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In Reply to: RE: Mental health parity and why I hate insurance companies posted by martyh on November 06, 2009 at 18:14:00
She is actually a high school teacher, herself. She is engaged to a great guy who has a 14 year old daughter from a previous marriage. The girl was terrific in every way - good student, athlete, very social, happy as can be.
She started to get moody - what teenager doesn't? Just a phase, they thought. Then, her grades started to fall. She started dressing differently and abandoned almost everything she enjoyed doing, then got heavily into drugs and alcohol. This all happened in a very short period of time - approx. 6-8 months. They finally had to do an intervention on her and take her away to a boarding school for teens w/ emotional problems. There they found out that she had met "a friend" (teen) on MySpace who eventually convinced her to come meet him at a hotel. He turned out to be 65 year old man who flew in from out of town and sexually abused her several times over a weekend when they thought she was at a friend's house.
My friend is guilt-ridden because she cannot believe she didn't see the warning signs, and that is her profession. Made worse because she has seen the signs in her students before and tipped off counselors.
Anyway, they are in insurance hell because this is not the type of thing that is "cured" quickly. It will take years and years to repair the damage. They burned through their savings on the boarding school(and flying out to see her regularly) that year, but feel it was worth every penny because she couldn't get ahold of any drugs there AND in that setting of horses and open pastures the counselors were able to coax out what really happened.
The daughter returned home after a year at the school and now is enrolled at my friend's private high school. She seems to be doing much better, but is nowhere near the happy go-lucky girl she was a year ago. Obviously, trust is a big issue for her.
Anyway, I hope you can get some help from someone that has experience fighting insurance companies on these things. I know form my mom's 5 years of cancer that it is a constant battle for every little basic thing with insurers, even the things they are supposed to cover. Good luck and I hope things turn around quickly for your family.
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