Hi Judy. Yes my friend has seen a psychologist group, she sees the school counsellor herself and I've been to see her about all of this too. She is also on antidepressants and has been for a while now but they don't appear to be working because she keeps talking about committing suicide and cutting herself. She's also been to a psychiatric hospital for 3 weeks at one point and at another point, 2 days.

I suppose it is unhelpful to compare symptoms - I just feel so angry. I guess I didn't get the support she is getting because I was so worried about how I would affect everyone so I just hid what was going on and then my Mum ended up finding out how I was feeling. But I didn't tell my friends at school for ages, I just didn't want to worry them.

But I don't understand why she talks about depression all the time. Doesn't someone with depression find it difficult to talk about all that sort of stuff until they start getting better? Her talking about it all the time is affecting everyone in the group; one of them has become really depressed and she cut herself and it wasn't scratches, it was worse, and another one of my friends looks like a zombie because she's so stressed - I can't even stand sitting in the group now because that is all she talks about. If someone changes the subject, she will inevitably bring it back there.

After she came back from the psychiatric hospital she talked about self harming and suicide even more and horrific stories that happened there because of what all the girls there were talking about, and after she came back that was when she started scratching herself with tweezers. She keeps saying she's going to commit suicide and getting taken home. She wants to go back to the psychiatric hospital because she says she can 'relate' to the girls there - if she enjoys relating to other girls who have depression she's never going to want to get better.

The only problem is she's always been that attention seeking, exaggerating girl - even before all of this. So you can never tell if she's telling the truth, exaggerating or making up stories - but you just can't not take a suicidal statment seriously! She's putting so much pressure and responsibility on us.

She's been at home for a while and is coming back to school next term.

I just don't know what to do.

That's a tough spot to be in, Indi.  You don't know if what you're seeing is real or an attempt to get attention - either way, she's sick.  Maybe you and your friends can come up with a way of handling this whenever she talks about it, like telling her that you just can't listen to it any more, it's bringing the rest of you down and unless she takes responsibility for herself and tries to get better, it's too difficult to be there for her.  I had to do that once with a friend of mine.  Yes, she was mad for a while, but she eventually got over it, quit talking about suicide, for the most part, and we're still friends today, 20 years later.

Maybe another thing you can do is go with your friends to talk to the school counselor and ask for suggestions about how to cope with this.  Whatever you can do, you should do it because you need to take care of yourselves.  I hope you'll let us know how this goes - good luck.