I've never joined a forum like this before, much less sent a post to one. But I am at the end of my tether.
My 16 year old son has suffered from depression for three and a half years. I have spent that entire time witnessing his gradual decline while the mental health services have been entirely ineffective in doing any thing about it. When it started he was a bright, outgoing boy, expected to get a set of top grade GCSEs (we've never tried to push him, he is just very capable). Since that time his school attendance has declined further and further, we've changed schools (to one much closer, CFS was an early symptom), reduced the number of GCSEs he is taking, lowered expectations about grades. Now he hasn't been to school at all for three months (I think the mocks finally pushed him over the edge, he didn't even take them). He is four months away from GCSEs and now the probability is that he won't sit them at all, much less pass any of them.
During that period, his mood has declined, he has lost most of his interests, and is losing all hope about his future. We are prioritising his mental health over education, but feel that we have been pretty much left to get on with it alone. Despite a lot of pushing and a resulting string of referrals to psychologists, psychiatrists (he is on anti--depressants, though they appear to be completely ineffective), key workers and therapists, nobody has been able to halt the decline. Either the interventions are too infrequent to make a difference ("so we'll see him again in three months"), or the quality of those interventions has been hopeless (key workers who seem to be unable to form any sort of rapport with him, much less provide any useful advice). I know I should be grateful we have been able to get some help, but it takes months to get anywhere.
I've seen the news reports about how the mental health services are failing teens, and now I'm experiencing it first hand. There genuinely seems to be nothing anyone is willing or able to do to help us and we're pretty much being told it's up to us to sort him out. My wife is having to give up work, and the school no longer even bothers to initiate any contact with us. We feel completely abandoned, left to deal with him as best we can, and left to pick up the pieces of his destroyed education. I get lots of breezy assurances that he can always go back to education, but having researched the options, there really isn't a lot out there. Certainly I can't see him attending a college in the next town or halfway across the county when he currently can't manage the ten minute walk to school.
I suppose I'm posting here because I'm interested in hearing the experiences of other parents who have been through this. There seem to be no parent support groups in our area, so we can't even talk things through with other people in the same position. And frankly, most of the time I don't feel that I have the faintest clue what I'm doing, whether I'm helping or hindering my son. I'm trying to maintain a brave face, encourage him, keep my relationship with him strong, but I'm increasingly struggling to hold it together. There seems to be no end to this and I wonder how far down he's going to sink.