When your first child becomes a teenager, you expect sullen looks and a resistance to parental requests. You know there will likely be a steady withdrawal to the bedroom and you begin commiserating with fellow parents as your once motivated, happy child morphs into a recluse overnight. Isn't that what all teenagers do?
But when the faddy diets start including internet-sourced laxatives and the time spent alone involves small razors, the jokes soon fade.
The first time my 15-year-old daughter took an overdose, I quickly found out that I was indeed 'good in a crisis'. Stumbling across some empty pill packets discarded on the bathroom floor, I asked her if she had taken them. As she nodded, I knew that this would be a moment permanently etched on my memory.
What causes a bright young girl - a girl with the prospect of a wonderful future and a loving family behind her - to try and take their own life?
It's the question that has kept me awake at night, and the question that well-meaning family and friends ask time and time again. I've accepted though that there isn't an answer, and that mental illness can strike anyone at any time - and it does not discriminate.
On that first occasion, the ambulance never came. I bundled my drowsy and emotional daughter into the car and promised her that I would do everything in my power to ensure that she got the help she needed.
I naively thought that I could keep that promise.
Despite the mental anguish she was experiencing, with no lasting physical damage she was deemed fit to return home the next morning. I was assured that our local CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service) unit would be in touch.
We didn't receive our first CAMHS appointment through the post until two weeks later. The Duty Mental Health Practitioner - the person assigned to work out how serious a child's mental state is - had been given the task of deciding whether she should be bumped up the waiting list. She met with my daughter for 20 minutes, then met my husband and I for a further 20 minutes. Despite the fact that when asked if she would attempt suicide again, my daughter rated herself as a 7/10, she was put back on the waiting list, to see one of only two psychiatrists assigned to the entire borough.
Soon enough we were back in A&E. She had disclosed her utter despair to me in a text, including the date on which she had chosen to end her life. But our GP and the private therapist who had been desperately trying to "keep her safe" for the past 3 months, told me that the best chance of getting any help would be to go to A&E and refuse to leave.
Five days later, our 15-year-old daughter was voluntarily admitted to an adolescent psychiatric unit, 80 miles from home. Thankfully, the CAMHS psychiatrist who had been sent to assess her immediately recognised that my daughter's determined streak, the one that we had always been so fiercely proud of, was going to kill her if something was not done.
After a 5-month stay in an NHS adolescent psychiatric ward, our daughter left with a prescription for the medication that continues to be vital to her wellbeing and a course of intense therapy provided by our local CAMHS unit.
She's doing so much better now. But the physical and mental scars that she is left with will likely haunt us forever.
Place2Be, the charity that first initiated Children’s Mental Health Week, is running a campaign in schools across the country, urging children to be kinder to one another. It's such a simple act, but can be so effective. There are other things that need to happen too. Our society needs to accept that this silent killer is not something to be ashamed of, so that our children realise it's OK to speak out.
Parents must be educated in the early signs, the ones that might ordinarily be dismissed as 'typical teenage behaviour'. And our schools should be forced into taking their students' mental health more seriously than their GCSE grades.
If you’re at all concerned about your child and not sure where to turn, the charity Young Minds offers parents a free, confidential one-hour telephone consultation.
Guest posts
Guest post: "My daughter's determined streak nearly killed her"
MumsnetGuestPosts · 07/02/2017 10:31
This reply has been deleted
Message deleted by MNHQ. Here's a link to our Talk Guidelines.
Jiggly I will have a look. The consensus amongst these sources seems to be that mental health problems are not on the rise but rather that they are being better diagnosed. A little like crime: if everyone reported crimes it might give the impression crime rates were rocketing through the roof but in fact they would be fairly stable.
I certainly am not dismissing Suzanne's point but I also think we have to bear in mind Suzanne speaks about one school and moreover one teacher in that school.
I think it's reasonably well asserted that high performing girls tend to be the ones vulnerable to eating disorders certainly and perhaps other mental health problems.
I feel there are valid points raised but just the same there is a definite boundary blurring here between serious mental health diagnoses - eating disorders, personality disorders, depression and anxiety (which if untreated can be crippling for a persons ability to function) schizophrenia and the like - all of which are serious, all of which can prove fatal, and all of which require specialist and professional help - and any kind of emotional difficulty a child may go through. The two aren't the same thing. A child who feels stressed about her SATs should certainly be reassured and comforted by her teacher but to assert this means she is suffering from 'anxiety' is an example of the boundary blurring.
I share an earlier concern. Teachers are not counsellors and we are not doctors. That's not intended dismissively - the opposite, in fact. If we take the first line of the doctors oath and 'first do no harm' - it IS possible to do immense harm through ignorance. Helping a child with an actual mental health issue needs to be done via a mental health professional.
Furthermore, I think we would all agree the root of mental health problems are complex. To try and claim, as some are, that 'pressure' is the cause misses the point. That same pressure will cause others to thrive and others to be indifferent. Realistically, none of us are going to be able to remove anxiety and stress from adolescence in its entirety.
If this post had pointed out that many of or young people would benefit from frequent reminders to be kind and compassionate I would agree. But in the particular context of mental health, I don't. I have a sibling with severe (if untreated) mental health issues. Believe me, when you get to the point of running naked down a busy dual carriageway shouting that people are after you with samurai swords (
- you HAVE to have a bit of gallows humour at times!) kindness makes not a jeff of difference. What they need is medication and expert treatment and schools are not the first place we should be looking for either of these things.
To comment on this thread you need to create a Mumsnet account.