My daughter is on a mild anti-depressant/anti-anxiety medication. For about two years (slightly less, actually) she’s taken it and it has helped.  She still goes to talk therapy on a regular basis, she still gets worked up over things, but I had the impression that her “worked up” is no longer getting in the way of her getting through the day.  I was wrong.

Every month when we have her medication management appointment with the psychiatrist, the doctor asks if Princess ever has thoughts of hurting herself or other people.  She always says she does not.  She told us that last Thursday, so we refilled the Rx with the same medication at the same dosage, because I thought it was working.  I was wrong.

Today I got a call from the school counselor that Princess was saying that she sometimes thinks about hurting or even killing herself. That she’s been getting messages through her account on one of the online game sites (the independent one with the upper age limit of sixteen, not one of the ones she accesses through Disney or Nickelodeon) with foul language and threats that this person is going to find who she is and where she lives. That after being upset by this person’s messages one time a couple weeks ago, she saw a knife in the kitchen and just wondered what it would be like if she just picked it up and stabbed herself so it would all be over.

I thought I was doing the right things to monitor her online activity. She does not use the chat room on this particular site, and when she is looking for games to play, alone or with her little brothers, I urge her toward the the ones allied with the children’s channels or ones that I know have a fairly strict filtering mechanism for user messages. I thought I had developed an open line of communication with my children about what’s going on in their heads. I was wrong.

The school had a speaker last week to teach the middle school students about cyber safety and cyber bullying. She and I talked about the presentation, and all of the things online that are OK and not OK to say or do, the things that are OK and not OK for someone to do or say to us. I didn’t think we had a problem. I was wrong.

I’ve got a message into the psychiatrist who handles her meds and am trying to get an appointment this week with the LCSW she sees each month for her other counseling.  We are going to review her messages tonight (the ones she has not deleted) so we can report the user sending her the offending messages.  I am going to protect my daughter and she is going to be OK. 

I really hope I’m  not wrong.