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[quote=Anonymous]17-year old DS has been treated for ADHD since 4th grade.  This fall, he expressed that something changed in him when we made a med change, and he felt that his ADHD meds were making him depressed. We made med changes back to his original med, but he felt even going back to his old med he was feeling waves of depression.  We made the decision with the doctor to take him off meds.  He said that he felt so much better, even months later as I was asking on a regular basis. Our pediatrician advised it may not be the meds, so we needed to keep an eye on him.

Over the weekend, he was not seeming himself and expressed to me that he had been having waves of depression for about a month. I called the pediatrician who felt it was time to see a therapist/psychologist.  I've been working on that.

Today, I got a call at school from a counselor that he'd been sent to her when a favorite teacher saw he was upset, began a conversation with him, and decided he needed to see the counselor. During a 1-hour meeting with the counselor, he talked about the depression, and also how he'd had wondering if life was worth living. She reiterated that he said many times he said he'd had no real plans, the thought just popped into his head quite a few times. The one thing he did say that freaked me out was that he had a thought while driving one day, "what if I just ran off the road." But he said he did not actually think about doing it. That comment scared me.

DH and I went to pick him up together. He chose to stay after seeing the counselor to go to a rehearsal that he very much looks forward to. We took him for a ride just to talk.  It seems as if we have a combination of depression feelings, school stress and the end of an online "relationship" that we were not aware of. Apparently that ended a few weeks ago.

I have many feelers out for referrals and will make many calls tomorrow.  After we talked, he seemed much better. If I thought it was necessary, I'd immediately bring him somewhere (hospital, etc) now but he seems good and said he wants to go to school and work tomorrow. He will be seeing a counselor as soon as I can get him in, but I'll seek a hospital if things change.

Beyond consulting a counselor, we've also contacted his math teacher about a tutor. She replied tonight and I've been in touch with the tutor. He's also amenable to going in to his math teacher's office hours on a regular basis. He was feeling like he was failing in spite of a B+ average in a IM HL1 math class. He's doing poorly this quarter and felt it was getting too big to overcome.

We also talked about how too much time behind screens and not out in the real world is known to contribute to depression. He has friends, and agrees it is a good idea to make efforts to see them more in person as opposed to playing online.

He expressed very clearly the things we do that contribute to his stress such as hitting him with questions about grades, etc right when he gets home, getting distracted from his own work trying to help his brother (who has high-functioning autism) stay on task, which gets him off-task. There were a few others but we told him we'd try to make changes too.

What else am I missing that I should do?

Scary day[/quote]

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