Advice for my teenaged sister about one of her friends.

[GrouchyKiwi]

My 16-year-old sister (who lives on the other side of the world) is going to call me in the morning to ask for advice on how to look after one of her friends who talks a lot about killing herself. The reason she's calling me is because I had a few friends who felt like that in high school and uni (one who spent 6 months in hospital after trying to kill herself) and they are doing well now.

From what I know, this friend (also 15 or 16) has fairly controlling parents who don't listen to her issues and are threatening to send her to different schools. She's a talented girl, and they're (apparently) very pushy.

The only thing I can think of at this stage is for her friend to take someone with her to have a good sit down with her parents and talk it all out. Hopefully if someone comes along to support her then her parents cannot change the subject/talk over her/sweep it under the carpet.

I'm hoping my innate good sense will kick in while I talk with my sister, but any suggestions would be extremely gratefully received.

TIA.

I would be urging her to get her friend to seek medical attention too, or teenage MH charities so that she can find someone independent to talk through her problems and work out where to go from here. Obviously that depends on what is available and how it's accessed wherever it is your sister lives

Wilie Thanks, hadn't thought of teen charities. Not sure what's there, but sister might know.

eighty Absolutely. Was going to suggest she thinks of a safe adult that can go with her (the friend, not my sister).

Have just finished speaking with my sister so want to write this all down.

• Her friend has been talking with the Guidance Counsellor at school, and the Dean for their year knows about her situation. She has also my sister thinks) told her GP, so there is some support there.

• Sister thinks that someone has gone with her friend to talk to her parents before but it didn't work, so have suggested she talks to her Dean and asks him/her to go with. As a teacher, the Dean should be used to advocating for teenagers, and (I think) knows the family, so that might be a bigger help.

• We've found a charity/support line that also does face-to-face counselling near to where they live, so Sister will pass on that info to Friend and encourage her to use it.

• Friend has an older sister who she used to be very close with, but she's not talked about her much in the last year. The older sister has moved to another part of the country, so that might be why there's less talk about her, or it could be that their relationship has deteriorated. If it's the former, then Sister is going to tell Friend to get help from her older sister.

• Have encouraged Sister to sit down with Friend (and their other friends who also are helping/dealing with this) and talk about how a) they care about her and want to support her, but b) it's very hard on them to be in this situation, and she needs to talk with people trained to help.

• Have explained to Sister that it's not her responsibility to cope with this. She needs to care about and support her friend, but Friend needs to want to get well and work for herself. And, should the worst happens, it's not Sister's fault.

• Finally, I've offered my help as A Safe Older Person that she can offload on, if she wants to, and maybe that will help too. (Obviously with the proviso that I am not trained, but I'm a good listener, and sometimes that's all that teenagers need.)

If you have any more ideas, or if you think any of the above advice is wrong/would be detrimental, then please let me know. I have stressed that trained care is what her Friend needs, so I'm really hoping that Friend can see that too.