Thank you to those who replied, your support and advice is very much appreciated!
An update on the situation:
Whereas, in my previous post, my brother (still aged 14) was threatening vague violence and was quite general with his abusive language, the threats and physical aggression has escalated to more graphic and unsettling levels.
Before, my brother was simply pounding his fists against walls and doors and throwing smaller, lighter objects. Now...
- He has stopped attending school almost altogether, and has missed major exams.
- He has since put a hole through his bedroom door by beating it with a metal pole from a set of weights he received as a christmas present from my mother.
- He has begun picking up the kitchen chairs and aiming to throw them at either my mother or myself when he is in a rage (he usually misses and ends up severely damaging the kitchen wall instead of managing to actually hit one of us).
- He storms out of the house in the middle of the night (this was worrying at first but has recently become routine).
- In anger, he throws the actual 10kg weights from the aforementioned weight set down the stairs. We used to have a small accent table at the bottom of the stairs beside the front door. This has been removed after he smashed several family photographs, a large mirror hung on the wall, smaller ornaments and our broadband modem by throwing the weights.
- My mother recently found evidence of self-harm on his phone.
- Arguably most disturbing of all, we recently found that he had hidden a Chef's Knife from my mother's kitchen set behind the gas boiler in our kitchen. This has raised the most alarm from me as anything he may have been using as 'self harm' has only been found hidden in his bedroom. The fact that he had hidden this in a family room in the house has me frightened that he may have been keeping it there to cause serious harm to my mother or me.
In my last post, we had only been dealing with counsellors who had been giving my brother the choice whether to continue with them or not. Since then:
- The police have been called to the house on two seperate evenings. Once when my brother woke my mother up at 2am by pulling the blankets and sheets from her bed, throwing them down the stairs and shaking her by the shoulders, demanding for his phone (which had been confiscated due to his behaviour earlier that day). The other time was only last week, when he returned home after storming out at nighttime and took a knife from the kitchen, threatened to self harm with it and would point it at anyone who came into the kitchen to try and persuade him to calm down.
- Paramedics have been called to the house on two separate occasions. The first was around 1am on the 24th of december (I remember specifically since it was Christmas Eve), when he had worked himself into such a state of anger and tension that he had to be brought into hospital. The doctors didn't admit him and only spoke to him briefly in the emergency room. The second was the aforementioned incident from last week with the police. He was, again, not admitted but released from the emergency room.
- Our governing child and family agency TUSLA (We live in Ireland, and I only realised that this site was Australian after reading the responses. Hopefully this isn't too big an issue, we have no equivalent forum for Irish families as far as I know) have stepped in. This group usually intervene when prompted by a school or third-party observer that a child may be in a dangerous situation. Instead, my mother called them into the home of her own accord as we have had little to no support from private counsellors or the counselling service provided by my brother's school. They have been good to have around as they are legally obliged to work with families until the matter is resolved, and cannot wash their hands of the case when they run into difficulties as the other counsellors were so quick to do. On the other end, as they are a public body that must operate using government legislation, actions taken have long waiting lists, so it's a verrrrrry slow process to see anything done.
- Our father, who I had mentioned in the previous post as having not been in contact with my brother or me in recent years, has since been contacted with the purpose of having my brother go to live with him (This was initiated by my brother, who expressed an interest in moving). Both he and my brother told TUSLA social workers that they were willing to go ahead with this move. However, whenever the option is put to my brother, he refuses to go. And whenever there is an issue at home with my brother's behaviour (such as the police calling to the house, or my brother ending up in the emergency room), my father makes it clear that he wants no involvement and uses the excuse that he has other children in his new relationship that he must look after. This has been unendingly frustrating becauses my father is continuing to feign co-operation with TUSLA, thus slowing down their responses to any serious issues in the house as they are being led to believe that we now have another avenue of support.
As you can most likely tell, the situation at home has escalated and I am ever increasingly worried that it is going to end up with serious injury. As horrible as it may sound, I'm finding it difficult to remain concerned for my brother's mental wellbeing as my priority now is shifting to simply wanting him to be removed from the family home by any means, even if it means having him admitted to state care--at least there's a chance that he will be placed with carers who are better equipped to handle him.
