My daughter is 15, her father died suddenly from meningitis 2.5 years ago, and she seems to be suffering from a sort of delayed grief depression reaction. She's always had problems with anxiety/panic-type issues, ever since she was very small. For about 1 year she's been cutting her arms and bashing her hands (although this seems to have subsided a little recently), has suicidal thoughts, and can veer from hyperactive behaviour some days to very depressive moods on others. I'm convinced that she's much more aggressive and prone to cutting when she's coming up to her period. Her school attendance is terrible - she usually managed no more than 3 days a week (the school are not terribly understanding of this, which puts her under more stress, which in turn affects her behaviour and emotions).
She sees a psychiatrist and CBT psychologist via our local CAMHS, who have also put her on Prozac (I don't feel that this helps much), but recently has taken to not coming home on school days when she's supposed to be seeing her psychologist, just getting a friend to phone me to say that she's not going as she can't face talking to her. It's so frustrating when I've fought so hard to get her the appointments in the first place!
I also have 3 other children, the youngest is age 4, who have witnessed so many of her "meltdowns" and some of her cutting - it's becoming harder and harder for me to deal with it all, and it's affecting their behaviour too. I sometimes feel that she's using the cutting/expression of suicidal thoughts as blackmail or a way of getting my attention. Any thoughts/comforting works gratefully appreciated....I love her so much but I'm now getting to the stage (when she's at her lowest) of feeling that I'm so exhausted & can't deal with it any more & (awful as it sounds) I need to "offload" her onto a hospital or someone else who can deal with the problem....but I know that could be the final straw for her.
This situation is putting a huge strain on our family, not least my partner (father of our 4 year old).....help?!?!?!
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Depressed 15 year old daughter - I'm struggling to cope!
7 replies
Milla37 · 08/11/2012 16:30
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