Ive come to the conclusion that people in this profession are winging it.

[ihatethecold]

Mental health workers, especially people involved in any way, shape or form with helping children/ teens with MH issues.
It's an absolute travesty.
Right across the board I am shocked at how they really don't seem to know how to help young people.

Gp services that don't have a clue so won't prescribe anything and just refer you to a service that is so overstretched your child has to be practically dying before they will help them.
They genuinely don't know how to help.

Camhs, so underfunded that you wait absolutely ages just to get an assessment, to be told they will treat your child but the waiting list is a year long. They will refer you to a psychiatrist but that takes weeks. then they forget to put the referral in!

Private therapy, now this really is a shocker. You would think if you are paying (and this really isn't cheap) you would be seen by a professional that has some solid ideas of how to treat MH issues.
Its so wishy washy. I've never felt so ripped of in my life.

Counsellors with their own agenda. Took us 6 months to realise this.

School support workers. They deal with school kids that need support because of all sorts of needs. Lovely people but they really don't get MH.

One family support worker linked to the school said that self harming was ok and children need to do it to relieve their stress. How the hell is that right?

After 18 months of trying to get help for my DD14 I have come to the conclusion that they are winging it. No one seems to have any solid ideas that will help her manage her problems

Unfortunately Ive become an expert in severe anxiety in teenagers. Ive had to so I can support her.

Its just so depressing seeing how bad the services are.

I dont want or mean to offend anyone in this line of work but it just seems to be endemic that no one really has a clue.

I'm so sorry that your daughter is having these difficulties. It must be extremely worrying for you, and desperately frustrating that you feel you can't access suitable support for her. The teenage years are so difficult, as anyone who has brought up one will admit. There are peaks and troughs and usually manage to muddle through. When this is not possible I can quite see that you must be in overdrive trying to help your dear daughter. The cuts are having such a massive negative effect on Mental Health services. It's not just the waiting lists, but also the fact that so many staff have become so demoralised that they have left their professions. The loss of expertise is incalculable. Your girl sounds very sensible, inasmuch that she is trying to help herself too. School is so full on at this age. I know you said she has school support, but that is also ineffective, in your opinion. Have you asked her if she might prefer being home-schooled? Would that ease her anxiety? Or is school totally not an issue for her? I just wondered, as you said you can't work due to supporting your daughter, so homeschooling might be feasible? I do hope she will recover from her anxiety in due course, must be so hard for you both.

I can completely understand your frustration OP, my mum has had mental health problems since the 70s (not a great time) and getting her the necessary help over the years has been a constant battle plus too many different (often contradictory ) solutions.
I felt like I had to become educated very quickly in it and it's so hard to watch someone you love going through it and feeling so helpless. I felt like I was failing my mum for not being able to get her help, can't imagine what it must be like to watch your child ho through it.
Hope you get the help you need x

Daphne
We talk about HE and I would prefer this but she really doesn’t want to leave school.
She says she wants to be in school but be feel enough to attend.
She is already on a reduced timetable.
We are currently in the process of arranging to take half a term away from school and do a trial with an online learning platform.
I waiting for the gp to get back to me so we can remove her for medical reasons so she doesn’t lose her school place.
She really wants to start her GCSEs in September at school with her friends.
We want to give her a break to help her get better so she can manage this.

I watched Victoria Derbyshire on iPlayer #wecareSherry

Very sad 😔

I so agree with what the mother said about early intervention. If the infrastructure was there to catch mental health issues early on it could prevent so much suffering down the line for many.

I’ve contacted the show to say how good it was to see this being discussed and how my heart goes out to the girl and her family.
It was a brave and amazing move for the family to talk about it publicly.
It’s not an easy thing to do.

Blueracoon you are so right. Sitting here with tears rolling.

Anxiety needs challenging. So gradually doing stuff that scares you and finding out that it is okay. Many people mistakenly reinforce anxiety making it worse

ihatethecold

That sounds really sensible - it must be a difficult balancing act between respecting your daughter's wishes and finding a way forward that might suit her better. Very best wishes to you in negotiating all this

crunchy it's all very well and good to say that, but next to impossible for many people. What's more, by pushing myself too hard, I've frequently made my anxiety worse.

