When to intervene?

United States
June 1, 2007 11:52am CST
My friend is married, with 3 children, she has had a lot of tragic events happen to her in the last few years, her oldest killed himself, her only sibling died of liver disease and her best friend died of cancer. She has been in and out of mental health facilities for the past 4 years, even before this stuff started. She says she wants to die, carves into herself and abused the prescription meds the doctors keep giving her. I grew up with this girl and was very close to her until about 8 years ago, nothing happened, we still kept in touch we just grew apart and had seperate lives and directions we were going in. I also got tired of the prescription drugs she was on and her being in a complete daze all the time, and yes I did try to talk to her about it and she claims she needs them. I still care about her and her kids very much. I believe this is having a very negative effect on her kids, as I said her oldest commited suicide, the oldest living child (11 yrs old) brought a pellet gun to school the other day and threatened to slash my niece's throat, the 2 youngest 5 & 7 are allowed run around the neighborhood, even riding their bikes a half mile to my brothers house to play with my neice. They are left completely unsupervised at times. I know this because they live in the house directly behind my mother. I don't believe she is well enough to take care of her kids at this time, I know she loves them more than the world but her actions are not condusive to raising children and I believe they are being brought up to believe that this kind of behavior is acceptable. When do you say you have seen enough and call authorities, though they are aware of the situation it doesn't seem like enough is being done to get these children into a healthy enviornment. Should I file a complaint with social services??
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2 responses
@eden32 (3973)
• United States
31 Aug 07
Does she have family who you could speak to first? It does sound like this woman needs help, but my experiences with social services leads me to think they're not often very helpful. Perhaps if she has family locally you could voice your concerns to them & help them come up with a way to reduce her stress, without involving social services. If she has no one, then you need to weigh out if the risk to the children is greater than the risks of involving child protective services.
1 person likes this
• United States
7 Jun 07
It's time. I would contact not only CPS, but APS. They can do an evaluation and decide if she is a danger to herself or others.
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