This mother had lost all hope, but then she met her MST-FIT therapist, Lauren
When I first met Ms. Minton*, she was in a very fragile place. She was in poor mental health and felt the professionals dealing with her case were judging her. It felt as if she was fighting a losing battle. Social services were threatening to remove all her six children. By the end of their MST-FIT treatment, she was confident dealing with professionals that recognized the difficulties her family was experiencing, and they were all working much more effectively. This is a letter she wrote thanking her supervisor, Dr. Phil Reynolds. *Names have been changed for confidentiality
I wanted to contact you regarding the therapy that MST has provided us as a family. MST is no longer working with my family as we currently no longer require your support. That is something I thought I would never say!
I had lost hope and believed things could never be any different. I had lost my daughter and was gradually losing myself and the belonging of my existence within my family. I’d lost all faith in services, and I truly believed services had created barriers between me and, especially, Ingrid. There was a lack of trust as services continued to let us down. On numerous accounts, we had a service involved that would then pull out. Again we would be left with nothing but a bad situation. I felt personally targeted from other professionals. I felt they thought I was paranoid, lying and exaggerating the severity of violence that Ingrid was presenting towards myself and her siblings. Professionals were continuously questioning my state of mental health. This had caused Ingrid to have a lack of emotional warmth towards me and turn to school rather than myself. At this point, my daughter was not a part of me and very much segregated in our family unit.
I didn’t think MST therapist would make a difference
When MST was mentioned and I first met with [the therapist] Lauren, I never thought that a professional would honestly be able to change the dynamics and bring back the family unit we once had. Could Ingrid’s violent and verbal
Since Lauren’s departure, things are still going well. Now, we get the fact that Ingrid will always and continue to be challenging, but we know how to handle situations. Ingrid is fully aware that violent outbursts and verbal aggression will not be tolerated.
The main thing is as a family, we are a lot safer and aim to be prepared
Lauren has worked miracles, and I can’t thank her enough for always believing in me and really seeing what was going on within our house, and that for once, it wasn’t my fault. If other professionals had believed in me and saw past my mental health, they would have, too.
MST is such a valuable service for families like ours. Without MST coming on board, as a family, we would no longer be together. We would have lost Ingrid. It had become an unsafe situation. The fact that MST has helped repair this is amazing! Ingrid is now part of our family again, enjoying playing with her siblings, and my relationship with Ingrid is linked. We are having our own little quirks back along with the “normal” squabbles and differences that every family experiences.
Thank you for offering your service to us, and most of all to Lauren for the time,
Congratulations to the Minton family for all of their hard work and sustained success.
Lauren Skeels is an MST therapist on the MST Northamptonshire South team.
To learn more about what makes MST an effective intervention for at-risk youth, download this white paper.
