Reply to I seek only a child therapist, psych, or psychiatrist who will call me back.

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Reply to "I seek only a child therapist, psych, or psychiatrist who will call me back."

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[quote=Anonymous]I had a serious issue with my teen about two years ago. I decided to go the ER route because like you, I called every psych in a 3 hour radius and got either no return call or they were not accepting new patients. It was so frustrating. Like you school was no help and her ped just gave me a list of psychs I had already called.  
I tried the ER route thinking it would fast track us to an appointment and I would highly suggest that you do not go that route unless you are seriously afraid that at any minute your kid will harm themselves.

We went to DC children's and the experience still haunts me. They immediately treated her as an imminent suicide threat. She was admitted and had a 24 hour guard in her room, even to pee. The wait to see the psych at children's was 2 days. Granted, we were admitted on a weekend.

The scary part was that once you go down this path you lose total control. We knew our kid was dealing with some serious anxiety due  to a sexual assault  but we absolutely knew that she wouldn't kill herself at that very moment. Yet because the hospital needs to cover their own liability, things have to go a certain way. They were about to take her to the teen psych ward where we would not be allowed to see or speak to her for a week. We refused, she was hysterically crying and scared, and they told us if we refused they would make us sign ourselves out AMA and may be forced to call DSS on us. It was the scariest experience of my life. 
The only way we were able to escape was to agree to have her go to a week long daytime program where we would take her there each day and drive her home each day. We were not allowed to be with her, it was like group teen therapy. The place was like a prison (seriously bars on the windows) and was not the right place for our daughter. She went for two days-- the final straw was that on day 2 the group was told to write an essay on "what I can do to control my anger better". Remember, this kid is there because she was a victim! We refused to bring her back. I explained to the outpatient place why we refused and I never heard another thing. I figured if I ever heard back from children's I would immediately call a lawyer in prepapation for them calling DSS on us. But never did.
Thankfully she is older now, we finally got off the wait list, she went to a psych for about a year to deal with her trauma, and she is doing really well. But man did I learn a lesson.  Don't use the ER route for this stuff unless you are ready to have your kid pushed into the same process meant for kids who are literally about to kill themselves or have already tried. It's very scary.
And this post is not meant to scare people away from the ER when your kid is seriously going to kill themselves. If that's the case the ER handles it totally appropriately for that situation.  I'm only posting this as a warning to those who have heard (like i did) that the ER can help you find a child psych. It will, but not the way you want it to happen. If your kid is not about to Kill themselves, pick up the phone, keep calling until your fingers fall off, and sit on the wait lists. This area of the country has a serious shortage of child psychs and that's the only path.[/quote]

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