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sick.
    At one point I started to fantasize about suicide. I had to have a plan. I could make it through my day as it was, but what if it got a tiny bit worse? So I would visualize cutting my wrists and then calling a teacher who I confided in a lot who lived close to me. Visualizing the blood coming out of my wrists was like a release and a hit of something; it kind of perked me up and gave me a bit of strength. At first it was occasional but then I remember picturing this every five minutes or so in class. And that was kind of my coping mechanism, but I totally didn’t feel like I could tell anyone that.
    —Lindsay, age twenty-six
    One way of thinking about what crises do is to say that they move people to strike out against their isolation by seeking help. For people who have already moved away from home, this usually means reaching a personal breaking point. Shannon remembers arriving at a clear sense that her problems had become more than she could handle alone.
     
    Six months later, my boyfriend and I ended up splitting up. But it wasn’t long after that ended that I came to the personal realization, I need help. I can’t do this on my own. Something is wrong with me, and I can’t live the rest of my life this way. At the time, I was only nineteen. And I mean, I can’t live until I’m seventy like this. I’m not going to make it to seventy. This is awful. So I got help. I found a local counselor, and I started going to counseling.
    —Shannon, age twenty-six
    For people who are still living at home, though, parents usually play a large role in assessing what is wrong and deciding whether to seek help—and what kind it should be.
     
    When I was young, I was pretty anxious, and then I had like your classic sort of being nudged away by the cool girls in my school. I was thirteen. And then I became basically anorexic because I was like, I can’t deal with this. I was in this small environment, and I was totally unhappy. My parents saw me and they were like “Okay, she needs intervention and it needs to be chemical.”
    —Alexa, age twenty-three
    Some people remember their parents as benevolent helpers. “When they put me on drugs, I think it was a great decision,” said Alexa, “because I really was wasting away, and I went on them and I was a lot better. I gained the weight right back, I made friends, I joined track, and I think I cared a bit more about school.” Lindsay dreaded what would happen after she confided her daydreams about suicide to a high school counselor who was obligated to notify her parents. But she remembers their finding out as a good thing. “My parents were really broken up that I was in that much pain and didn’t come to them,” she said. Having to talk about it was awkward, but fruitful: Lindsay’s parents helped her find a therapist and get on Prozac, and they became more involved in her life in a way that Lindsay welcomed. Jamie, eighteen, and her mother, Patricia, both said that coordinating Jamie’s care the year that Jamie was a junior in high school brought them some much-needed closeness as mother and daughter.
    But a number of people experienced their parents’ involvement with more ambivalence. Particularly when it’s not the child’s idea, the matter of seeking and sticking with treatment can become a point of conflict between parents and offspring, part of the larger power struggle of adolescence. Rachel remembers resenting antidepressants because she felt as if they were being imposed on her:
     
    My mom decided to take me to be seen. The psychiatrist diagnosed me with obsessive-compulsive disorder and some kind of depression and some kind of anxiety disorder. She gave me some medicine, Paxil, Zoloft, Remeron, one at a time. I was resistant at first to taking medicine.
     
    Do you remember why you were resistant?
    Because it felt like my mom’s idea, and I wanted not to be controlled by her.
    —Rachel, age twenty-eight
    Sometimes parents and children disagree