Bad Parents Sought Medical Care
photo credit miracles for Justina/ FB
Okay, here's a big story about a girl named Justina Pelletier. I am going to try to water this big story down. She was an active child and even a figure skater, but around the age of 16 she became sick with a flu and was taken to the hospital. It was here she was diagnosed with a mitochondrial disease (genetically related that causes weakness in the muscles). She was referred to ,by her physicians, to seek medical care at the local Children's Hospital (Boston's Childrens). It was at this hospital where new doctors decided that Justina had a psychiatric disorder and her medical mystery was more or less, not real. The hospital decided to get social services involved, blaming the parents for being "too active" in pursuing healthcare matters for their child (aka overmedicalizing). The family lost custody for almost 1 1/2 while the child became weaker in state care at a local mental hospital. She is now w/c bound! The parents wer now allowed only weekly visits and weekly phone calls.
Even if the parents were over zealous... is that a bad thing? Trying to find out why your child is sick? Mental health or not? Isn't that what you are supposed to do? Do you believe parents could be so overmedicalizing that it would cause their older child to become non ambulatory?
I watched videos with interviews. The girl appears to have some sort of neurological disorder. Her speech seems dysarthric and she is in a wheelchair. Let's say it was mental illness and her parents were to blame, why didn't she heal or at least dramatically improve out of the parent's care? So if it was mental illness and the parents were in denial, was it really their fault she was weakening? Serious questions to a very serious situation. She is home now after 1 1/2, still disabled, but looking happy!
