Hi - help me to help her

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Hi
I joined this site this morning & as I’m writing this my 16 yr old cousin is being brought to a psychiatric hospital.
She was diagnosed with AS a few years ago but nothing was done about it. She had rituals & routines (like spending 4 hours in the bathroom washing herself, her clothes had to be washed & ironed a certain way, if you gave her a kiss hello/goodbye she would flinch & smell herself afterwards). Anyway, all these obsessions were allowed continue without any question and its only in the last few months that her parents have realised that there is something wrong with her cos she has got extremely violent & aggressive towards them and towards herself. She has broke mirrors, windows, furniture; torn up her clothes, wreaked her bedroom. She won’t speak to her parents (but especially her mother). She bangs her head continuously against the wall & is all bruised from hitting herself. She is extremely agitated when she is in the same room as her parents & goes into her own world where she grunts & talks to herself.
When it gets really bad (and by now this happens a couple of times a day) she goes into her room for hours screaming “f*ck off, f*ck off, I hate you” until she wears herself out. She was on Prozac for a few weeks but it didn’t seem to help. She is now on another medication, (don’t know the name) but that just knocks her out.
A psychologist is after referring her to this psychiatric hospital that specialises in teen behavioural disorders. The problem is ‘cos she’s 16 she is treated like an adult & she has to voluntarily stay there. My family are very distressed at the thought of her being somewhere like this but know at this stage something has to be done to help her.
Basically I would just like to hear from any young people with AS or their parents who were in this kind of situation.

dude i dont hink this is AS
i think there are biger problems here......
a lot bigger.
but good luck

Yeah, I don't see AS symptoms there.

I am no professional but washing for 4 hours a day....possible OCD. I don't know about the self-injury behavior or aggression toward others. If you like to do your own research to help, you can check out the DSM criteria books. They sell them on Amazon.com

Sorry I couldn't help more. You are a very good person to care for your cousin.

The right diagnosis leads to the right treatment. It's so important.

Good luck and best wishes

That's not AS. It might be OCD, it might be Tourettes (but she's kind of old for that to develop suddenly) but it sounds a lot more serious. I'm not a professional by any means, but maybe for now, if it's a good psych hospital, she's in a safe place. There are a whole host of other things that your post says to me, and someone has to get her to a competent psychyatrist fast (which sounds like it's happening), so good luck.

i really think she has OCD and maybe she has manic episodes because she is psychophraniac (sp)? yes she needs help but she is directing a great deal of this towards her parents. maybe there is more to this than what you know. I hope that she gets the help she needs.

Thanks to everyone for your replies. She was diagnosed a few years ago with AS and does seem to have a lot of AS traits. It’s only in the last 6-8 months that the aggression & self harm has started. The aggression was totally towards her mother but in the last few weeks towards her father as well. I’ve read a lot of other parents posts who have teens & there does seem to be a lot of them who have rage episodes. The psychologist that she was seeing said that these episodes have a lot to do with teen hormones. She has also a lot of upheaval in her life over the last few months, which I think might be upsetting her – her father had cancer (but has been successfully treated), her only brother went to Australia & she had important school exams this year. I always thought she had OCD but the washing seems to be more of a routine than a compulsion – but hopefully the doctors will come up with something.

I think one of the big problems was that she was never disciplined at home by her parents. All her life she has been allowed do what she wants, say what she wants, eat what she wants, whenever she wants. But now her rages have gotten too much for them to handle, so they finally got treatment for her.

The place she is in is lovely, my sister went with her on Monday. It caters especially for teens. I’m going to visit her this weekend & have a chat with the doctors to see how she’s getting on. I have been talking to her on the phone & she insists there’s nothing wrong with her & all she wants to do is come home to play her drums!! !