Millions of the children in the United States have a mental illness of some kind. However, the diseases are not well known or understood to families who have children without mental illness. A family and school in Livonia is trying to change that.

“When he was real little we would watch friends that would go through divorce or job loss and we would always go well, ‘what's ours?, what's ours? something's going to happen,’” said Mary Pat Vogel. “It took years until we went ‘it's Sean!’”

The Vogel family from Livonia is a lot like other families in many ways, and Sean Vogel is much like other boys his age. The 16-year-old likes to watch and quote movies, he likes to build things with his own hands, and he enjoys playing video games.

“My favorite game is Wii sports,” Sean said. “I really like bowling and tennis and baseball.”

What makes Sean different is that he has to play his video games at a treatment facility in Auborn.  That's because he's diagnosed with Schizo-Affective Disorder: a combination of schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder, both illnesses affecting his brain.

“People's initial reaction is fear, but if I were to tell them my son had a brain tumor, it would be sympathy and yet they're both cognitive,” Mary Pat said.

Those impairments have been a part of Sean's life in some way since he was two years old.

“We had difficulty getting him to go to sleep,” Mary Pat said. “(There was a) set structure and set routine, and yet it took sometimes two hours to get him down.”

As he got older, his parents noticed Sean didn't follow direction or do well with restrictions. He also lacked social skills. By the time he was four, Sean had already been to several specialists.

“We've gone through diagnosis of ADHA, developmental basal ganglia syndrome, PDD, NOS, and we were told he was somewhere along the autistic spectrum,” Mary Pat said.

At first, Mary Pat says some doctors didn't believe Sean had a mental illness because he was so young and still developing. The one place the Vogel's have always found assistance though -- the Livonia Central School District.

Kim Bojara, the director of student support services there, works with families with children who have mental illness, like the Vogels.

“Communication with the family, team meetings, so that we're all kind of working the same direction is really key for us (as well as) knowing about the medication the students are on,” Bojara said.

Bojara says she doesn't know how many students are taking medications for mental illness in the Livonia school district. But she says more children are being treated for mental illnesses because doctors are better at identifying disorders.

For those students, the school provides several services. For Sean, those services included behavior therapy, educational planning and occupational therapy.

“Our occupational therapist provides a lot of support as far as sensory integration ideas,” Bojara said. “Things that would release some of that anxiety or whatever might be going on as far as their mental health issues.”

The goal at Livonia is to keep students with mental illness in the classroom, with other students, as best they can. However, in Sean's case, he started lashing out when he didn't have enough structure.

“He went to fourth grade which was a new school in our district,” Mary Pat said. “And it was a new time getting up -- all those things -- many transitions.”

Since then, Sean hasn't gone to school at Livonia and he hasn't lived at home with his parents and younger brother and sister. He's been in and out of hospitals and to various treatment centers and facilities.

News 8 asked Sean what is most difficult about having mental illness.

“The thing about it -- sometimes you can't go home all the time,” Sean said.

The difficulty for his mother? Sometimes, it is living without her oldest son and sometimes it’s talking with other people who don't understand Sean's illness.

"It happens to normal, well-balanced people,” Mary Pat said. “He's never been neglected, he's never been abused. We're well educated.”

Doctor Craig Cypher, a psychologist from Hillside Crestwood Children’s Center says there is a culture of blaming parents, and there is one way to change perception.

“I think education is the most important part in termsof being able to broaden people's understand of that in terms of mental illness and how it affects children and how they understand what's going on with the child,” Cypher said.

“I may be a little different, but everybody's different from each other,” Sean said.

Sean recognizes he is different, like everyone else. And his mother says, realizing that is the missing piece to the puzzle.

What I hope that they take from this is that when you see someone who's acting maybe a little different or doesn't approach life the way you would, that you stop and you think you know what? Somebody loves that person. Whatever their disability, they've got a mom or a dad or a brother or a sister.”