DD overdose. The system is broken? Any advice?

[BeethovenNinth]

I have posted about DD before. Broken by lockdown, anorexia age 12, school drop out, burn out, self harm extreme. We are five years in.

we have repeatedly been told she doesn’t qualify for help and have tried various therapists ourselves.

she is out of school and self learning. Very lonely. Seems ok recently ot so I thought.

due to intense sadness last night she took an overdose of aspirin. I suspect a cry for help and she phoned childline who got her to phone 111. (She didn’t think to wake any of us). I suspect A and E will just kick us out soon.

we are a loving family but this is a huge setback.

we are Edinburgh based, desperate desperate for the right help.

private psychiatrist? Do we suggest sertraline? Anyone in Scotland have any good suggestions?

thanks from a broken mother

Re Autism. Your born with it and you die with it. Other things can look like ASD but ASD doesn't come on ( rare things like vaccine damage but that's vaccine damage as a diagnosis?). In girls it can be hard to see. Dd has Autism but very outgoing, social, loud, clever, gets too touchy snd close, explosive, shouting. I think the only reason we suspected it was because her brothers are ND. I'm still not convinced some days if we took her to another medical professional they would dissagre. Plus the criteria seems to ever change.

I do think camhs are a dangerous organisation. Ds was on the waiting list for four years. Always promising he would be seen in a few months. So many lies. I too got my mp involved. How or why would any parent trust someone who lies re your child in a crisis?

I'm in England but my ds got on stertraline as soon as he turned 18 via a mh nurse at the gp. He was on 150mg at 18 and by 22 doesn't take it anymore. When he was really low we had no support from anyone. Not school, nhs, family. It's a lonely place. Family though we just needed to be stricter. But then when people are successful at ending things, everyone says 'if only I had known!" I found the samaritains helpful for me. If only to feel heard when everyone else's attitude was "I wouldn't put up with that"

The SNP government is criminally incompetent. Staggeringly bad. Like nursery aged kids pretending to be politicians. And people vote for them time and time again because they’re gullible enough to think Indy would be remotely better. A once great country brought to its knees but utter morons. It’s devastating.

Thanks graydon crisis saw us in A and E. We have been here so many times: they nod sympathetically and are really nice to her and refer us to East Lothian CAHMs.who either do nothing or last time offer her a Teams appointment with a nurse who says there is nothing offered to her!!!! I tried adult Crisis yesterday in the hospital but she is 16 so they won’t touch it (despite her being put in a mixed adult ward).

i agree my next step is private adolescent psychiatry. That’s this week as much as I can. Private scares me as it’s out my control I guess but where else do I go?

I haven’t slept. I checked on her every hour.

Interestingly she phoned Samaritans who she said were rubbish and it was Childline she said was amazing. I’m v grateful to them. Why she couldn’t wake us up I don’t know but this is why I cannot sleep.

dyslexic I don’t think she is autistic. I thinj Covid had contributed to the onset of autistic behaviours. What this means and what we do I don’t know..

Ah I see. Have you tried emailing and ccing your MP and PALs outlining her history and asking why CAMhs won’t do anything when crisis have referred her?

Also just to say I don’t know anything about Scottish politics but it’s exactly the same in England. Equally as shit.

I remember either sleeping with her, or she would creep in with me, or I’d sit on the stairs and listen to her cry if she wouldn’t have me any closer. I couldn’t even breathe deeply because I was so scared I wouldn’t hear her doing something dangerous.

My heart breaks for you. But I swear with a diagnosis comes the appropriate meds and she will get there.

One thing the private consultant said to my DD really helped: that they would work with her but they are not a 24 hour emergency service. So if she did anything dangerous they would stop working with her. She took that seriously I think, or at least the process of being heard as part of the diagnosis weeks seemed to ease something.

Anotjer thougjt @BeethovenNinth, O was advised by a trained clinocal psychptherapist, now an academic, thay when seekong a therapist go to ones under an umbrella organisation for the sageguards and clinocal peer review that is more readily available.

Whilst the system is starved of resources, there seems to be no cognizance of the potential lost revenues arising from young people falling out of education/work and the concomotant lost tax revenues. I've no doubt that of dd had not been able to access optimal, care that she wpuld not ha e gone to uno, qualified and been able to successfullu practice as a secondary teacher. The oppprtunity cost enabled by the system os breathtaking. My experience was that CAMHS gave not a jot about that and the enduring impact on self esteem and lofe success.

The Director of Childrwn's MH services told me that they treat all users the same - sadly thay extrapolates to badly.

@Graydon, why the caution about goimg private? We found private with a recognised Consultant Psychiatrist far superior than anything provided by the NHS. Still rimging in my ears is the comment from an experienced CAMHS MH nurse "well mum, she's too old at 17 to be diagnoswd with ADHD". Ingrained incompetence.

I agree @RosesAndHellebores

Our private consultant was also an NHS consultant. But DD would have never been able to access her without going private.

Many people in the Edinburgh area work for banks. The Bank Worker Charity can help with funding therapy for bank workers and their friends.

If you want NHS help I would also advise contacting any local MPs / MSPs who are competent and not SNP. I’m always really surprised by the ability of politicians to kick some arses into gear when needed.

Because we’ve had some very good private care and diabolical private care (registered under the systems that are supposed to mean good care)that caused a huge amount of damage and made things ten times worse. We’re not alone. Private is a lottery with an increasing amount of people trying to make a fast buck and manipulating vulnerable users. Our best care was the right NHS care but it’s increasingly harder to get. Instead of lambasting the mentally unwell we need to be looking at giving them better NHS access to what they need.

