How do I help my 13 yr old DD who is showing all signs of being depressed?

[exasperatedemma]

I am at my wit's end and after two particularly bad late nights with her screaming, trashing her room, biting (I know) and kicking me etc - all because I asked her to put her phone downstairs I don't know how to get through to her. This has been going on in patches for the last year, but is happening more frequently in the last few months.

The background is that she has been doing fine at school up to Easter, really good report from school, is part of an athletic's club, plays football etc and then she met a group of new friends from another school who she is obsessed with. She wants to move to their school and has been vile since Easter towards us as she sees us as the enemy for not letting her go there.

It is a really awful school but apart from that, my worry is that she could move there, and then the new friends abandon her and it would be worse than ever. Last week she didn't come home from school for a couple of hours and I couldn't get hold of her - she was with the new friends. She got grounded for a couple of days as we had told her not to go (she had just spent the entire weekend and two other days after school with them). She did the same thing the next day unbelievably, and her grounding was extended to 1 week. Then she simply walked out the door on Sunday to meet one of the boy's at a park. Thank goodness we drove over to the park because when she got there, he wasn't there but it was deserted apart from a group of older boys hanging about and she would have been easy prey for them.

She says she has been unhappy at school for ages and the only thing that will make her happy is to move to this school. she has stopped doing athletics, is barely eating, won't come out of her room and is constantly waiting for texts or calls from the new friends and gets very volatile when she doesn't hear from them - resorting to extreme and violent behaviour. it's like she gets stuck on a single train of thought and cannot think about anything else at all. Naturally she hates us at the moment. Her school is aware that she is unhappy as she has simply stopped doing any work in classes and her head of year is being very supportive. I am waiting to hear back from my doctor who has referred her to CAMHS but I don't know how to get her there to see them - she won't accept that she has a problem.

Anyone got any advice on how I can persuade her to get some help?

[Brightspark1]

This all sounds like a replay of DD's behaviour at 14. It took me and DH to get her to her first CAMHS appt, we basically had to frog march her from car into the building. I can't offer you any solutions or answers. I can only say that you aren't alone in having to deal with this, as you've probably seen on this site. The only thing I can say I'd that you should have a zero tolerance policy on her violence towards you, tell her that it is NOT acceptable and that there will be consequences, confiscation of phone, grounding, stopping of allowance etc and follow it through with NO exceptions. If it carries on, you will have to phone the police... I was horrified when CAMHS told me to do this, but if you don't, her violence will escalate. I found this out the hard way. You need to set clear consistent boundaries, easy in theory, but hard in practice, especially when you are so concerned about her unhappiness. Good luck