Also, I think that kind of stuff works for mild - moderate anxiety. For some people, they literally cannot go outside. It's not a case of 'just being able to build up to it'.

That's why it's so much better to have a doctor or psychiatrist who can support you. Unfortunately, it's so hard to find much support these days.

Firststep Yes people need support. So my colleague whose anxiety was that he would not leave the house, or even his bed some days, was gradually supported to increase what he did. From getting out of bed every day, to standing on the door step with the door open, and so on.
For many people anxiety is a lifelong tendency. And those who are surrounded by people who enable it, can live more and more restricted lives.

I used to work in mental health service. Not winging it, highly trained but overworked and underpaid.
One thing I always found was how angry some clients or their families would be at the staff, much of which was the idea that they should "do something" for them....by which they meant fix them. Like when you go to your dr with a sore throat and they give you pills and you're all better. We didn't do that, we didn't just fix people. Most people can't be fixed, but the help we tried to give to adapt and adjust and improve was never enough. I'm not even talking about that people who bit and kicked and punched staff, that's a whole other thing.
Half of the people I knew who worked in that area don't anymore, there is only so much you can take physically and mentally. Plenty end up in need of services themselves. Knowing that the people you've tried to help then tell everyone that every one of you is a shitty person who is only pretending to be good at their job really doesn't help.

You have my sympathy OP - I have a teenage DD with an ED, depression and anxiety. My GP is brilliant but as you know, can do little but refer to CAHMS. She tried this on an almost weekly basis for 3 months but CAHMS kept sending the paperwork back asking for "more" information which was already on it - apparently they do this as a stalling technique. I had a rather tearful conversation with PALS who sorted it out for me.

We have an OK counsellor (not a psychologist) - not sure it is making any difference but DD quite likes her. However, she was seen recently by a psychiatrist who on the basis of 30 minutes with her sent her away with a prescription for prozac and no follow up appointments etc arranged. Fortunately for me I have a brilliant GP who gave me a list of all the things they should have put in place for her when prescribing this and also rang to tell them I would be calling and gave them a bollocking. Needless to say they are now in place.

I have seen various MH professionals over the years and I have to say that they are of a very variable quality, partly because anyone pretty well can call themselves a counsellor - the best psychologist I saw was equally scathing about a fairly large swathe of the profession and advised that he would only refer from people registered with the BPA or whose work he otherwise knew to be very good.

It is hard - I would second the advice about trying to get a specialist from your nearest Priory - most of them have private practices as well.

IN the mean time do make sure you are taking care of yourself as you need to in order to support your dd.

"One family support worker linked to the school said that self harming was ok and children need to do it to relieve their stress. How the hell is that right?"

It's not OK, she's your precious DD, and you don't want her to feel that stressed, that the way to deal with it would be to harm her body. But, the way I learned about self-harm, was that it is rarely intended to harm the person in a very bad way. Of course things go wrong, and that is tragic when they do, and the scars that they are left with when the wounds heal tell a story of the journey they have been on, but the act of self harm itself, is a measure of control. It's converting an uncontrollable and unmeasurable emotional pain into a controllable and measurable, physical, visible pain. By doing that, the release that comes from the act of self harm, allows the person to function, for a time. When people are denied self harm in their usual way, they sometimes take big risks to self harm in other, more dangerous ways, and unfortunately, they are more likely to have a mishap because of that. It's sometimes safer that they self harm in a way that they 'know', especially if they have access to after care.

There are some popular replacements for self harm, such as having an elastic band on the wrist, or having a red pen to draw a line, to replace cutting, for example, and they can work really well for some people.

crunchy yes, he was supported. Unfortunately the OP’s daughter isn’t getting the support she needs. It’s not always possible for parents to do it alone.

Besides which, when I had really bad anxiety, leaving the house or even taking steps towards that was as impossible as asking me to take steps towards flying to the moon.