To be furious hospital have allowed DS to come home after overdose

He may know why he is doing it but won’t tell you. He also may not know the root cause.

He needs immediate counselling so if you can afford it that great if you can’t then I think as much as it’s hard then take out a loan. You also get to choose your therapist, this isn’t a reflection on therapists but people feel more comfortable with certain people don’t they. It’s the same here.

When it comes to in patient care there can be a bit of contagion within units, good friends made but also bad friends made. I have done a lot of voluntary work with food projects so have come in to contact with a lot of people who have addiction and MH issues. Because I was not social services or an agency they trusted me and told me a lot about themselves.

Except I didn't say that. I actually recommended a free online course for young people self harming and talked about other help available.

Please don't accuse me of something I didn't do simply because you disagree with me.

You mentioned being fined for absence but school cannot refer for fines where there is medical evidence. I would challenge the fine and ask for a list of absences along with how they were coded. We have a similar issue with our child and we found they were incorrectly recording her absences because they didn't believe in mental health issues. I had evidence from her counsellor as well as CAMHS yet they still made recording errors and whenever I challenged they would shrug and say human error. Funny how the human errors only happened for the mental health absences and not the other health issues she had. In the end I resorted to reporting the absences differently. Our system is a phone call to a voicemail so I would start the message by declaring "this is an authorised absence, you have ample evidence for her medical exemption, failure to record this as authorised will result in a complaint to the principle" followed by the details of the absence. That seemed to sort it.

If he doesn't like counsellors he might be struggling with social cues and finding it difficult to talk. I had delayed speech patterns and a stutter and stuff which would just confuse people so I didn't bother.

Maybe then remove the partner from both their lives and concentrate on her son until he is well? Basically, nobody will sort her son out, but her. Nobody has the same duty towards him as her. Her son's is nobody's priority but hers. Like say 'OK, we are starting afresh. From this day. You and me and school and that is it?' And then if things don't work out, at least she will know she did everything possible?

CAMHS can't work miracles - both my children attended CAMHS - they are both adopted and were neglected as infants and were dealing with the aftermath of that. But CAMHS was only a small part of the bigger picture. I do know a lot of other adopters and I would say that some people did expect to hand their children over to CAMHS to be fixed, while others did see CAMHS as just one element.

School can be just as important. Home life. Hobbies. Friends. Screen time. Exercise. Nutrition. They all need addressing.

It does take a many-pronged approach imo. You can't take your eyes off any of the balls.

CAMHS is not the panacea some people think.

I personally would start off with a course in NVR (non violent resistance), some private equine therapy sessions (much easier to sell to a teen who isn't cooperating but also incredibly effective), ehc application, referral to the LA service for vulnerable kids (re the weed), while waiting for whatever CAMHS can supply.

I'm not talking about you personally there have been simlar posts. I still disagree though.. on line courses are not always enough . In my opinion if a child is attempting suicide. Then it can't get much deeper than that to need mental heath help/ therapy from camhs. If it hadn't been for camhs theres a possibility my ds would not be here to day. Its not worth the risk.

Do you get on well enough with his dad to understand what happened for him to stop seeing him, didn't his dad try to keep seeing him? It sounds like he started a lot of lashing out and destructive behaviour at the same sort of time, have you explored what was going on for him then. It's quite drastic to stop sports, drop a girlfriend, old friends, a parent and school all at once to start hanging out with drugs, drinking and self harming. All these sound like symptoms, tbh, rather than the underlying issue.

I would try and find out what changed or happened and see if you can find someone he would be willing to talk to.

Good luck OP, it sounds incredibly hard.

All of the above.

Absolutely, there is lots of work to prevent people/children with ND being admitted to hospitals and certainly psych wards, this is what the DSR supports are set up for.

CAMHs isn’t the help people think it is because it isn’t fit for purpose which absolutely isn’t good enough. Also but private equine sessions! What sort of money do people think parents have, let alone the fact it would do sfa for many serious mental health struggles young people are struggling with when CAMHs is failing them .

