My daughter tried to kill herself last Thursday

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Exactly a week after two psychiatrists assessed my daughter and said she had no signs of depression at all, she tried to kill herself by drinking ammonia last Thursday. I was just in time to see her do it and I tore it from her hands and ran upstairs to dump it down the sink. While I was on the phone with 9-1-1 and poison control, she was trying to drink the laundry detergent and her twin sister poured that on the floor and sink so she couldn't drink it.

The paramedics got her to go to the hospital finally, but she refused to dilute the ammonia by drinking water. The cops were yelling at her that they would force her to drink it and she still calmly refused.

Luckily she ended up just burning her mouth a bit and her cheek and her stomach inside and it caused her to have the runs all night. If I had not stopped her in time, she would have drank more and her throat would have swollen up and she likely would have stopped breathing and fainted before she could ask for help. I am so grateful her friend texted my daughter to let us know what she was planning.

Her pattern is to wait until we are sleeping and then she usually cuts and then shows her sister and then her sister wakes me up.

So she ended up finally spending 3 days in the residential crisis unit which she hated and felt like was prison. She came home last night to attend school today because you can only stabilize her up to 5 days. They were supposed to have some big safely plan and really the plan was only that I and my fiance safety proof the house and that we supervise her at all times, so someone has to sleep in her room at night for God knows how long.

6 weeks we have been going through this craziness and there is no hope of it ending any time soon. I am exhausted, depressed, anxious and just feel like I am in hell.

I did call the adult crisis unit to get help for myself this weekend, but his advice seems different than the residential crisis unit's advice. They said that helping her so much while she is cutting is escalating her attention seeking behaviours. His advice was to not give her attention if she cuts and supervise her, but not speak to her at all and only comfort her if she asked for help first. If she wants a snack afterwards, she can make it herself and if she is bleeding, she has to clean it herself. But that doesn't really help if she starts drinking caustic liquids again.

If she is doing it for attention, then your response will make her more likely to do it, but you're right - you can't ignore this. Ignoring a cry for help will only make it escalate. Instead, you should do the opposite, responding to both the severe and the minor cries for help, so she learns she doesn't have to do the severe stuff to get your help.

My big question is - how does she feel about what she did? Does she really want to die, or was it an impulsive act? Does she want to stop acting this way and doesn't know how?

If she's motivated to change, I recommend seeing if you can get her DBT. It's a treatment for people with extreme emotional reactions, that teaches skills to defuse and redirect emotions so you don't do something destructive.

The psychiatrists are trying to get her into cognitive behaviour therapy, so hopefully that will help. Likely a long waiting list for that too though.

Is something bad happening in school?

I am sorry. That DBT thing sounds like what I was trying to think of for the other thread. I don't know if it is attention-seeking for her to show her sister or if she is just scaring herself, and after the fact, she wants help. Hopefully she can get access to more services soon.

Ettina, she doesn't seem to realize how serious an act it was and she doesn't currently want to die, but it takes nothing to trigger her to want to. She couldn't understand why I was so upset with her and I had to explain that I could have been planning her funeral if I had not caught her in time. She did say she feels more grateful for her life now and that she won't cut ever again and that she felt that the whole world owed her something, but she could have said all this to just come home because she said she missed her family and her cat.

Slenkar - she has been cutting for weeks and saying that that she feels so anxious and can't stop herself. What made her drink ammonia was her and her best friend got into a fight. Her friend said that she was no longer be friends with her and then my daughter showed her a picture of the bottle of ammonia to show that she was serious about killing herself. She even sent her sister away saying she was really nauseous and they couldn't hang out, so that she would be able to drink the ammonia. When she gets like this, she says she is giving up and it never gets better.

ASD mommy - well we have an urgent appointment with the psychiatrist tomorrow - so hopefully he can help her this time.

Good luck with the psychiatrist, judging by her behavior I would have thought she was being bullied, but no.

Gosh, I just wanted to say I'm so sorry your family is going through all of this.
I don't have any words of advice... just wanted to say that I'm thinking of you and your daughter and sure hope the psychiatrist's appt. is helpful this time and they can figure out some way to really help your daughter.

I have to bring my daughter to her psychiatrist appointment today at 1:00 pm. I feel really anxious because we haven't been lucky with getting her help so far. Every time she meets a new person, she acts so functional and everyone reassures me that she is doing great and then it soon falls apart. I asked her this morning if she finally realizes that she needs medication and she says yes, so hopefully she will convey that today.

I was talking to her mental health nurse that went to see her at school yesterday and he figures we just need something stonger to help her sleep. Trazadone didn't help, so he thinks Seroquel might be prescribed. That is the drug I was really scared for her to go on because of the side effects and the weight gain, but really she is so thin now, 5 ft. 11 and 130 pounds, so some weight gain might be welcome. And really if it will help her sleep, that will be awesome because she has had really bad insomnia for the past 6 weeks. I just hope that she doesn't realize they prescribe Seroquel for schizophrenia or bipolar disorder and that it's an anti-psychotic. She is really worried to be diagnosed with bipolar disorder like her father.

For what it's worth, not everyone on Quetiapine (the generic) gains weight. I've been on it for about 3 years now and it's only in the last few months I've gone up a clothes size so likely unrelated.

I found the drowsiness effect from it partly wore off after a while but in the short term it could stop her from drinking bleach.

I was put on it for 'labile mood' but not diagnosed with psychosis or bipolar.

We saw her psychiatrist yesterday and I got to stay for the first half hour of the meeting so he could clarify what happened in the week since she got assessed and the suicide attempt. She was much more honest with him about her lack of sleep, her wanting to cut and that she really had been trying to kill herself and would have drank much more ammonia had I not stopped her. I told the doctor that she was trying to drink laundry detergent too, while I was on the phone with 9-1-1 and poison control.

He put her on 25 mg of Seroquel to help her sleep and to curb her impulsivity and we seem him next Tuesday to see how that works and if he should switch her Zoloft.

My daughter actually slept all night last night (after a month of insomnia) and was in a great mood this morning, so here is hoping that we can go back to having a nice calm life again. Her twin sister is still sleeping with her and we are keeping the home safety-proofed.

I am not too concerned about her gaining weight because the Zoloft is giving her a lack of appetite, so hopefully they will even each other out. Conceptually Curious, what is labile mood?

Glad to hear the psychiatrist took some time to really understand what has been going on.
Hopefully this med. will work well and help her feel better!
Take care!

"Labile Mood" is a marked fluctuation of mood. My dad was both bipolar and alcoholic. He could be talking with you as if you were his best friend one minute, shouting in your face the next minute, and the crying on your shoulder the next. His moods were "Labile".

I'm sorry you experienced that Fnord. My mother is much the same way.

In my case, I could go from very happy to crying very quickly or irritated and impulsive. Much like you'd see in ultraradian bipolar or BPD, except that I didn't turn out to have either after all - I was just struggling to manage my emotions.

I'm glad it helped your daughter sleep. The second dose I took, I fell asleep in the car on the way to school, blearily took myself to the library and then slept through the first two periods! I ended up changing to loading my dose to night time only, rather than twice daily.

I'm intrigued that he's only prescribing 25mg though - I take 100mg a day and that's generally accepted to be a very low dose.