Suicidal teen

[nugsy33]

Hi this is the first time I have posted here although I have been reading a load of relevant threads here about similar problems. My 14 year old daughter is in a very bad way and it's making the rest of the family ill. She has complained of stomach aches for over 2 years and has had every test going including an ultra sound which has revealed nothing. She has missed alot of school because of this. Last October she left herself signed in on facebook and I found to my horror that she had been sending explicit photos of herself to boys. Some of which she didn't even know. I ended up getting the police involved. We talked and talked and discovered how much she hated herself and thought she was ugly. We thought that we had moved forward. I banned her face book account and took away her phone. She got her phone back a couple of months ago but I still kept up the ban on face book. After she had lied to me about being at a friends house I took her phone back and just happened to check her messages and photos only to discover she was doing it again. I was so angry after all we had already been through and we argued. I called her a slut which i regretted straight away. I went later to her bedroom to talk and I apologised. She said there was no need to apologise because she thought she was a slut and then told me that she had been having thoughts of suicide and wanted to throw herself in front of a car. She said she hadn't slept for months. I was so frightened I didn't know what to do and spoke to my husband. later that evening i found some empty packets of her stomach medication on the floor of her room and asked if she had taken them. She swore to me she hadn't. However the next day she admitted to a family friend that she had taken 32 of the tablets. We rushed her to A and E and she was kept in over night. the next day camhs spoke to her and arranged some more appointments. She also decided that she wanted to talk to a family friend. Things were going ok even though she was telling me she was still having suicidal thoughts and thought life was pointless. Then on Sunday night she complained of her usual stomach ache. My husband and I had noticed that it was always worse on a Sunday before school and pointed this out to her that maybe the anxiety was causing this. She took this to mean that we thought she was lying about the pain which we don't and it ended up in an argument with her Dad. She told us she hated us and didn't want to speak to us any more. Later that evening at one in the morning I heard her go downstairs. I followed her down to discover she had started drinking alcohol. She told me if I hadn't come down she would have drank until it killed her. the police ended up at the house in the early hours and spoke top her. She seemed to respond, she admitted that there was a boy at school who was bothering her with nasty comments and she agreed for the police to make the school aware of this. She didn't want to go to school the next day but i made her go. When she arrived back she was happy and said she had a good day. rather than be relieved I felt angry that she had put us all through that the night before and was now so happy as if nothing happened. Later that evening she was low again and told me that she feels no love for anyone or anything and thinks life is pointless. I have phoned camhs today for advice and they are looking to possibly medicate her. I'm so scared and this is making the whole family ill. I can't see an end to this and my moods are completely controlled by her at the moment. Any advice will be gratefully received.

I didn't want this to go unanswered as you sound so terribly worried and distressed. We have had something similar with our 16 year old dd, although not as far as i know the Facebook issue. Of course I am no expert but in my experience going to the gp was the best thing we did, and dd started counselling, and when that didn't help on its own, dd was put on anti depressants which have helped a lot. You are doing all the right things by loving her, talking to her, but sometimes you need the professionals. Take care of yourself too.

Have you seen Maryz's support thread for troubled teens?
I think you would probably find some support and some benefit from it.

My completely uneducated guess is that her stomach pains are anxiety related.

I think you need to keep a close I eye on her. How close, I dont know, as you might make her more angry.
I think you may need a professional opinion on this.

when she came back from school "happy", I can almost guarantee you that many of her issues have nowhere near gone away.
Please bear that in mind, as I think that is very important.
It may take a long long time for her to resolve her issues.
Is she still talking to the family friend, and how often?

hth

Really sorry you are going through this.

I have a teen (now 16) who has also attempted suicide and whose mood swings are very strong and have a great impact on the family. I can relate to what you say about getting angry: it is so difficult when a low despairing mood that has kept the whole family under a cloud for days is suddenly replaced by a high. But dd is getting better at verbalising how she feels and is beginning to realise that the high moods are as much part of her anxiety as the low ones, and I am getting better at spotting when what seems like irritating insouciance is in fact a sign of anxiety-triggered hyperness.

I have learnt never to confront her about pain. One of dd's big problems is that her physical chronic pain condition was mistaken for psychosomatic pain when she was younger, so she has learnt not to trust anyone on the subject of pain.

Instead the approach CAHMS and I take now is that it is rotten to have this pain, but that it is possible to make it more bearable by using certain techniques. When dd and I have discussed it I have compared it to the pain of childbirth: nobody denies that it hurts having a baby, but there are mental techniques you can use to make it more bearable. I have learnt never to try to analyse her pain.

(And to be frank, when I get a tension related headache or migraine, I wouldn't find it particularly helpful if dh told me it was all in the mind. Of course it's in the mind, in the sense that it's my worries that cause the pain. But the migraine is still there and it still hurts and having it analysed doesn't make it hurt less.)

Is your dd still seeing CAHMS?

What my dd found useful was that their approach was very much about putting her in charge, giving her the tools for taking charge of the situation. It is taking a long, long time, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Dd started anti-depressants last year when she turned 15 and they have taken the edge off it, not to the point of making her happy, but to the point where she feels able to confront life to some extent. It is also helping that she is becoming mature enough to discuss the situation openly, and I try to make sure that there is no stigma or embarrassment about it. CAHMS have told her that she may always have these mood swings, that this may be part of who she is, but that she can learn to live with them so that they do not get to dominate her.

Thanks so much for all the help and support. She has been a little bit happier the last couple of weeks with just a few blips. Especially when it came to going back to school after half term. I felt that fear return in me too but I'm handling it a bit better. The stomach pains started again as the week got closer to going back to school and she has hardly slept this week so far but she is talking more and sometimes even to me which is a big change. She is still seeing CAMHS and has another appointment next week.

One thing she said disturbed me. She said she would probably kill someone some day and that she thought she was really capable of doing something like that. I try not to take stuff like that too seriously and know that that's moods and anger in a teenager who hasn't the maturity to express it. It still shocked me a bit though.

You've all given me a lot of hope even though it's one, sometimes very long day, at a time.

Apologies if this suggestion seems flippant or childish, but I've suffered from severe depression as an adult, and really struggled with alienation as a teenager.

Has she read Catcher in the Rye? When I read it as an adult, it took me back so strongly to how I was as a teenager, and I really identified with the main character. Even though the subject matter is dark and at times bizarre, it helped to normalise my attitudes and behaviours as a teen, and helped me make sense of some of my thought processes as an adult.

Is there any possibility the stomach pains could be related to her periods?

If I've read correctly she is only 14 so will be all over the place with hormones/changes/fear etc

I really would not put any credence on her saying she would probably kill someone someday

Kids sometimes say things to shock, usually because that is the level of their emotional intelligence at this age and there is usually angst and frustration thrown into the mix