Okaaay but leaving them to just get worse with sfa is just as damaging.

No one has suggested SFA, some of us have given specific advice around services, strategies, exploration, pathways, safety planning.

I am not disagreeing - but my DS used anything he could to self harm - the little blades from a pencil sharpener for example.

We were told not to lock stuff away because then they will find something else, and cutting with not very sharp, possibly dirty items unearthed from god knows where could cause more problems.

OP, my sympathies are with you. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.

CAMHS were useless.

I felt that DS and us were totally unsupported. DS is adopted and many of the issues were around identity and self esteem, but the adoption support team basically implied it was my fault.

I can't really say how we got through it, we had self harm and drug and alcohol misuse and self medication with anything he could lay his hands on.

Sertraline helped enormously, I think he was put on that around 16 or 17? But it's all such a blur now I can't really remember.

He has also subsequently been diagnosed with ASD and ADHD which was probably all part of it, but everyone put his behavioural issues down to adoption/attachment for years and it got overlooked.

Hmmm no thanks that smacks of fobbing off, autistic children like mine need autism aware treatment for their serious mental health conditions when they need it.

Yep we were told not to lock things away particularly if it’s a coping strategy, you’re just supposed to provide materials that can keep wounds clean.Great!

This thread isnt about your child, its to answer OP's specific query

You have been incredibly hostile on this thread to those of us who have offered specific advice to take OP slightly further along the line to try to support and find out whats going on.

Ive long advocated for autism support for children, no MH service is set up to manage ND needs per se, they are set up to manage MH conditions and not all presenting behaviours from someone with ND is a MH condition, OP does not know in terms of her son, and this is about her son, which that is at the moment. There is some space to explore that.

Many children/people with ND find SSRIs unhelpful for example if medication is looked at, they find standard therapies and group work ineffective or unhelpful. Not all, but many.

There should be specific ND services which support those with their ND presentaiton and comorbid MH conditions that they may have from their ND. But there arent.

I missed this post. Equine therapy has a good success rate, particularly for kids with ND, its hugely effective.

It was completely useless for my mentally ill ND child. Not surprising as it does not unpick serious mental health conditions such as trauma, EDs, OCD, chronic depression, suicidal idealisation, self harm etc with trained mental health professionals.Parents of mentally unwell children are trying to hold jobs down, cope with loss of wages, support siblings- where is the money from equine therapy coming from?

I am simply pushing back on the continuous fobbing off and pushing parents away from services their kids need and should be having. Services that aren’t fit for purpose and as funded by tax payers should be made to be fit for purpose. It simply isn’t good enough and the op should be complaining hard. Some of the comments minimising a suicidal child who self harms and has overdosed are frankly appalling and dangerous .

For many it is impossible particularly for those with children who can’t identify or verbalise emotions
and are too overcome by their mental illness. The idea that untrained parents can just chat about suicidal idealisation with children who are ashamed, concealing plans and deeply unwell is trite and laughable. It also indicates how clueless mental health professionals really are.

It was transformative for one of my daughters - didn't remotely touch my other daughter, but then again nothing has ever touched her (she had 2 years of art therapy at CAMHS, attachment therapy at the Post Adoption Centre, filial therapy when she was very little and family therap via adult services)

It was because these therapies didn't have any impact that CAMHS diagnosed autism rather than attachment/adoption/ trauma diagnoses. She was 15 when diagnosed with autism.

Once we started treating her as someone with autism rather than as someone with a mental health problem, everything got so much easier.

Her "self harming" was very basic and not really dangerous but it came from her sensory seeking and need for control rather than as wanting to harm herself as in not feeling good enough etc.

She doesn't take any drugs and is doing fine.

Your children were lucky to have interaction with CAMHS when they needed it, most who are very mentally unwell and whose self harm/ conditions are not harmless are just left to get worse.

It’s a reactionary service which is massively letting young people down.

If a child has attempted suicide, families should not be left trying to work out why on their own. CAMHS is not working - it doesn't help enough young people, it doesn't help them quickly enough.