Support I receive just isn’t helping, says self-harming girl damaged by dad’s death

“One day I got upset at school and a teacher found me while I was having an attack in the bathroom, just after break-time had finished. She noticed I’d been biting myself and phoned my mum.”

The teen, a diabetic, said her mum, Siobhan (39), a home-maker and mother-of-three, immediately made an appointment with a doctor who saw her in April 2016 and referred her to a specialist.

It was, however, six months until she was assessed and it then took a further six months — and countless follow-up calls from her mum — before she was seen again in April this year.

But the main issue for the Glenavy teenager, who wasn’t diagnosed with autism until 2012, is that she doesn’t feel that sessions with a psychiatrist are helping in her particular case.

“I feel worse after seeing him, when I really want to feel better,” she said.

“He focuses in on one thing — my panic attacks — and doesn’t talk about the issues I want to discuss,” she claimed.

“The idea of a support system is there — but I don’t think it’s the right type of support for me.” Natasha, who lives with her mum, stepdad Martin (39), stepbrother Ryan (15) and stepsister Chloe (8), admitted that she had contemplated ending it all, but stopped herself after a friend attempted suicide.

“For a while I didn’t want to go on,” she admitted.

“But then one day my best friend ended up in hospital after trying to kill herself, and that really hurt me.

“It also made me realise that I didn’t want to do anything that would make people who care about me feel that much pain.”

The Co Antrim schoolgirl, who has seen a specialist twice since April, said she knows several girls and boys her age who suffer from mental health issues, but she said they all feel as if they have nowhere to turn.

“A lot of my friends feel the way I do and they want help, but that help just isn’t there,” she said.

“I know I have mental health problems and I need help.

“If I can help other people my age and younger by admitting that I have problems then I would gladly stand up in front of the whole world and say it.”