Child with anxiety

[Calliekyle]

Hi I have a 12 year old daughter who has anxiety. It started in May when she had some medical issues and missed a lot of school. Those issues were resolved and we've had trouble getting her back to school since. She has been seeing a psychologist for the past 6 weeks but I can't see a much improvement if any. Some days (usually weekends or afternoons) she is in a really good mood and other days she's screaming at me that she doesn't want to live. The psychologist she is seeing doesn't usually work with children but at the time all the child psychologists were booked up for weeks. Should she being seeing a child psychologist? It's starting to affect everyone. She does say she likes the psychologist she's seeing but I want to get her the best help.

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[Sophie_M]

Hi Calliekyle, welcome to the forums.

We can see from your post how worried you are about your daughter’s well-being. It is clear that you want to do all you can to support her recovery. Firstly it is excellent that she is seeing a psychologist who she feels comfortable with. Finding a health professional that is a good fit for a particular individual is often the biggest challenge for children and young people especially. It would be ideal for your daughter to be seeing a psychologist who specialises in working with children who she also feels comfortable with; however this doesn’t mean that the psychologist she is seeing will not be able to work effectively with her. It may be helpful to discuss your concerns with her current psychologist and explore whether the psychologist feels she is making progress or not.

We can understand that you are hoping for some evidence of improvement by now. It is so important to know that counselling with a psychologist is an effective treatment for children; however it is unfortunately not an immediate cure. Often anxiety and other mental health issues have developed over many months or even years, and so the treatment does need time to make long-lasting positive changes to an individual’s thinking and emotions. Unfortunately it is common for people to see a mental health professional a handful of times, feel it is not helping and give up before it is able to make a positive difference. If you have not noticed any positive change in your daughter yet, this certainly does not mean that there won’t be in the future. Please do not give up and continue to support your daughter to access the support.

We are concerned to see that your daughter has said she does not want to live. It would be important that her psychologist know about this. It is important that you know whether you daughter is considering taking action to harm herself or end her life. If you feel she is at risk, seek help urgently.

You can take the first step in doing this by:

- Speaking to a doctor or her psychologist
- Calling the local Mental Health Team (you can find the number in your local phone directory, or by calling her local hospital)
- Supporting her to attend the emergency department of the local hospital
- If she is at immediate risk of hurting herself or ending her life call 000 for emergency services to attend.

It might also help you to have a look at the information on our website about managing risk by following this link:

There is some great information on our website about how you can best support a loved one with depression or anxiety that you might find helpful as well:

We also wanted to encourage you to look at the information about looking after yourself as we know how distressing caring for a loved o...

You are also very welcome to call our Support Service on 1300 22 4636 if you have further concerns or questions. We are available 24 hours and we are here to help in anyway that we can. We also have web chat service available from 3pm-midnight 7 days a week; you can access this from our website if you feel more comfortable interacting online: 

[Calliekyle]

Thank you for your reply. I have told the psychologist a couple of times that she tells us she doesn't want to be here, I don't want to live or I want to die in a hole. She doesn't think she is trying to tell us she is going to self harm more that she's using it to show that she's hurting but it's hard when your child is sitting on the floor, repeating this over and over and you have no idea how to help her. I'm also worried it's going to start affecting her 6 year old brother. I do have an appointment lined up with a child psychologist in November which I made in early August (that's how long the wait is) but I was just concerned about switching psychologists. You know, you never think things like this will affect you. You always assume it will be some other family.