When your first child becomes a teenager, you expect sullen looks and a resistance to parental requests. You know there will likely be a steady withdrawal to the bedroom and you begin commiserating with fellow parents as your once motivated, happy child morphs into a recluse overnight. Isn't that what all teenagers do?
But when the faddy diets start including internet-sourced laxatives and the time spent alone involves small razors, the jokes soon fade.
The first time my 15-year-old daughter took an overdose, I quickly found out that I was indeed 'good in a crisis'. Stumbling across some empty pill packets discarded on the bathroom floor, I asked her if she had taken them. As she nodded, I knew that this would be a moment permanently etched on my memory.
What causes a bright young girl - a girl with the prospect of a wonderful future and a loving family behind her - to try and take their own life?
It's the question that has kept me awake at night, and the question that well-meaning family and friends ask time and time again. I've accepted though that there isn't an answer, and that mental illness can strike anyone at any time - and it does not discriminate.
On that first occasion, the ambulance never came. I bundled my drowsy and emotional daughter into the car and promised her that I would do everything in my power to ensure that she got the help she needed.
I naively thought that I could keep that promise.
Despite the mental anguish she was experiencing, with no lasting physical damage she was deemed fit to return home the next morning. I was assured that our local CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service) unit would be in touch.
We didn't receive our first CAMHS appointment through the post until two weeks later. The Duty Mental Health Practitioner - the person assigned to work out how serious a child's mental state is - had been given the task of deciding whether she should be bumped up the waiting list. She met with my daughter for 20 minutes, then met my husband and I for a further 20 minutes. Despite the fact that when asked if she would attempt suicide again, my daughter rated herself as a 7/10, she was put back on the waiting list, to see one of only two psychiatrists assigned to the entire borough.
Soon enough we were back in A&E. She had disclosed her utter despair to me in a text, including the date on which she had chosen to end her life. But our GP and the private therapist who had been desperately trying to "keep her safe" for the past 3 months, told me that the best chance of getting any help would be to go to A&E and refuse to leave.
Five days later, our 15-year-old daughter was voluntarily admitted to an adolescent psychiatric unit, 80 miles from home. Thankfully, the CAMHS psychiatrist who had been sent to assess her immediately recognised that my daughter's determined streak, the one that we had always been so fiercely proud of, was going to kill her if something was not done.
After a 5-month stay in an NHS adolescent psychiatric ward, our daughter left with a prescription for the medication that continues to be vital to her wellbeing and a course of intense therapy provided by our local CAMHS unit.
She's doing so much better now. But the physical and mental scars that she is left with will likely haunt us forever.
Place2Be, the charity that first initiated Children’s Mental Health Week, is running a campaign in schools across the country, urging children to be kinder to one another. It's such a simple act, but can be so effective. There are other things that need to happen too. Our society needs to accept that this silent killer is not something to be ashamed of, so that our children realise it's OK to speak out.
Parents must be educated in the early signs, the ones that might ordinarily be dismissed as 'typical teenage behaviour'. And our schools should be forced into taking their students' mental health more seriously than their GCSE grades.
If you’re at all concerned about your child and not sure where to turn, the charity Young Minds offers parents a free, confidential one-hour telephone consultation.
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Guest post: "My daughter's determined streak nearly killed her"
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