We are the parents of a bright and talented 17 year old. She’s done well in high school, a few honors classes and UW GPA of 3.5. She also tests very well on standardized tests. After the first quarter of this year she was diagnosed with depression and anxiety. And as of January she has not attended school full time. She has tutors and is trying to keep up but is up and down on how she is feeling. She is on medications which are helping but she is still not in good shape and has good days and bad days. Due to the amount of absences she has had her entire Jr. year will be P/F which put really limits what her college options will be. We are focusing on trying to get the right diagnosis and treatment (we have a full set up tests coming up) but we are still thinking that we want her to have a college experience … eventually. Anyone deal with this in HS and see their child go on to college? Again our main hope is that we can make her as healthy as possible but hearing of people who dealt with this and saw their kid regain their bearings would be useful right now.
Well, I’m quite sure we were dealing with this in hs, just didn’t know what it was. First diagnosis came freshman year in college. Three years later, the diagnosis has changed, and is now one that really does fit all the issues. So, let me just start by saying that while depression and anxiety are very common, that may not be the final or correct diagnosis. And if you’re this far into spring and she’s still missing class, I think you’re very likely to still be searching for the right meds. Not going to give you a list, but my child went through many. Until you know you’ve got the right diagnosis and treatment (medication AND some form of therapy), keep the kid close.
Are you talking about the sleep-away college experience? Most college kids go local and commute from home. That’s really the typical experience. My kid dormed–about 10 minutes from the house. No depending on flight schedules or long drives. Was really easy to find/change providers, deal with insurance, help with little day to day things (like picking up a prescription) when things got overwhelming.
Success? Sure. Graduated in 4 years. Highest GPA in the cohort in her major. Moved quite a ways away for the first job. But, by then had 4 years of learning to manage the condition, deal with insurance, etc. Also knew very well how upsetting the apple cart with something like a solo move was going to affect the illness. One of the first tasks was to find new providers (and no, the first therapist didn’t work out at ALL). Still a very bumpy start, but she was more ready than she would have been at 18.
My D suffers with depression and anxiety. A severe case of PCOS and other illnesses made things worse. In an attempt to gain control over a body that wouldn’t respond to normal diet and exercise, she added an eating disorder to that mess.
She missed a lot of school second semester sophomore year and went on homebound instruction for awhile. Late Fall of her junior year, things deteriorated to the point that we withdrew her from school. We focused on getting her better. She returned to school the following year. The last 2 years of HS were bumpy. Tbh, despite being a great student, there were times I wondered whether she’d graduate HS.
Somehow, she got through HS and applied to a handful of colleges.She really wanted to get away from the area in which we live (and its extreme body consciousness), so despite my reservations, I let her go several states away to her first choice school.
First semester was tough. Mono and a concussion didn’t help, but she “got back on the bike.” I read somewhere (maybe on CC @MaineLonghorn?) to try to keep the ball in play. So far, it has worked. D loves her school and knows she has to do certain things to stay there. She has learned to be more proactive with her mental health - counseling, regular exercise, getting meds adjusted sooner rather than later, communicating with professors, etc. She’s had a few setbacks here and there (one thing I’ve learned is that it is an ongoing process - not just a few hurdles to overcome - you have to take things one day at a time), but overall she is doing well. There is hope!
I want to add that my heart goes out to you and your D, OP. I remember how stressful those days were. I have to admit that it took me awhile to truly get my head around the idea that there are many paths. I knew D’s mental health was more important than school, but I’m the type who wants to get a problem fixed and move on. I didn’t really understand the nature of mental illness. When things improved, I thought the hurdle was cleared. I now know that mental illness requires ongoing active management and there’s not often a straight upward trajectory of improvement.
OP, you mention medication, but is she also in counseling? In my personal experience (for myself), the combination is what works best.
My D never got an official diagnosis, but was in counseling for a year and half in HS for stress and anxiety. Freshman year of college was rough, and I wish we’d had her take a gap year. But she is now a college graduate, living on her own and self-supporting. And happy.
Personally not dealing with this problem but wanted to check in since I see a lot of this with my work in family practice.
If your child struggles with anxiety, please specifically make sure the therapist is using Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and make sure they are certified or completed a course.
