Expert: Ryan Hale - 2/21/2010

Question
My 19 yr. old son has had bulimia and other mental disorders for the past year. Our insurance will only pay 1/2 of the cost of any mental health care. We even found a treatment center that would cut their $60,000 cost to $18,500 so my son could get the help that he needs. I have been fighting with the state,SSI and our insurance for months and there are no inpatient facilities in WA State. Our son is our dependent as proven by the State and our psychiatrist. Our private insurances Premeier Blue Cross though my husband's incurance says our son does not qualify under the subsized COBRA program since he is not our dependent, which is untrue.  But he has been proven by the state to be mentally disabled at this time. Our insurance company is saying he now has to pay under regular COBRA & we must pay $1000.00 per month and that's not including the cost for my husband and myself. My husband and I have been unemployed for months. I am so tired of fighting with the DHSH system and eveyone,that does not even have a program for Bulimics or Anorexia.  My son's therapist dropped him since he no longer had insurance and will not take state medical coupons. IN FACT, noone does. He has no support right now and thinks suicide is an option which is not! I have applied for the Manna Foundation and the F.R.E.E.D. scholarships for financial assistance to get him into treatment and have heard not a work from them even though I keep calling and emailing but have not heard anything from them and it has been months! My son is in such a crisis. His elecroylites are continually out of balance.  One night we took him into the ER and the doctor was so surprised my son was still conscious because his potassium was so low. Then another blood test showed a glucose of 175 which is too high.  He needs treatment now or this disease will kill him.  Do you by chance know of any organizations/foundations set up to help children like my son?  I need to find help soon or he will die from this terrible disease.  Thank you so much for your help!

Answer
Michele-  I'm sorry to say that I do not know of any, especially not being from your state.  I can make some inquiries to other mental health professionals to see what I can dig up.  In the mean time, keep trying to get him into "the system" somehow.  I'll look and see


Michele-  I have been given some resources I've been given by someone in the eating disorders and advocacy field.  I haven't taken the time to look at them because I wanted to get them to you as soon as possible.  Here they are:

somethingfishy.org  866-690-7239

edreferral.com  

theelisaproject.org  214-369-5222

medainc.org  617-558-1881

anad.org  630-577-1330

centerfordiscovery.com  866-382-6570    (this is in Seattle)

I'm going to look into these but wanted to get them to you soon so hopefully there is something useful here.