Hello @heather1974 , I am so sorry to hear about what you and your family have been through. I can't imagine how tough it must have been. I thought I might pop in and offer some support until some other parents can offer their advice. It sounds like you have been so supportive of your daughter and that you have considered lots of ways to support her. That is really amazing and shows how much you care about your daughter
Great to hear that you have already connected your daughter with professional supports, I hope that she has found them to be helpful over the last 6 months. Hopefully they have been able to work with your daughter and help her manage the intense feelings and thoughts that she has been having. It is also so great that you have been trying to reintroduce some positive coping strategies into your daughters life. Re-sparking her interests in music and art and allowing her to express herself in those outlets can be quite helpful. From the sounds of it, you have a supportive relationship with your daughter, so I am wondering if you have had discussions with her before around safety and self-harming? I think that you might have before as your daughter had approached you when she was concerned, but just in case, you might find having a discussion with her around staying safe and the best ways to manage her thoughts of suicide (whether that be calling a local helpline or talking to yourself) to be helpful. Having a discussion like that might also help you feel a bit more at ease once your daughter comes back home.
From what you have described, you are going through something really tough at the moment and mentioned feeling overwhelmed, which is understandable. If you don't already receive support from a professional, you might find talking to a professional therapist or psychologist to be really helpful. We are an Australian service so unfortunately our local support options won't be suitable, however I did find this service that offers telephone counselling to parents. It looks like it could be useful if you ever feel like it would help to talk to someone about what you are going through. I also just wanted to quickly let you know that I have had to edit some parts of your post to make sure that it fits with our community guidelines. You can have a read of these here if you would like
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