I’ve had many patients over the years. Many who self-referred themselves to therapists in the community and then many who went to specific therapists that I knew for a fact actually did CBT. The kids who are doing CBT do SO SO SO much better than the kids who are getting general therapy. A lot of times the parents did not know which particular type of therapy their kids were receiving…you may need to specifically ask.
I’ll butt out now. I wish all of you well!
Normally good advice, but this would have been anathema to our son’s situation as the major cause of his anxiety and depression was living at home. He took a gap year, got off to a bit of a rough start when he went away, nearly got expelled, but a good counselor and some looser reins from us has him now doing well. He is a junior, dating a very nice and very pretty young woman, will be starting a prestigious internship in a few weeks, and is really finding his mojo. For him, the change in environment has allowed him to expand without the rebellion/punishment cycle being on repeat.
Our D has some anxiety and was seeing one of the college’s counselors but it was not debilitating. Neither were ever put on medication.
Yes we have a counselor.
Success story here. Depression, suicidal ideation leading to hospitalization, shattering loneliness, debilitating anxiety consumed most of my son’s junior and senior years of high school. He just finished his freshman year of college and did very well. The college experience was his choice, which he was able to make after he began to recover. So there is hope, but I will tell you to be prepared for a long haul over many months, and that recovery is nonlinear.
Our D found that DBT skills training with an experienced therapist (individual and group) resonated with her more than CBT.
I’m not trying to say that DBT > CBT, only that sometimes you have to keep knocking on doors until you find a team + method that clicks.
Everyone on D’s team thinks she should go away for college because that is D’s goal. We will do our best to set up a support system. The therapist told us you just never know how it’s going to go. Sometimes the kid you think will be fine, will completely crash. Sometimes the kid who seems super shaky, takes off and soars.
Since recovery is turning out to be a marathon, not a sprint (and definitely not linear), we also erred on the side of taking the best financial package on the table for college. We are seeing professionals outside of our HMO, and it’s expensive. We didn’t think it was wise to stretch for school too.
Wishing your strength and clarity. Thank goodness for the internet! When I had my own crisis of depression in college, it was very difficult to find help, or even understand what was going on with me! So much different nowadays.
Not a parent, but a student who has dealt with depression and anxiety since my early teen years. I have been on anti-depressants and anti-anxiety meds on and off for over 10 years (since either late middle school or early high school).
The worst year was probably my junior year when I was hospitalized because I had lost so much weight due to the fact that I just stopped eating. I didn’t have an eating disorder… I was just so anxious that I would forget to eat. I did poorly my junior year- even getting a D and a C in a core course. I did have suicidal thoughts but never suicidal tendencies, thankfully.
Transitioning to college was rough and I went to a college that was within driving distance. I didn’t do it because of my anxiety/depression but in retrospect it was a very good decision because I could go home when I felt myself getting overwhelmed.
I think I am a success story. I did great in my undergrad (graduated PBK), have a master’s, and am now working on my PhD in a top 3 program. I found a life partner in college who understands my mental illness and is a wonderful support system. I am still on Zoloft and will likely be on it for the rest of my life. But I’m not in therapy anymore. It reached a point where both the therapist and I felt that more therapy wasn’t going to be helpful but the Zoloft has kept me pretty level for years now.
I would not let her go off to college if she hasn’t found a regiment that works for her- medicine, therapy, combination, etc. Transitioning to college is hard and trying to control depression and/or anxiety on top of that is just a recipe for disaster. (Of course, there are exceptions like magnetron’s situation up thread).
I wish you the best. The thing that got me through my toughest years, without a shadow of a doubt, was knowing that I could be honest and open with my parents about everything. They knew my moods, what was “normal” and what wasn’t and it was probably the only time that they showed me tough love. They got me into therapy whether I wanted it or not.
OP you mention that as parents you want your child to have certain experiences. I believe my son did not start to recover until I completely set aside any vicarious type of goals I had for him. That was harder than it sounds. Not conveying my stress that he was missing a calc exam if he didn’t get to school that day - not that easy! I made a lot of mistakes along the way and he internalized some of my anxiety on his behalf.
