I wanted to trust him, but the kid had a long rap sheet and an even longer history of lying
Mrs. Gottlieb sent me a short e-mail message: “Dear Dr. Freedman: My son Shlomi is really a great boy and doesn’t have any psychiatric problems, but now he’s in a bit of trouble and I’m hoping you can help him out.”
Now, those two phrases — “really a great boy” and “in a bit of trouble” — can mean just about anything. There are kids who have never shown any symptoms of psychiatric illness but have begun to show the early signs of psychosis, there are those whose parents failed to recognize the development of mental illness building over the past years, and there are “regular” kids who just seem to be followed by trouble.
We scheduled an initial consultation, prior to which Mrs. Gottlieb sent a brief history. In her note, she described a pleasant, stable family in the Tristate area without any major flags. This was a boy who had done well until he’d gotten to high school, when the problems started: an incident with marijuana, a fight and a stolen bike, and now the most recent infraction — involvement in a Jerusalem riot that landed him an overnight arrest.
“He’s really a great boy, though,” Mrs. Gottlieb practically pleaded at the end of her message. But then Shlomi showed up 47 minutes late to his 50-minute appointment. There were excuses about a bus and a taxi that couldn’t find the building.
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