Mental Anguish at Texas West Oaks Hospital

Amanda is eight years old now, living at home with good days and bad. She went through a period where she ripped out her own teeth. She scratched her ears repeatedly till they bled. When sensations overcome her, she hides in a box in the front room closet. She loves purses and changing clothes and cats. But she's strangled a kitten — it scratched her — and has tried to drown and has hit other kittens until someone intervened.

A short while after getting out of West Oaks for the second time, Amanda was sent to Austin State Hospital after being rough with her siblings and beating her mother with her permanent cast to the point where Loretta was bleeding. It took them three weeks to detox her off her meds before they could evaluate her.

Back in public school in Conroe, Amanda is working to regain some of her lost skills. Being mainstreamed in kindergarten was a nonstarter; she doesn't get along well with kids her age, and she was having a lot of seizures. Now that she is in special life skills classes at Armstrong Elementary with a lot of structure, she's doing better. She can count to ten and is learning shapes and colors. She's stuck at age four right now mentally; it's unknown whether she'll improve. At night, she sleeps in diapers. The parents have learned some better techniques to help calm her.

Her mom and dad say they will never put her in an institution, but they have checked out some other mental health programs in Texas. Amanda has pica as well — she eats dirt and paper — and many places won't take her because of that.

Jim works in vinyl siding and is on the road a lot. So most of the work with Amanda falls on Loretta, a homemaker who now goes to seminars all the time trying to find out more about the mental health system.

They do have help now through the Home Community Based program. Tabitha Etheridge comes for a 3-to-7 p.m. shift five days a week to help with Amanda. They're waiting to see how long she lasts; Amanda has routed a succession of helpers.

They know they won't put her back in West Oaks, but they really don't have too many other options. Emergency room runs usually are a disaster; upset by her surroundings, Amanda runs through the room hurting other patients, Loretta says. They don't want to put her in another psychiatric hospital. An autistic treatment center might be the answer; there are only a few in this area, and funding is tricky. Autistic service dogs are supposed to be calming miracle workers, but they cost $6,000, Loretta says.

She wrote a poem to Amanda, working out some of her frustrations, but declaring her love for her at the same time. It reads, in part:

I hate your disabilities and all that goes with it

But without those disabilities I wouldn't have the Amanda I know and love

You are my Amanda my sweet little Amanda

"The only option I have is to take care of her myself with the help of Tabitha," Loretta says. "I don't know what there is out there for parents like myself, but I can guarantee you it's not hospitalization. You don't know what's going on behind their doors."

margaret.downing@houstonpress.com