Parents plead for easier route to help mentally ill kids

• Shumans tried for 20 years to get appropriate, stable mental-health services for adopted son
• But Ted was prone to outbursts of hitting, kicking, biting and scratching that could last for hours
• One night, he strangled his roommate in a southwest Ohio facility where he was receiving treatment

GREENHILLS, Ohio — Starting at age 7, Teddy Shuman would transform at a moment's notice from a sweet-natured boy who struggled with developmental disabilities to a child driven by uncontrollable rages.

He would hit, kick, bite and scratch in episodes that sometimes lasted for hours, leaving him and his parents exhausted.

No one — least of all Teddy — understood what triggered his outbursts. But by early adolescence, he knew when one was coming on.

"He'd stand at the top of the stairs and say, 'Call 911,' " remembers his father, Thom Shuman.

In wake of the Connecticut school shootings, Americans are searching for explanations and solutions. Families like the Shumans say a crucial answer is a coordinated, easily navigated system of mental-health services that makes treating a psychiatric illness as acceptable and predictable as treating a physical disease.

For 20 years after adopting Teddy in 1988, Thom and Bonnie Shuman — he a Presbyterian minister and she a former special-education aide — made dozens of phone calls and drove hundreds of miles to find help for their son, who had a host of developmental, emotional and behavioral problems. Teddy was born with fetal alcohol syndrome and had been sexually and physically abused during his first two years of life.Without it, tragedies will continue, they say.

But help for a child with Teddy's problems was hard to come by. When his parents found it, it usually lasted for a short time.

"People who haven't had to work with the system don't understand," Shuman says. "They say, 'Just find them somewhere to live.' Well, there aren't any places and if there are, they're full."

By early adulthood, Teddy had been in more than 20 different treatment settings, from pediatric psychiatric units to residential care, from Indianapolis to Louisville, Ky.

He was often the youngest person in the facility, and his parents had to drain their savings to place him there. No matter how much his parents pleaded with administrators about his need to remain in a stable setting, as soon as he showed signs of progress, officials sent him home.

Then one night in February 2006, the Shumans got the phone call families of violently mentally ill children dread.

Teddy's roommate at a Fairfield, Ohio, residential facility was found dead, a belt wrapped around his neck. Authorities said Teddy, then age 20, was responsible.

A judge later ruled him incompetent to stand trial and dismissed the charges.

His parents say no one will ever know for sure what happened. But they say the gauntlet through which families are forced to go to access mental-health services almost ensures a tragic ending.

After his roommate's death, Teddy was placed at the Columbus (Ohio) Developmental Center, a structured residential program where his parents say he continues to do well.

"It shouldn't take horrible things for people to get the help they need," Thom Shuman says.

The Shumans say raising a child with emotional and behavioral problems is an isolating, exhausting, expensive and numbing experience. Parents go through a spectrum of stages similar to those of grief, from denying their child has a problem and believing he'll outgrow it to acknowledging they need help, then finding that the necessary services and facilities aren't there.

"It's not surprising, when you have one of those broken, vulnerable people as part of your family, to wonder if society really wants to help," Thom Shuman says. "You come to these periods when you say to yourself, 'I can't do it any more. I'm finished.' I know there were times when I felt that way as a parent."

But the Shumans carried on, searching out resources, visiting care centers, advocating for Teddy with mental-health experts, schools and finally courts. Thom Shuman estimates they spent more than $100,000 on Teddy's treatment and care.

Now they say that the sorrow and furor over the Connecticut school shootings should be channeled into a national conversation on mental-health services and a campaign to reduce the stigma and isolation that leave families feeling overwhelmed and alone.

"The easiest thing is to label someone as evil, to say they were born without a soul," Thom Shuman says. "But we have to remember that this is someone's child. This is a human being. Like the case of Adam Lanza (the gunman in the Connecticut shootings), we'll probably never know the depths of his brokenness."

Krista Ramsey is a columnist for The Cincinnati Enquirer.