My Bright, Creative and Depressed Daughter
Lesson: There is no choice but to keep loving and helping our children
My daughter, Colleen, almost 15, is depressed and,
although she has been in treatment
with both a psychologist and a
psychiatric nurse practitioner for about 2 months, she has not shown
much improvement. I am a single mother with three children aged 12,
almost 15 and almost 17. Our lives have been turned upside down.
Throughout her childhood, Colleen has been an
exceptionally bright and creative child. She always has cared
deeply for other people and animals. Although she has been very
sensitive, and prone to quick anger, before her depression she was,
for the most part, a delight to live with.
Now, Colleen says that she does not care about any of
us. She hates to be alive. She is failing in school and two days
ago, she stopped taking her medication, despite the fact that she
was beginning to show improvement. She said the improvement was in
her "ability to fake happy so that other people would leave me
alone" and that the medication wasn't actually helping her at all.
She says terribly cruel things to her two siblings and to me.
I work 30 hours each week and I am in my final year of a
doctoral program in developmental psychology. I teach parenting
classes in the community. None of this experience has prepared me
for what I am going through now. Since we have had these struggles
with Colleen, I have spent so much time worrying, attending school
appointments and attending therapy appointments that I am getting
very behind in school.
I wake up most days just feeling deeply concerned and
unhappy. I stay functional for my kids, but inside I am very sad.
I have lost touch with many of my friends who have dismissed my
problems with Colleen and who believe that I should just send her to
a "boot camp" or that I need to discipline her harshly. Her father,
with whom she has very little contact, thinks that she "just needs
to be squashed".
I know that she needs love and support and I have given
her this. I have set many limits with her but I refuse to be
punitive with her. Nothing I do seems to help. I have ongoing
support from her psychologist and the psychiatric nurse
practitioner, but things just seem to be getting worse.