"But if she is on the side of less able to tolerate school and even employment - you might have to make some significant changes in your hopes and dreams and standards."
If a child's reported "problem" with school or doing anything productive is that it isn't "fun" and she'd rather be getting high with her friends, wouldn't the parent be irresponsible for not getting help to see that school/eventual employment/self-suffciency is not a hope and dream, but necessary reality? Life isn't only fun. Of course its too soon to jump to conclusions, but how would a parent be expected "adjust expectations" to enable a child to become a 30 or 40 year old unemployed drug user? What's wrong with searching for help to avoid this possible path?
"This might be more the meds than the illness. The mood stabilizers will stabilize mood all right - with a depression that dose not let up."
I know too many people for whom medications have been a lifesaver. Even my daughter reported them somewhat helpful (not a miraculous change, but no longer suicidal and extremely depressed) when she was taking them regularly. Now that she's not taking them regularly, she's medicating with recreational drugs.
Medication is a solution to buy time until the chemical reaction in the brain is starting up again. A very close relative is just now undergoing a depression and where she actively was trying to find a painless way to meet Saint Peter, she now just would not care if she was run over by a truck. So the medication has removed the initiative actively to attempt suicide, but the depression is still there.
There are two ways to fight the depression. Here in Denmark lighter depressions have successfully being fought with extensive exercise. In fact doctors in our country can prescribe exercise as treatment.
Serious depression called for extensive treatment in hospitals - no oher places. Our outpatient programs are now an 20 week extensive program with 2-4 days per week with a mix of course adding to group therapy (The code of ethics for group therapy in Denmark calls for max. 1,5 hours per day. According to our research longer group therapy session results in psycho drama with no real results.) Additions course can be treatment of anxiety, exercise, dance, lunch (Some suffering from depression does not eat enough, so even lunch is made a kind of treatment.)
But the most important factor in the treatment is the close awareness and presence of the family. I dont know what your possibilities for taking time off from your job are, but you as a parent in person is needed, if you decide to take the treatment out of the house in order to remove her from the negative peer group.
I am there for my relative and was it my child, I would team up the professional help and seek some time off from the outside world in a place where she and me could be undisturbed. What about doing some hiking together with your child? It does not have to some disguised boot camp with excorts, handcuffs, restraints etc. Surely a large country like your most have a human approach to the wilderness where you can go both as parent and child.
But remember: The Wilderness option is only for lighter depressions and go yourself. Children dies outthere every year. It is not always the child next door who get killed. Sometime tragedy happens for you. So just to make sure that your child is not returned in a bag, go there yourself along with your child if you choose that option.
Another thing you have to decide on is if you want treatment or school for your child. You can not have both. When our hospitals starts their 20 week intensive treatment they order people on sick leave.
Forget those so-called therapeudic boarding schools. The level of the education IS NOT what you find in your local high school. They have to show you results academicly in order to justify the payment, so they offers light courses which on paper seem to show a raise in the grades. But it is an illusion and the child has to pay later. If she show poor grade think about pulling her this year - get her treated - and return healed next year.
Please feel free to comment.
