some young men had even gotten into trouble with the law, but the Legion would take them in anyway. Each recruit was assigned a new name and a buddy who spoke French and taught them the ropes. Once you got into the Legion, you took on the identity of a Legionnaire. It was the army of second chances. Even when you were off-duty and went into town, you wore your uniform because your new identity was not something you put on and took off again. Your first loyalty was to the Legion. It was a lifetime pact. Even the commandant spent holidays like Christmas first with his men, then later with his family. That summer, I remembered seeing Legionnaires walking, either alone or with a buddy, on the streets. How disciplined and self-contained they looked!

  Well, I didn’t talk to those young men in front of me about the Legion, but I did talk about how the program at the school offered them a chance to become a new person. I knew I was addressing them mainly as a mom—that was the most important thing. Not all of the teens there had their parents visiting; that was clear. For some of them, being reunited with their families, even for a few days, was still a distant hope. So out of all the things I may have said on that particular day, the one thing that would resonate for them was telling them I knew their parents cared about them. “How do you know that?” they asked me. I told them it was because I had been talking to other parents for a while now. Mostly moms. That I was in touch with a whole network of moms who had sons or daughters—mostly sons—in this school, and we wrote messages to each other for encouragement. I had even met a number of them. That what I knew was this: these parents wanted their sons to do well. They wanted them to be able to come back home and live good lives. When I told them this, looking into their eyes, I could only hope that somehow my words (and Mike’s too) lifted their spirits a little. Some of them would have a hard road ahead.

  I’ve often wondered what happened to those young men in the room that day. Where are they now? I only found out about a scattered f
ew: one went back home and did well, went to college, had a girlfriend, stayed clean. Another seemed to be doing well, but then he had a fatal car crash—probably drug or alcohol-related. Yet another had gotten out of the program and, fearful of resuming his old ways, signed up for the military—against his parents’ wishes. I wonder how many of them had—like my son—mental health issues to deal with. Probably more than a few. My impression is that families were each struggling to find their way. There weren’t clear maps for how to deal with these complexities, but we offered each other support, shared whatever we knew.

  From a parent’s point of view, was this program worth all the time, all the money, the emotional risk of sending our kids away? In extremis, given the circumstances, yes. Sometimes there has to be a major intervention, a new perspective. But had I understood more about my son’s particular mood disorder—how his particular brain chemistry affected his behavior—and if he had been diagnosed and treated sooner, before things spiraled out of control, then such a drastic intervention might not have been needed. Was there a better way? Yes, a closer program, an alternative school with informed counselors so that we parents could have received more training and support in how to deal with this earlier. Maybe group therapy for teens with similar issues so that they could face problems together, with guidance, and not feel isolated. There needed to be interventions that all parents whose kids needed it could afford.