And has there been anyone else in the family who’s had any sort of serious mental health problems?

No, not as far as I know. I think if you go further back, I was brought up by my grandparents and I think, my maternal grandparents, and I think my grandmother possibly had depression but I wouldn’t have known what depression what it was and she died when I was fifteen. But she did talk about her own, it was either her mother or her grandmother, having early onset dementia or I think she said in the parlance of that she would have used that she went a bit ga-ga and I can’t remember if that was her mother or her grandmother. But certainly no one in my or my father’s side or my mother’s side have had any significant mental illness.

It’s depression in our family that would be, if any, the sort of mental illness that anybody has suffered from is depression, long term depression.

And in her father’s family, were there any?

It’s a personal view, I think hes mentally ill. I think hes possibly got a personality disorder.

Theres that expression, you know, normal is as normal does. To my mind, I think my family were normal. I don’t think his family were. They’re incredibly punitive and strict and, whereas I was brought up with lots of chaos and love, he was brought up with lots of rules and not showing much emotion.

And her, my daughter’s granny’s father, so her great grandfather, had some kind of mental illness but I’m not sure what it was and there was possibly a suicide in their family too, but I can’t remember the details because I split up from him quite a while ago.

And again they wouldn’t have talked about it. He wouldn’t have talked about it. He wouldn’t have talked about it.

Yes.

Because he didn’t talk about emotions so.

One thing I would say is those awful websites that encourage young people to, I don’t know what could be done to sort of, to stop them.

I suppose you can’t really. It’s free speech but they really do seem to be, you know, very, very instrumental and I know that my daughter has looked at them. Shes admitted to me that shes looked at them and shes found them helpful, which kind of scares me.

Is that mostly the cutting ones?

I’m not sure.

Or is that ones for overdoses too?

Yes, there are ones to tell you how to over, you know, how to commit suicide and and you know, supporting your feelings of suicide and I know there have people been doing it online and it’s just horrible. I, you know, I wish something could be done about that because when you think how much time young people spend online and

Yes.

And seeing that, it’s just awful, you know, reinforcing the ideas that you should go through with it and young people do, you know, imitate each other.

I felt very protective towards her. But also, I’ll admit, especially the first time, really quite frustrated and annoyed.

I have to be honest, I was quite annoyed that shed done it and angry because I was felt that there were there were other things she could have done because I did feel, at that time, that it was cry for help. It wasn’t a serious, there wasn’t serious intent because of the amounts of tablets but, nevertheless, I was supportive and I kept sort of softening, sort of going through a range of emotions, which hopefully I didn’t project particularly but I tried to show her the soft side and sort of very supportive and I was very tactile with her as I always am.

And what is it about CAMHS that you don’t like or you haven’t found satisfactory?

I found them not to be impartial and, in fact, it’s in a meeting and my daughter painstakingly explained something that her father had had done, which was to my mind horrible and unforgiveable and just showing his controlling nature, making her stand out in the cold weather waiting for a bus. It might not sound much but it’s, you’d have to know him, and it was a horrible example of how he can have power over his daughter. So I think I made a comment like, oh, I sighed or something and the psychiatrist said, Oh, it sounds to me like it was a mistake, a misunderstanding. And that made me very angry because I didn’t think they were taking the content of what [my daughter] was saying seriously so I got quite upset and then I think something else happened later on in the meeting. I think they’d asked me to help, no, my child had asked me to help to talk for her, so I started saying a few things that I thought it might have been, the reason why she took the second overdose and again, the psychiatrist busted in and said, It’s not helpful having these lists and just giving lists to [my daughter]. She needs to talk about it. And I got very upset.

Yes.

I have to say, and I walked out of the meeting, and I haven’t been back since, but I would say that this is, sort of backs up with my experience of CAMHS as, in in my job and myself and my colleagues do often get very frustrated with, they seem to deal with minutia of life without looking, [sighs] well, I suppose were coming at it from two different ways. Because I’m a social worker, I would look at problem solving, I would look at how to make this family exist better and that might be that they need a washing machine. It might not always be terribly sort of small insignificant thing that happened when they were three or. I just find CAMHS labour a point too much but I was prepared to go along with their, the way that they work because of my daughter and I’m just hands off now.

Yes.

I certainly would never stop her going but I just don’t get involved.

So do they try and communicate with you or that’s?

They send me the meetings, the care plan.

Right. Yes.

But other than that, her father takes her, he, if needed hell go into meetings with her but I’m nothing to do with it anymore and I’m glad.

And did she say why particularly shed done it? I mean did she want to die do you think?

I think it was a cry for help.

Yes.

But I also think it to assume that is quite, one can never know can one? I can’t get inside her head. I can’t think she was, you know, she definitely didn’t want to die. It’s hard to think that a fifteen year old wants to die because it’s so unpalatable and horrible to think that a fifteen year old would want to die. I think part of her just wanted everything to go away and for her parents to get on and stop hating each other. And maybe that was the main issue and then the other things all built up, the school problems, the friend problems, the boyfriend problems until everything became too much and it was the only escape, the only thing she could think of to do.

And do you know what started it off? Was there any particular trigger or things that were going on?

Trying to sort of look at it now from what I realise now was going on, I I believe she was very upset at school, more upset than I’d realised and her exams were looming. She was very worried about having missed some school, not a great amount but, you know, a certain amount of school and that I think shed never had a particularly happy time at that school, looking back on it.

And when she went to senior school, it was a time of great change. Wed just moved house and I’d and I’d split up so I don’t think she was ever particularly happy there. It’s a very big school, quite impersonal. She was having a few issues with her friends as well at that time and with her boyfriend and with her parents, with myself and her dad in that we don’t get on and it must be very difficult for her knowing that we don’t like each other. And we had the kind of normal teenage mother fallings out.

She was beginning to push boundaries quite a lot and, although it’s I mean my attitude to bringing up children is completely, vastly different to her father. I’m on the much more relaxed, perhaps too relaxed end of the scale. Her father is much more punitive and strict. So I think the conflict of having one parent, who was incredibly strict, and the other, who was too lax, was quite difficult for her to handle.