Eventually however - after a crisis that really woke me up - I made myself stop caring when he graduated from high school. If it took an extra year, it would take an extra year. If he ended up having to get a GED instead of a diploma, then that would be okay too. If he didn’t go to away to college, or took time off, or took one class at a time at our local university and it took 8 years to get a degree, it would be okay. What was important was that my son was alive, communicating with me, and just getting out of bed. So I had to recover too in that I had to set aside all of my own anxiety about the timeline for his future, stop talking at him,and just listen and support.
I could write a book about this. Perhaps I should. 
Yes, a kid with a dual diagnosis of anxiety and depression can successfully go off to college, and even to study abroad, as mine is now doing. But it takes a lot of planning, and self-awareness, and the student really has to take ownership of her illness starting in high school.
I recommend going to school close to home. There will be time to go abroad or to transfer, but that first year really should be a car ride away, if possible. Mine was close enough to continue with her psychiatrist in college, but chose another therapist (and yes, CBT is the gold standard for anxiety!)
Make sure she knows the closest pharmacy to get her meds while at school. My daughter transferred her prescription to a CVS close to campus.While your D is still at home, she should begin tracking when she needs to call the pharmacy for a refill or her psychiatrist for a new prescription. She will also need to find an off-campus therapist (the on-campus counseling is for short term only) and have a way of getting there. Mine rents a Zipcar every week.
We only let our D go for a year abroad after she negotiated with her insurance company to get a year’s worth of medication and found a therapist overseas before she left. As a mother, I was tempted to do this for her, but knew it would be better if she did it all herself. This is probably the most important piece of advice I can give: your daughter needs to learn to identify what brings on her anxiety and depression, and to cope with it using the techniques given to her by her therapist. She needs to know when she’s falling into a pit, so that she can get whatever help she needs.
Your daughter will have setbacks during finals and high stress periods, but this is okay. Once she gets through them, she can store them in her memory for the next time. She’ll learn things that help her cope. (My D is a creative type, so drawing, playing the piano and writing poetry really help her, as does running and spending time in nature.)
My daughter did have to come home the week before finals her freshman year, but got back on track and was able to return to take her exams. Her sophomore year was a lot smoother.
She has just finished her junior year in France, and has stayed on to work until July. The autumn was very difficult. We thought she might have to come home because she broke up with her boyfriend and a beloved professor died, all in the same week. We flew out in November, got her back on track, and now she doesn’t want to leave!
We have gone from being really discouraged about her illness and wanting it to just go away, to recognizing that this may be a lifelong problem for her that can be managed.
Thanks everyone for sharing your stories. I am encouraged and found many of your suggestions really helpful. My D’s anxiety and depression made itself known in a big way the summer before she started HS, while we were on a vacation in Canada, when she seemed like a different person. She has been in therapy with a wonderful counselor since then and has done well throughout HS, and is now about to graduate. Not surprisingly, the stress of college applications, auditions for Musical Theater (her chosen major) and decisions have caused a worsening of her symptoms, but she is managing them. After reading all of your posts, I am especially glad that she opted to go to a school in the city near where we live, rather than to another school on her list where she would be several hours away. She will be living in the dorms but is only about 30 minutes away.
What helped was finding the right psychiatrist, one who specializes in teens and college aged. As a psychiatrist, she was the one prescribing and monitoring. There were many rx tweaks over the first 6 months (every one made sense, as it takes time to see both positive gains and side effects.) She’s out of college now, still sees her doc occasionally, usually a med check and to catch up. She can email her doc any time and has.
Previously, my kid had a therapist DH and I liked, but who didn’t connect with our girl. Maybe more important, didn’t know how to move her forward. That’s hard to spot and you can’t just ask your child, when she’s deep into the confusion and at an age without much introspection.
Like ordinarylives, ours learned a great deal about her strengths and weaknesses, how to manage meds and moods. Today, she is what I’d call fine-- don’t misunderstand that, she’s still growing and learning through young adult experiences. But she can breathe. She is facing some major life points in a good way.
All this can take time. Best wishes.
