Letter to the Editor
Lyme & Mental Illness: A Mother's
Personal Story
Dear Editor:
When I adopted my son at the age of three, he had already been in psychiatric hospitals for violent behavior. I was told by Yale doctors when he was only four that they had no doubt when he got older he would kill someone and they pressured me to put him a psychiatric facility.
My son had been placed in highly specialized schools, and all the experts at these schools could not help him. He had been expelled from one school after another.
I took him to countless doctors and psychiatrists. He had been on many different meds (including several years on a cocktail of Lithobid, Tegretol, Abilify and Zyprexa) and many different diet and behavior plans.
One of these doctors was the author of the book The Bipolar Child, Dimitri Papolos. Dr. Papolos said that my son Nick was one of the most severe cases of pediatric bipolar he had ever seen. Nick had made the rounds of many hospitals such as Hall Brooke, Four Winds, Natcheaug, St. Francis, Danbury, St Rapahel's, White Plains, and Westchester. Some of these places he had been in 3 or more times.
None of these facilities had been able to help him. I couldn't even begin to count ER visits. The ER staffs at the Danbury Hospital know me by name. The treating psychiatrist at Four Winds Hospital told me that Nick was the worst case of pediatric bipolar she had ever seen, they could not help him and after 6 admissions they said they would never take Nick back.
The last time he was in Danbury Hospital, he was taken there handcuffed in the back of a police car because he tried to kill someone with a knife. Although a child, he was placed in the adult unit and the social worker at Danbury Hospital tried for 3 weeks to find a pediatric placement but could not find a single place that was willing to take him and the social worker told me he was looking everywhere in the continental U.S.
I was told many times that Nick needed to be institutionalized. And I knew that meant for life. This would be a life of daily physical and chemical restraints. Nothing and nobody seemed to be able to help this child. Nothing could stop his homicidal and suicidal rage… that is, until one brave doctor took the time and made the real diagnosis: Lyme disease.
And after a long and winding, Nick is a completely different child.
Can Lyme cause mental illness and violent behavior? YES.
There is absolutely NO other explanation for what happened to my son. ALL of his symptoms were psychiatric in nature. Nothing else can account for the complete transformation in his life.
Anyone anywhere who doubts that Lyme disease can cause mental illness and violent behavior, including homicidal rages, send them to me. There is absolutely, positively NO other explanation at all for the complete change in my son.
The treating psychiatrist at Hall Brooke said it himself (until he was pressured by superiors to "shut up"), "It has to be the Lyme treatment, there is no other possible explanation for the change in Nick."
I have no medical background at all, I studied painting, drawing and art. I cannot begin to explain what happened to my son in any medical terms. I am just the witness to what did happen.
Now is he unique? …Of course not. I suspect that there are many people out there who suffer from some degree of mental illness and/or Lyme rage and hide it. Many do not even speak about it in their own Lyme communities because of the stigma attached to it and because they are afraid of being outcasts.
I am hoping that if someone is embarrassed by the label of mental illness and doesn't want Lyme disease to be linked to psychiatric illnesses or violent behavior only because it might reflect badly on them personally-I ask them to reconsider their position.
We need to be telling the world the truth about this illness. And the truth is that it can cause mental illness, violent behavior and, yes, sometimes extreme violent behavior.
Donna Benner, Art Teacher
Mother to 15-year-old Nicholas, a great young man
