Anxiety/OCD in 7YO

[Ragusa]

Tomorrow I'm trying to get DS an appointment with the GP. I think I'may just posting for a bit of a brain dump and to see if anyone else with such a young child has been in this situation.
DS is just 7 and seems to be having major issues with negative thoughts, intrusive compulsions and ... well, just life, really.

This all started in the long summer holidays with seemingly innocuous questions about swearing and how bad it was. He kept saying that bad words and thoughts were popping into his head and he felt an urge to say them out loud.

This has spiralled into compulsions to confess trivialities (obviously not trivial to him), alleged rule transgressions, etc.

I am not a novice at this as both my maternal and paternal families are riddled with depressive and anxiety disorders, and there is also a fair bit on DH's side albeit totally undiagnosed and dismissed as 'quirks'. Additionally I have major depressive disorder mainly anxious type, but well controlled with medication for years and years. Totally minimised in childhood which is why I am determined to not do same with DS. Dh's view is that it may pass, guve him time, etc, ut I think this is just avoidance of difficult issues ...

This has spiralled so rapidly with DS and I am a bit concerned that he is showing what could be symptoms at such a very young age.

His older sibling seems totally unaffected by the shitty slate of hand that is mental health issues.

Help. How do I approach this with a GP without sounding like a crazy lady who is projecting her own issues onto her child?!?!

Hi both my DC1 and DC3 started with similar intrusive thoughts and compulsive behaviours in Year 5 so age 9. I didn’t know what was happening with DC1 and just put it down to changing school. His got steadily worse over the following years and we finally got him some help during year 8. Both have crippling anxiety and use compulsive behaviours including the need to obsessively talk about what is in their heads to deal with that and their feelings of unwarranted inadequacy.
Because I now know what I am dealing with when DC3 started in Year 5 in exactly the same pattern ( worried about being naughty, thinking that people had heard her thoughts out loud, thinking she has copied in school, rituals etc) I got her refered too. More or less at the same time.
Having the help much earlier has been such a good thing. She is a long way from better and after the four sessions our local children’s mental health charity provides we feel very much back alone but at least I have some idea what to say or do some of the time. My eldest has it much much harder as everything is so much more ingrained and buried.
We were lucky that we were able to self refer to our local mental health charity so never went through a GP so I can’t advise on that.
However I have read that early help for OCD means a better chance of recovery,
My DC3’s came on literally over a Xmas school holiday totally out of the blue and progressed very fast so your experience does sound familiar to me.
Hope that helps a bit,
I found crying on the phone when self referring helped....

Thanks Happy piglet, I am sorry your kids and you have had to deal with this stuff too.
So I took him to GP and he did a pretty good job of explaining stuff and answering questions. he is a very smart little lad and am so proud of him.

Basically, at home CBT style books seem to be our main strategy for now. If that makes no difference then back we go. Review before Xmas.

So grateful for a supportive GP and I am confident that he will do ... something if we go back.

Hi,
My DS has OCD. Our GP referred himto CAMHS after I explained all my worries... We had an initial appointment where they recommended these books:

www.goodreads.com/book/show/962985.Freeing_Your_Child_from_Obsessive_Compulsive_Disorder
Which is for you to read.

www.goodreads.com/book/show/313130.What_to_Do_When_Your_Brain_Gets_Stuck
Which is for you to work through with your child.

They were brilliant. The CBT ideas were really helpful. So much so, that by the time we eventually got called for ‘proper’ appointments 9 months later, we felt he’d preogressed enough not to need them!

It was hard work, but it helped that he was the one that said he couldn’t go on like he was...

He still has days where things are harder, but he's a changed child. It used to take him over an hour to get to bed, by the time he'd done all his rituals and he was exhausted. Now he does none of them!

He knows he'll always have it, but now he has the skills to do something about it.

I managed to get both books from the library, but ended up buying the first one and often dip back in to it if I feel I need to.

Good luck with everything.

Was this very sudden onset or rapid worsening of symptoms? If so, it could be PANDAS syndrome (just mentioned this on another thread). My DD has this. It is autoimmune rather than mental health but is more common when there is a family history of anxiety.

@Callmekitten thanks for that idea. Not something I had considered a day I will look it up.