She grew up. Seriously. She's 21 now and was falling apart in 10th grade and fully fell apart at the start of Covid. She tried medications, therapies, appointments, meditation, special diets, etc. I kept saying "I think this is a phase - you need to wait for yourself." She was very quick to claim she'd tried things and they didn't work for her, and shot down all suggestions.

Now she's 21 and sleeping, eating and going to school. She will announce a problem and I ask if she just wants me to listen or make suggestions, and if she asks for suggestions she'll take them now. She quit social media around 16 and is poking her toe back in gently now because she feels cut off from society. So we've had some talks about healthy accounts to follow, and how much time to spend, etc.

You have to know your kid and give them more of what makes them happy. Meds and therapy only can do so much. I have 2 introverted kids with anxiety one of whom is also with ADHD and highly sensitive.

First off, maturity helps a great deal. It helps because they know themselves better so awareness is the key you want to aspire.

Next, something they love whether activity, sport, subject matter, people they enjoy to hang with. Whatever gives them a joy. Pet does wonders. The responsibility they have over a pet helps actually. A sense of worth, inspiration, need, I'm telling you it helps like medicine!

Lastly, patience goes a long way. I have depression. I never had Rx and therapy never really helped me. I live with it but it gets easier because I know how to manage it. It's knowing yourself and accepting times when you need to be alone and accepting your feelings of being down are normal. The only difference between depression as it constitutes a long term detrimental state and having a couple bad days is the length of time you're down and. The intensity of those emotions. You can't be happy and not all of us can feel even keeled every single day of your life. Some of us have ups and downs and the goal is to ensure the ups and downs are manageable but as a parent you can't look at the comparison of you v someone prone to depression. You have to manage your expectations.

Also a note that meds are life savers but I tell you as a mom who swears they have changed my kids lives - I am not on meds and found a way to be fine. The thing with meds is they change you so while in some capacity they are great, you have to realize that as with everything there are side effects. You cannot go into it feeling that meds are 100% helpful without causing other effects. You use them but never forget that it's chemicals in your system.

Time and built confidence

I think it was a combination of things: changing his academic schedule to one that was less stressful, changing to a more experienced therapist, following his lead on his sport (actually stepping up the sport rather than cutting back because it is the thing that brings him joy), encouraging him to reengage socially (pushed hard by his therapist and helped by his sport) and maturity. I wish I could say meds helped but only to take the edge off early on. This isn’t to say they wouldn’t help someone else but they just didn’t really help him. Our next step was to try DBT which I think would have been really useful but his sports schedule made difficult. If his depression worsens again, that’s the direction we’ll go.