Disclaimer-I'm keeping my daughters name anonymous for safe guarding reasons. I'm sure you will understand given the nature and age of my daughter.

Autistic people die on average 20 years earlier than non-autistic people, and the two biggest causes of this are suicide and epilepsy.

A headline in the Independent today showed a rise of 45% in teen suicide in 2022.

A research study by the University of Cambridge looked into the probability of suicide in people with autism and autistic traits in undiagnosed people are more vulnerable to mental health problems such as suicidal thoughts and behaviours. The research examines coroners’ records related to people who have ended their own life.

Autism is a lifelong developmental condition which affects social skills, communication skills and heightened sensory to name a few. A private diagnosis on average costs £1000 and the NHS waiting lists are years long. Even post diagnosis, as I personally have encountered alongside many other parents I have spoken to, there are insufficient support services for autistic people and their families.

Professor Simon Baron-Cohen added “Suicide rates are unacceptably high in autistic people and suicide preventaion has to be the number one goal to reduce the worrying increased mortality in autistic people.”

Me and my 16 year old daughter have been struggling in this system for the past five years intensively, and after years of different therapies, and exhausting the NHS services and waiting lists, my daughter received her diagnosis of Autism and ADHD in February of this year with strong questioning of BPD.

BPD stands for borderline personality disorder, which professionals will not look at further until the child reaches 18, without another serious battle. It is very complex and a lot of the traits of autism/adhd can overlap. But they can co-exist.

Dr Lafina Diamandis, A London GP, explained the reason suicide rates and self harm are so high in people with BPD is they are more likely to experience intense emotional pain and challenging emotions. These can become intolerable over long periods of time without a strategy in place for dealing with their emotions or any social network to lean on and escape the emotional pain they experience. The escape is usually drugs, alcohol and suicide. People with BPD and the lack of support become socially isolated by family/friends, and are unemployed and homeless in the worst cases.

I find myself staring at my daughter, wanting to keep every moment I have with her because I feel like it's only a matter of time until she may not be here anymore. No parent should feel like that.

My daughter became suicidal at age eleven and by the time she was sixteen, had tried to take her life eight times. The methods have grown more daring and intense. The reasons are more irrational. Even if she doesn't understand that death is final, her impulses and heightened manic states take her to these points repeatedly. All these attempts affect her body long term, too. Her crisis points are closer together and are now multiple times a year.

As hard as it is being a teenager in this era, she has other difficulties with her mental conditions which without adequate support affects her mental health, too. These things greatly impact her sleep and because of her disordered eating that often goes alongside her conditions, means she now weighs only 5 stone. Select mutism is also a part of her coping behaviour, which she has done throughout her whole life, sometimes for months at a time.

Every day is unpredictable, and despite multiple hospital visits and extremely risky behaviours, we are still nt closer to getting my daughter seen for medication or the therapies proven to help those with her complex needs. The problem isn't just long waiting lists; it's also the fact that the services on the NHS just don't exist. One of the workers from the top mental health services for children in the Leeds insisted on telling me how bad the mental health facilities are for children in hospital and outside. So even if my daughter were to stay in the mental health hospitals, she would most probably come out ten times worse or worse still, never come out at all.

I feel desperate and I will try everything possible to keep my daughter alive.

I have for the past month extensively been researching and speaking with a few psychologists about what would be the right care for my daughter so she can get to a point of managing her emotions better and understanding herself and her brain.

Somatic development/experiencing -psychology- £100 per session.

DPT-Dialectical behaviour therapy- £110 per session.

Cranial sacral therapy £50 per session

These therapies when working together have proven to have exceptional results and are often used in private mental health residential homes, which cost on average £4,500 a week!

The therapies chosen would be very beneficial. The goal is to trial everything and see what is fitting the best and do what's advised for as long as we possibly can. Ideally if we could get at least six months’ worth of therapy paid for that would be very helpful. And going off having these services twice a month would cost around £520.

I would like to work with a family therapist that specializes in her mental needs, but those sessions are coming up at £120 per session on top of the other therapies. As you can see it’s a lot. So I am prioritizing the most important therapies for her.

The sad truth is my daughter is just a statistic to the government and services. To me, she is everything, but she is unwell and she needs help. She’s actually wonderful - she's beautiful, kind and funny. Most of the people that have lost their battle to mental health were somebody's child or somebody’s loved one.

I am self-employed and this all affects my work and has done for years. Financially, I cannot afford the private care by myself and the free services just don't cover what she needs at all or have ridiculous waiting lists. Time is ticking and we have been told to expect another six months to one year to be seen for medication and further therapy. My daughter has these ups and downs days and weeks apart. We don’t have time to wait and see if she will survive the year.

I would be forever grateful to anybody who would like to donate and help me and my daughter. The figure I have in mind is £3500 for up to six months worth of private therapy. Hopefully, this will lead to her being able to manage her emotions better, and understand herself so she can stop suffering and enjoy her life.

I realise I’m asking a lot at a time when so many people are trying to cope. I'm sorry, I wish I could have chosen a better time.