Anonymous wrote:It sounds like your kid would benefit from seeing a psychiatrist with experience in treating adolescents. Get names from your pediatrician. Call *all* of them. Because I found it was not necessarily easy to find a psychiatrist who was taking new patients. A couple of the people my pediatrician recommended simply did not call back.

For this age there is Dr David Driver’s Heartwood program, Capital youth Services..…The Ross Center. Compass Health Center can take 11 year olds.

Pursue multiple options at once! Because there is great demand for adolescent psych services, which means waiting lists, etc

It may be that your kid needs an SSRI and a therapist to help with the emotional overwhelm. Things like anxiety can exist in a milder form in childhood, and then with the pressures/hormones of adolescence get much worse.

If it gets to the point where there is an emergency, and you feel your child needs emergency care, you can go to an ER. I have only found three places in the area that do inpatient for 11-year-olds: Shepherd Pratt, Children’s, and Dominion. You can basically show up at any of them and they will do an evaluation. Most adolescent programs are geared more to 12 and above. Good luck, and I am rooting for you and your kid, you are not alone in this and I know how distressing it can be.