Can A 14 Year Old Refuse To Attend A 2-week Psychiatric Program In Favor Of Going To School To Preserve Grades?
Posted by: Alan in Alcohol Counseling, tags: 2week, Attend, Favor, Going, Preserve, Program, Psychiatric, Refuse, School, Year
The subject is a straight A student and Freshman in public high school and a speed-reader who shuns television in favor of reading books which she does avidly. She is normally mild mannered, considerate, polite, kind to the underprivledged, and charming to those who know her. In her home environment, however, she has a very aggressive, foul-mouthed older sister (age 19) who is into pot and alcohol and who performed in the lower 25% of her class and was given to highly disrespectful behavior. The subject also has a mother who is prone to hitting, hair pulling, screaming and uncontrolled outbursts of profanity. In this environment, the subject is sometimes drawn in when attacked and will resort to profanity and yelling back in an effort to defend herself.
The mother also has a paramour of over 5 years who is head of their shared household but with no custodial rights over the subject or desire to take on responsibility for any of the 3 children under his roof, given that he has 3 of his own out of state from a previous marriage.
Based on prolonged complaining by the paramour and a recent episode where all parties engaged in yelling and profanity, the mother has decided the problem must be with the mild-mannered 14 year old with straight A’s since she and the eldest daughter were never able to perform at that level in school. So the mother is PULLING the subject OUT OF SCHOOL for an intensive 2-week psychiatric outpatient program (6 hours per day) at a critical time academically, right before semester finals. The subject is willing to submit to evaluation and counseling but wants to do so at a better time so she can focus instead on making good grades in her finals in hopes of maintaining a high GPA that will put her in better stead for a college scholarship.
The subject in no way is a danger to herself or others and there is no psychological crisis going on at the moment. But in an effort to justify her decision to take radical action at this time, the mother is now painting her daughter as having “serious psychiatric problems” — which prior to the latest meltdown where the mother attacked and beat the subject in an angry rage — were nonexistant and never mentioned by the mother or apparent in any behavioral reports from the subjects teachers.
At 14, a minor gains some additional discretion over who they can choose to live with, i.e. their mother or their father. They also have more rights in other areas. My question here is whether the subject can refuse to participate in this intensive 2-week psychiatric program in favor of attending school at this time to protect her GPA and class standing. Or can the custodial mother FORCE the child to not attend school and go into this psychiatric program which was never ordered by the hospital or any doctor she was seeing. To this point, the child has not seen any mental health practitioner on a regular basis, nor did anyone (outside of the paramour who is not a family member) believe that such counseling was even necessary.
Can the 14-year old legally stand up for herself to make the more rational decision to not enter this psychiatric program right at this time and in favor of attending school to prepare for and to take her finals?
This would be in the state of Illinois. The non-custodial father with full, unsupervised visitation rights lives out of state but is very active in trying to support the child and to gain custody which earlier this past week before the idea of the psychiatric program was formulated by the mother, had been offered to the father by the mother as a possible solution. But instead of relinquishing child support and custody, the mother has chosen to characterize the child as having “serious psychiatric problems” which the mother intends to address via the psychiatric program (paid for by the mother’s health insurance policy), and quite possibly, psychotropic drugs if she can convince the doctors they are necessary, supposedly based on behavior in the home not observed by the doctors.
The mother does not have a 4 year college degree and is noted by many to be a pathological liar with symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder as well as Hysterical Personality Disorder, as observed by a veteran psychiatrist and mental health clinical director of many years.
So can the 14 year old legally refuse psychiatric treatment at this particular time and stay in school instead?
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February 25th, 2010 at 5:05 pm
In areas of behavioral health the person in question’s rights are compromised. They are typically medically cleared by an ER physician/pa and then evaluated by an independent social worker who will talk to them and determine if that person is a threat to themselves or anyone else. If that person is a perceived threat then they either need to go voluntarily or involuntarily for treatment. A parent can not have their child forcefully committed unless there’s proper reasoning and that reasoning needs to be proven by the social worker.
February 25th, 2010 at 11:30 pm
I think it would be legal as she is the girl’s guardian. However, why would the psychiatrists running the program allow someone who is not suited for the program to attend or be treated. You are running a fine line when it comes to ethics with the psychiatrists. Additionally, parents have their children committed to different programs all the time such as, Eating Disorder Programs. The children may not agree and they definately don’t want to be there, but the parent has the last say. The father might still have some say on the situation if he has any parental rights. If he does he could probably file some sort of injunction to stop the mother from admitting the daughter into the program.