Has anyone got any experience of the TRC group? They are London and Edinburgh based. They seem to offer more of a one stop shop and would also check DD for things like low iron (which our GP won’t do regularly.)

In regards to potential autism, it is common for presentation of autistic traits to start in girls during puberty. So yes, it is possible for there to be no signs during early childhood in girls. Timing wise, if she was 12 during lockdown and that’s when this all started, she was likely going through puberty.

To build on this, autism in girls is so often missed, especially when it concerns high functioning girls. They are typically much better able to 'mask' as typical young girls play in childhood centers around role play and developing social skills that allow little girls to learn how to interact socially when childrens games stay relatively simple. When the social interactions get much more complex in secondary and hormones kick-off, coping strategies that used to work stop working.
TBH it doesn't really matter if she is or isn't, given she has 'traits' that are observable, ensuring she has a therapist who is neuroaffirming is so important - there is just so much shame wrapped in feeling different.
Good luck, you sounds like an incredible mum navigating something really hard. Xxx

higgledy would they mask at toddler and pre school age though? Would they come home and have meltdowns? Wouldn’t there be some signs? I remembered a girl in DD’s class in primary one diagnosed and her mother spoke of the meltdowns at home after school.

my DD had none of that. My friend ran the nursery she attended and said she had no signs (and she saw her every day). She was an early walker and talker. Zero issues - I mean zero - with social engagement.

the kids with autism I know are actually doing really well! I’m delighted for them. But it doesn’t fit my DD with her extreme anxiety, sudden onset social anxiety. Hers is akin to PTSD.

I do recall once age six in a drama show she looked away a lot which I thought was odd. And another time I took my other child to hospital for a fever and I left DD - age about 3 or 4 - with a neighbour she hardly knew. The neighbour said she talked in the third person eg “Jane’s mummy has taken her sister to the doctor”. And my friend said this was a sign of Asperger’s as her son had it. DD never did it again and she was worried at the time as I was away and she didn’t know my neighbour. I thought no more of it.

could those two minor signs be it? She had zero issues with noise, lights, busy places, parties, school, social events, drama camps and shows, brownies and clubs,
and always had lovely friends and zero social issues. She had no tantrums as a baby although was no pushover. She was just a happy kid. My mother thinks it so strange that it’s now assumed she is autistic.

I'm so sorry to hear what you are going through as a family. We're in Scotland and have been through very similar. The wheels came off spectacularly when my DD was 14.

To reiterate what others are saying, please look into Autistic masking and burnout. It wasn't until I properly researched that it all fitted into place. Jodie Clarke is a good place to start.

We also have personal experience of Aspect Autism Consultancy based in Glasgow and I can't rate them highly enough.

And to give you a bit of reassurance, I have other children one of whom is Autistic and they haven't had any mental health issues.

Please feel free to PM me.

It wouldn't be masking at that age, no, but copying what other children are doing and imitating, which is how they learn what's socially acceptable and socially rewarded, which ultimately gets them through primary school. Other subtle signs are very intense interests or collections, which in girls are typically more socially acceptable and less noticable, e.g. she might like horses, but much more intensely than other little girls of the same age, so she might want to camp out in the stable or something like that.
FYI my niece is also on the ASD diagnostic pathway and I don't think she ever had a single tantrum, just followed directions really well but has started to struggle socially as she's gotten older.
No one here is going to be able diagnose your daughter and she may well not be neurodiverse but I think people are raising it because ASD and ADHD presentations are soooo misunderstood in young girls that it can be discounted too quickly.
Given your daughter herself is adamant she isn't autistic, an assessment probably wouldn't be the right thing as it would probably alienate her further - but a neuroaffirming therapist may be the way to go and then to research ASD/ADHD in girls more to see if it's something worth progressing in the future.

Also, early walking and early talking can actually be indicators, especially if they are particularly fluent early..

Because its difficult for people to consider that there could be anything else. Thats often how ASD diagnoses come about for YP with your daughter's profile.

She may be, she may not but ultimately she needs help to function every day and like she said she's not up at the moment for more talking.

But even if it is autism, how does this help the OP's dd with her current issues?

My DD received a diagnosis at 6 (we asked for referral aged 4) and had had lots of traits, mainly not being able to sleep at all. Which was resolved due to melatonin.

However, I received a diagnosis as an adult and I would say that things only became hard when I started secondary and hormones kicked in. When I reflect on it though there were things I’d do to sensory seek and I think I was anxious a lot as a child but didn’t have the language for it and so never spoke about it or knew that it wasn’t the norm to have a simmering anxiety under the surface all the time. I do think it can be hard to identify your feelings as an autistic person too. I had lots of friends but on reflection I was naive and copied a lot and believed what anyone told me. I was very empathetic towards animals and read a lot- enjoyed my own company.

Oh and my daughter is very well behaved at school because she is scared of breaking and rules and getting in trouble. That terrifies her. So it just looks like she is fine. We do have all the meltdowns at home though.

OP, you might be beyond this now but I found charities such as Mindroom, kindred and EDAN hub helpful as I was able to access parent support who could signpost me how to access resources. In your position I’d probably go private psych now though due to the age of your DD and the crisis point you are at.

@MotherofPufflings from personal experience, understanding neurotype helps identify the most appropriate support.

We have been on a very steep learning curve and understanding my DD's neurotype has made all the difference. The one-size-fits all approach that's offered via the NHS just doesn't work for many.

Thanks @catclarks Without wanting to derail the thread, are you able to explain/give an example of what support was/wasn't helpful for your daughter because of her diagnosis please🙏?