I’d just like to point out that depression and anxiety can be episodic. They can be treated to remission. And some lucky people will only experience one bout in a lifetime. Even for people who suffer multiple episodes, there can be long stretches of time where the person is, for all intents and purposes, just “fine”. I think this leads the belief that @Overtheedge alluded to when saying at first you think you can just get over the hurdle and put it behind you. And I guess some people do, which I think gives some of us unrealistic hope. How I wish my child could have been one of those people, but she wasn’t. Her anxiety and/or depression were just the presenting symptoms of another illness, and it wasn’t until those were treated that her providers were able to look closely enough to discover the real issue.
My D was just formally diagnosed with depression and anxiety, less than two months ago I’ve suspected it for a few years now…but could never get her to agree to seek treatment. She finally requested it herself after having a series of panic attacks over spring break.
She only recently completed an intensive outpatient treatment where she missed almost a month of school. She is also due to graduate from high school next month.
So, it’s really too soon to tell how well she will do in college.
Right now, she is back at school, tying up loose ends to graduate and still go on to college, and feeling MUCH better, due to meds and being open to therapy.
If your D is like mine, she may feel she’s EXPECTED to do as much as she can - for the school, etc. That she’s expected to be a leader, etc. “I’m one of the ‘smart’ kids/one of the AP kids, so I SHOULD be…”
They need to let go of that kind of thinking. They should be who they are, who they want to be. and not who they think others expect them to be.
So one thing D is practicing is letting go of things that she feels she is really doing just because it’s expected, and not because it’s what she really wants for herself.
As for college - last year, I saw D was stressed out and overwhelmed. I URGED her to apply to colleges that were not uber-selective, and I also steered her away from our flagship which is selective and full of high-achievers… I encouraged her to look at small private colleges, or smaller state schools where the pressure would be much less. Her high school is a high-rated pressure-cooker. She needs a break from that, and just needs a place where she can be free to learn without being surrounded by a super-competitive academic environment.
She’ll be attending a smaller state school, OOS, but just a few hours away, with just under 15k students. It is not a prestigious school, and lots of people have probably never heard of it. She will be there because she wants to be, not because she thinks she is supposed to be. For me, that is one of the most positive things about her college plans so far.
We’ve visited already a few times and it seems like a very nurturing place for those who need it to be.
More importantly, we checked out their Student Counseling Center, took note of how many therapists/doctors there were, what the therapy groups were, and policies for treatment there - how easy or complicated it would be for her to seek help there. We are happy with what we see, so far. I also really liked that the Student Counseling center had a prominent table at the Admitted Students Day tabling fair.
My main concern, thus far, has been to quickly make sure there is a support network in place at her university, and I’m also grateful she picked a college just a few hours away.
Finally, there was some initial talk about having D not go away just yet. In my D’s case, however, we really feel she NEEDS a different environment right now, that staying home - for a gap year or commuting somewhere to college - would just be a constant reminder of her issues… We also feel she needs to make new friends at her new school, and that we really need to give her the chance to jump out of the nest… I have a good feeling she will be better at college than at high school. It’s possible she won’t. But we feel we have to give her the chance to at least try.
And of course, like I said, with a support network - counseling center, a doctor, therapist, meds, etc. all in place by the time she gets there.
I plan to check in, on the Parents Clas of 2016 group, here and then, and update on D’s progress in the coming year.
Fwiw, my D tells me that group therapy, more than anything, has been very helpful. But I also think the meds may be starting to kick in, as well.
@ordinarylives - Yes. Thank you for clarifying.
“What was important was that my son was alive, communicating with me, and just getting out of bed. So I had to recover too in that I had to set aside all of my own anxiety about the timeline for his future, stop talking at him,and just listen and support.”
^This! @Snowdog
Going away was the right decision for my D too @BeeDAre. The best choice really depends on the particular kid and circumstances. There are lots of factors to consider.
D attends a private LAC with merit. It was an excellent choice in many ways - caring, supportive, collaborative, accessible professors that she feels comfortable communicating with about her illness, and she can’t disappear/withdraw from the world without it quickly being noticed and addressed.
On the downside, I wish her school was closer to home. Also, it’s a stretch financially which imposes time constraints and pressure on D. She’s attending school this summer and I can manage one extra semester. I’m trying to give her more breathing room in her schedule, but there’s only so much I can do. For those with kids suffering with depression, cost is an even greater concern than usual.