Apologies for the length of this. Long history of posting here about my difficult dd, now 15 and in year 11.
DD was referred back to CAMHS recently (we had had a pointless 12 weeks of family therapy which achieved nothing a couple of years ago) after telling her counsellor/mentor at school at the end of last term that she was suicidal. School promptly banned her from the premises as they felt they couldn't safeguard her there. This means she couldn't attend any revision sessions over the Easter holidays or the revision residential for children at risk of failing maths and English.
I have been anticipating and predicting this deepening of her problems - I told DH six months ago that she would have a mental health crises as her exams approached, as she had to face up to the mess she's made of her education, and experience the horror of sitting lots of exams she's not studied for at all.
I know she's very unhappy. How could she not be, after 4 years of doggedly oppositional behaviour towards us and her teachers she's got used to adults being exasperated and pissed off with her, and her self-esteem is very low. She is massively cheesed off with having to get up and go to school when she doesn't feel like it. Sometimes she won't go. Sometimes she goes but then buggers off somewhere. Conversely she certainly seems to have a lot of laughs with her friends, is out happily socialising every day and has been most days since telling her counsellor she was incredibly unhappy, so I'm a bit confused about her mood.
She is out at friends' houses every evening after school pretty much and every weekend. When she's at home she is horizontal in bed on her lap-top, coming out of her room only to demand food or money, or both. We've recently told her we won't give her money. She also does no school work and won't lift a finger at home to help. We have offered to pay her to study. She has said 'no' firmly to this and instead threatened to shop lift or beg if we won't give her cash for doing nothing. She feels that we have an obligation to give her money because she needs to buy cigarettes, and feels we should give her the money for these because she's 'stressed'. I'm anxious about what she'll do if we carry on not giving her money as a few weeks ago she stole my bank card for the first time and went to get her nails done, because I wouldn't give her cash. I did get it back off her, but she hasn't returned the money, and I've now lost all trust in her. Incidentally, neither DH nor myself smoke and we are very unhappy about dd smoking, but recognise that other than not giving her money for cigarettes we can't stop her doing it when she's not at home.
The psychologist at CAMHS has said that she is experiencing a lot of anxiety in relation to school and GCSE's. My response: no shit sherlock - DD has spent the last 4 years being chucked out of lessons, disrupting lessons, in internal exclusion, not doing homework, truanting, doing her coursework at the very very very very last minute and handing it in late, if at all, it's inevitable that the chickens which are now coming home to roost are going to make her feel severely anxious as she faces up to the reality that she has to do these important exams and she's probably going to fail.
When I pointed out that anxiety might actually be an understandable and rational response to dd's situation, the psychologist implied that the anxiety goes back much further than what dd is talking about now. I'm at a loss with this as neither I, nor DH, nor any of dd's wider family (who she's close to) or her teachers (many of whom like her, despite her bad behaviour, because she's confident and amenable and bright when she's in a mood to be) would have described her as an anxious child. In fact, we all would have said the opposite - that she has always been an unusually confident and self-assured child, even in the last few years of bad behaviour, she's still not ever had any problem communicating her needs to adults, and has had good friendships.
CAMHS view seems to be that her behaviour is the result of anxiety and that it's also 'relational' - ie, that it's because we (me in particular) have a poor relationship with her. Pointing out to them that our relationship was absolutely fine until dd became hugely difficult and oppositional, and that it's deteriorated because of her behaviour, seems to be water off a duck's back. They just won't acknowledge that the very difficult behaviour preceded the conflict in family, and that the conflict in the family grew from it. I feel that unless they acknowledge this, and also acknowledge that her lifestyle (constantly eating junk food, no exercise, spending prolonged periods of time in bed but staying up half the night texting and using the computer, having no hobbies or any activities which don't involve staring at a screen) may also be hugely compounding her problems.
Anyway, since she's been back attending sessions at CAMHS her behaviour has deteriorated - she's going out more and more, spending less and less time at school, and doing less and less school work (well, nothing at all actually). They've put her on antidepressants. Bizarrely, after having made a really big issue about how important it was for us to take charge of her medication (to the point of the head psychologist phoning me at home telling me that I needed to take the week's worth of fluoxetine they'd given her on her first appoint) they then gave her a prescription for a month's worth of antidepressants at her appointment, and phoned me to tell me to get the tablets off her. I pointed out that I'd told them that she was profoundly oppositional - hadn't they taken that on board, and that it would be very difficult for me to get the tablets off her if she didn't want to hand them over. Predictably, neither DH nor myself has been able to persuade them to hand them over, therefore we now have a situation where a depressed 15 year old is walking around with enough medication in her handbag to properly overdose - given to her by CAMHS, despite their own concerns about the risk.
Anyway, sorry for the rant, but I'm so fecked off with CAMHS - what they're doing with dd is like pissing in the wind. I feel like we're in a chicken and egg stand off - they see dd's oppositional behaviour as growing out of anxiety and problematic family relationships, we see dd's oppositional behaviour as having come out of the blue in adolescence (she was an exceptionally happy, confident and easy child up to this point) and that all the other things - low self esteem, anxiety about school, unhappy relationships with us, as having grown out of her being so doggedly confrontational and uncooperative, particularly her refusal to behave reasonably at school. I want them to explore why dd is so oppositional and see what can be done to help her help herself, rather than just medicating her, and pathologising her totally understandable and normal anxiety, which any child would feel when facing sitting important exams they've done no work for.
Incidentally, please no one suggest we should have home schooled. I'm very pro home schooling. But we tried it for a term when we were in the process of changing dd's school, and it consisted of dd lying in bed with the duvet over her head every day telling me to fuck off because she wanted to watch tv.