My daughter is 16 and has had an obvious anxiety problem that's been identifiable for at least 5 years. She was put on Zoloft at first and that did seem to help, but at the same time had been diagnosed with ADHD. She was failing all of her classes at the time, she was in 7th grade and by the next quarter of school was passing all of her classes and seemed like a much happier child. She did "ok" the rest of middle school and when she hit high school started having difficulties again.

It's a lot of information to go over, so I'll cut to the chase as to why I am most concerned now.

Background is that my mother has bipolar with rapid cycling which has become worse and worse over the years because she only takes the medications that she wants to take, she won't take the ones that do or that she thinks do cause her to gain weight. She also takes Adderal so that she can continue to lose weight, so you can imagine that she's a mess. She also abuses prescription drugs, which makes things even worse for her.

Given that my mother is that way, you can understand why my daughter has asked with fear in her eyes if SHE could be bipolar "too" like grandma. I have told her that even if it's possible...and it is...that grandma does not take care of herself and IF my daughter has BPD, we will get her the treatment that she needs and if she follows a plan of care, she will be okay.

She was seeing a therapist AND a psychiatrist in the past year and the psych was a child/adolescent psych. I feel like we wasted a lot of time there because he only switched her from Zoloft to Celexa and didn't spend much time talking with me about my concerns or us together and basically said that she was doing poorly in school partially because she doesn't WANT to do the work. He totally dismissed that the reason we were referred to him is that her anxiety level and sensory overload in school just hearing other kids talk in class was to the point where she told the school counselor that she thinks about hurting people and she elaborated to me that she had ideations at that time of even hurting her family. Well, when we talked to her therapist for advice, she did not feel like she needed "immediate" emergency help, but that we needed to tell the psych. She also has rapid mood swings and periods of what I can only describe as mania and will talk a lot, be happier, be productive in things she wants to do like writing stories, drawing, well, anything but school work, but then she'll crash and be depressed, moody, weepy. She is constantly yelling at her brother and me and her dad for making too much noise, certain kinds of noises, etc.

She also had to discontinue her ADHD meds last year because it became apparent that they were causing her anxiety to go through the roof.

She had chronic mono where the worst symptoms lasted for about a year and have been getting better for the past year, but she still has fatigue, sleeps a lot and now her teachers are asking her and us if she has depression, they are worried about her.

Allll of that to ask...would it be appropriate to take her to a good, somewhat local (hour away) psychiatric inpatient adolescent program for evaluation for intake? She approached me this evening and told me that another teacher asked her today if she's depressed, that she has too much anxiety in class and can't stand to be around her friends and is always yelling at them, etc. When I told her that I will see what I can do maybe getting her in with a new psych, also asking if maybe she would be open to going to a hospital for maybe a few days where they could evaluate and get her meds started and correct, she didn't hesitate and immediately said YES, I want to go away for a little bit, I think I need that.

I am concerned that just making appointments with a new psych and starting down that road is just going to be another time waster since it's not as intensive as I think she needs and we need everything evaluated at once to get her on track. She's failing every class and it's affecting her self esteem, but she can't seem to dig out of the hole. For instance, she has an 18% in English, her strongest subject. She cannot go on like this.

I need support. I will disclose that I was hospitalized as a pre-adolescent/adolescent from ages 12-14 at least four times because I was just a behavioral issue and my mom didn;t know how to deal with me, I had so many family problems and I was medicated improperly and I do carry some of that baggage with me, so I admit to being reluctant to just "put her somewhere", but I recognize that that's MY baggage and I am willing to do what it takes to get my girl better.