If you have a child ill with cancer people want to help. Mention you have a child with a mental illness and they run.
Those are the feelings of Roseann Flores, whose daughter Rachel suffers from bipolar disorder.
Like any 20-year-old, Rachel wants to move out on her own.
“I’m going to be living with my mom for a while until I’m ready, Rachel said.
When she was a teenager an independent life seemed out of reach. At 13 she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, a chemical imbalance that affects the brain. She spent the next five years in and out of educational programs and psychiatric hospitals.
“The whole system is set up to feed failure and we’re trying to change that,” Roseann said.
If you have a child ill with cancer people want to help. Mention you have a child with a mental illness and they run.
It’s a change the medical community is just starting to embrace. The Golisano Children’s Hospital in Rochester is planning a center to help those like Rachel transition into adulthood.
Through the right medication, home services and tutoring Rachel is now on the right track. She wants to live on her own and work in a daycare. She also wants to help others with a developmental disability avoid the challenges she has faced.
“We are just the same as everybody else; we just have a different problem. Everybody has problems,” Rachel said.