I'm a 16 year female and i think i may be suffering from depression. I have been quite unhappy for the past few years, but i am the type of person that will always wear a false smile. Sometimes I feel ok, but then I can become a lot worse for a few months. I have noticed a large change in my behavior since september 2007. I do not sleep properly (sometimes not at all); i find it hard to get up in the morning and as a result have started making excuses not to go to school as i cant seem to face the world. I have also started to make excuses not to see my friends, which i don't know why i do, only that i don't have the energy and would prefer to stay indoors. Also, i have noticed that my speech has become difficult, I cant seem to get my brain to connect with my mouth and sentences sometimes come out very slowly and disjointed. I have begun to binge eat, which is something I have never done before, but whilst I am doing so, i think it makes me feel better. I don't know what to do with these feelings or the reasoning behind them and so for the past few months I have begun to self harm.

It was all getting too much for me and as I was missing so much school, I wanted to help myself, but didn't know how. I decided that I needed to tell my mum and it took me a long time to pluck up the courage to talk to her. I finally did, but ended up crying a lot and she got concerned anyway and booked a doctors appointment for that day. We went to the doctors appointment and my mum spoke for me the entire time, saying she thought i was stressed because of school work and dance shows i was in. The doctor then decided that was the issue and told me that i needed to get into a routine to make sure i didn't get stressed. With both of them waiting for me to be ok with that decision, I just agreed, but I know that its something more than that because its controlling me. After leaving the doctors, I tried to talk to my mum about it again, but she said she had done all she could and shouted at me saying nothing was really wrong and that I was attention seeking. Now, if I'm crying she yells that I'm being selfish and want to make everyone else miserable, when I don't, I just want someone to help me. To stop myself crying, I've started to self harm a lot more and don't want to, but I cant find any other way to release how sad i feel. I don't know what to do next, it took so much courage to talk to my mum and now we aren't talking, which has made me worse, i don't think i could go through that with someone else again.