DS mental health deteriorating at night

[HotPenguin]

Hello my son is 10 and I'm posting here because the children's mental health board seems very quiet. He's going through a bad patch. His mood starts to plummet around bedtime and he gets into a very negative and difficult frame of mind. Gets anxious about the next day and starts accusing me of having said hurtful things in the past. Threatens to self harm or says he wants to die. Punching himself as a "punishment" for being happy during the day. He refuses to go to sleep and stays awake as long as possible.

He wakes up very moody but slightly more open to reason. Its a lot of work getting him out of bed etc but once he's got going and doing his usual activities he goes back to "normal". Next evening the cycle repeats.

We had an urgent referral to CAMHS but it's going really slowly so would just like to know if anyone has experienced this. It's difficult to help him because when he is in the negative frame if mind he says he wants to be miserable and wants to hate himself so he refuses all help.

Thanks @imitatingdory the school do not provide any positive support as such, the area I live in has extremely poor SEN provision due to lack of funding. A few adjustments are made for my son like not doing certain activities he finds stressful but I've had to fight hard for that. No social skills support. My son copes well at school and does have friends so from schools perspective there's nothing wrong.

The school should be providing more. DS has an ASD diagnosis so he would benefit from SEN provision being made. Yet another school thinking the child is ‘fine’ when if you knew what you were looking for I bet there are plenty of signs.

It is also possible to secure an EHCNA when the schools could do more, but won’t.

I bet there signs are dory.

I have been told for years and years that Ds is fine in school. Unfortunately he was anything but fine. But nobody would really listen. It did look like he was 'coping' but now he is older he is able to tell us, he wasn't at all.

Your post struck a chord with me HotPenguin as Ds was 10, when things started to go downhill MH wise.. I had known then, what I know now. I would definitely have pushed for more support.

Does he have screens before bed? The dopamine “come down” can cause anxiety/bad mood etc. my son was similar, we are 1 week into no screens and his bedtime sleep routine is going a lot smooother.