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Guest DrZ

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Hi

My 12 year old daughter has OCD, and just over 2 weeks ago it suddenly got a whole lot worse. We were originally referred to CAMHS about 4 1/2 years ago and she was diagnosed then, but due to a mix up it was never followed up by any therapy and since most of her rituals were performed out of sight and didn't impinge on her life much we let it slide, with people saying things like 'oh she'll grow out of it' etc :-(

Suddenly 2 weeks ago she simply broke down one morning, the rituals weren't enough, her anxiety went through the roof, she became distraught and it's got worse day by day ever since. She started harming herself; biting, scratching, pulling her hair out in handfuls and banging her head against the wall before becoming violent towards us. We eventually resorted to calling an ambulance because we didn't know what else to do. We eventually managed to calm her down, and saw a clinician and CAMHS for an initial assessment, and have a therapy session booked.

However, in the mean time her symptoms get worse, indeed new obsessions and compulsions crop up every day, and sometimes she seems locked in stasis before beginning her rituals, saying she needs to get calm before she can start them. She tends to spend about 5 hours in the bathroom now, or tries to avoid going if she can, which leads to accidents. She has stopped going out, and I'm worried that we won't be able to persuade her to go to the therapy session. We've begun the worksheets but she is very pessimistic about the outcome and we see so little of her we haven't got very far.

Her life is at a stand still, she hasn't been to school and is getting more and more upset as the days go by.

We are at our wits end and are starting to get sucked into at least one of her rituals, namely the hand washing to try and cut down the time she takes but the toilet aspect still take hours. We don't know who to turn to about the day to day aspects when the professionals tell us to try to have a time limit for bathroom visit but trying to impose any sort of boundaries produces truculence at best and anger at worst. I know from the NICE guidance notes that SSRIs are not prescribed till therapy has been exhausted but I'm left to wonder whether they are needed just to stabilise her now to get back to some sort of basic routine and thus let the therapy work. However I know there is no magic bullet for OCD.

Ross

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