Having personally gone through a horrifying abusive childhood where I had every “excuse” to go off the derech, have personal experience with people with mental disease and teens who have gone off the derech I can honestly and loudly say that bechira is the bottom line of whether one stays frum or not, period. Unless a teen is so confused that he forgets to eat, sleep, and do other things that a normal, functioning human being doesn’t do and we can classify him/her as so meshugah (I know not it’s not a politically correct word, but for lack of anything else I’ll use it here) as to belong in a home for people who cannot function, then there is free choice regarding yiras shomayim and all other mental disorders are not the real issue here.
This generation that keeps on churning out “mental disease experts” by the thousands, needs to be able to excuse and explain every single bad behavioral choices under the sun.
Kid doesn’t listen-he’s diagnosed with …sorry I forgot the initials , but some kind of defiance disorder. Behavioral problems, no it’s not the sugar overdose, ADD, ADHD, or whatever and presto, let’s give pills, medication, therapy and whatnot but let’s not get to the root of the problem.
Depression too, is treated with pills instead of getting to the root of the problem.
Now, every parent should always try to grow as a parent and as a Jew, however we are all human and everyone makes mistakes. I have seen children from good homes become OTD kids and kids from dysfunctional homes rise above their above to develope into beautiful people.
Now mental disease is a very overused excuse for everything under the sun and in this case is being used as an excuse for kids negative behaviours. Do people want to make bad choices? No and yes. They might not like what they’re doing but it’s too hard to change, so make an excuse ,mental health, abused childhood, whatever, so long as it’s not the teen who needs to change his negative behavior.
Bipolar and borderline personalities are real diseases, but that doesn’t mean one has the excuse to go off the derech because of it. There are enough frum people who are frum and have these diseases.