teenage daughter

[Brady_bunch]

My teenage daughter is currently an inpatient at a behavioral health unit. She has been struggling with depression, anxiety, and self-harm. The psychiatrist has said in addition to major depressive disorder with psychotic features and generalized anxiety disorder that she also has traits of BPD. Wanting to reach out to others who are going through similar experiences to support each other and learn what has worked for their families.

Thank you

Our objective is to better understand the struggles our child faces and to learn the skills to improve our relationship and provide a supportive environment and also improve on our own emotional responses, attitudes and effectiveness as a family leaders

[old97]

Hi Brady,

So sorry your facing this situation!

That's a lot of diagnoses. Diagnosis and treatment of BPD is pretty specialized. Does the psychiatrist have the necessary background in BPD? My experience is BPD can account for a lot of what you briefly described. I'm obviously not there, and equally obviously NOT a mental health professional. But I am naturally a skeptic and have insisted that the mental health professionals who have attempted to diagnose and treat our BPD-D show me some credentials and references. We were lucky enough to get a great referral from a counselor we had seen as a couple earlier in our relationship. But even with that, I asked a lot of questions and did a lot of reading before we mentioned it to BPD-D.

Good Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) administered by a skilled counselor who has the necessary training and experience can improve things. Badly administered DBT, or the wrong choice of therapy methodology, can make the situation worse.

All the best to you and your family. I hope things improve. Please stay engaged here! There are many people here who want to help and provide support.

[JD2028]

My teenage daughter is currently an inpatient at a behavioral health unit. She has been struggling with depression, anxiety, and self-harm. The psychiatrist has said in addition to major depressive disorder with psychotic features and generalized anxiety disorder that she also has traits of BPD. Wanting to reach out to others who are going through similar experiences to support each other and learn what has worked for their families.

Thank you

My suggestion is to get some guidance on what boundaries you want to set while she is away. When she comes home it's best to have a prepared set of rules and consequences as opposed to the more nebulous "I'll set consequences as necessary"

Make sure you and SO/other parent is on the same page for boundaries and positive reinforcement. It's good if you can hash this out with a therapist because she will test your relationship.

There's always more but start with that.