Families with teenagers at risk of suicide are demanding that the government not let their children die.

GironaLast year, 22 young people were admitted to the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Reference Unit (URPI) at Santa Catalina Hospital in Salt for suicide attempts. This is five more cases than the previous year. Behind each attempt lies immense suffering and despair, both for the young people at risk of suicide and for their families, who plead for more resources so that the authorities "don't let their children die" and provide more funding for the child and adolescent mental health care system. "When it comes to budget allocations, to making a serious commitment, it's always last in line. When a teenager is in crisis, a three-month wait for a psychologist in the public health system isn't just an administrative delay. It's an eternity that can have fatal consequences," laments journalist Sònia Cebrian, the mother of a child admitted to Santa Catalina Hospital in Salt for a suicide attempt. She was there for fifteen days and was discharged this Wednesday. "Healthcare and education professionals are overwhelmed and can't keep up with everything, and families are improvising stopgap measures that only allow them to stay afloat through struggle and isolation," Cebrian adds. The testimony of Sonia, as the mother of a teenager with a mental disorder and several suicide attempts, and that of Ingrid, as a young woman suffering this ordeal, exemplify the scale of a problem that carries a high emotional and financial cost for those who experience it and which, as Sonia says, "is needed." When the solution is a loan

With two suicide attempts, one last November and another at the end of January, 21-year-old Ingrid lives in fear that she might suddenly relapse into that moment when she feels everything is collapsing, when she ceases to be herself and longs for death, when she secretly grabs her box of antipsychotics and swallows them. "I want to live, I have people around me who love me, I have goals that excite me... I don't want to die, but I know I could try to kill myself again at any moment," says the young woman, aware that her life hangs by a thread due to the mental illness she has suffered since childhood (depression or autistic traits), but without any support to prevent dangerous relapses like those she has experienced in recent months.

The two most recent admissions to the emergency room at Santa Caterina Hospital, both due to antipsychotic overdoses that brought Ingrid to the brink of death, triggered the Suicide Risk Code, which outlines the procedures to follow when patients at high risk of suicide are identified. However, this has not been enough to get Ingrid what she is pleading with healthcare professionals for: immediate admission to a day hospital where she can receive daily therapy sessions and the emotional support she needs, and above all, where she can find a safe space and not fear another suicide attempt.

Comprehensive and intensive care in a day hospital is what the professionals at a youth mental health center in a private clinic in Girona prescribed for her. She went there on the advice of her closest friends, whom Ingrid turns to for help when the torment of anxiety returns and she's terrified of leaving the house, when she relapses. "I can't afford the high cost of admission to a private day hospital, so I've been following the public healthcare system, at CESMA, where since November they've only given me two appointments with the psychiatrist despite having attempted suicide twice," the young woman explains. Ingrid estimates that it could take two years between being prescribed admission to a day hospital and being assigned a place. "Who can guarantee that I won't have committed suicide while I wait?" she asks.

Faced with this uncertainty, after being discharged from her last emergency room visit, Ingrid and her mother decided to explore private healthcare options. She has already secured a place at a center in Girona and will be able to start next Monday because the bank has granted her the loan she requested to cover the €1,200 monthly cost of this private treatment. "I'm convinced I'll get out of this hole," says Ingrid. At the day hospital, she will receive therapy for her mental illness and also detoxification treatment for her leek addiction, which, she explains, she consumes to alleviate the anxiety and depression attacks she frequently suffers. In addition to having to take out a loan, Ingrid will have to leave her current rental apartment and pay the private clinic her full salary from her job as a shop assistant, from which she has had to take sick leave. "It's unfair and sad to have to lose everything to receive care that should be guaranteed by the public health system," says the young woman, convinced that she must take this step to avoid a more than likely completed suicide.

The loneliness of families

"Families living with a teenager in crisis end up taking on roles for which no one has prepared us. We are not heroes. We are survivors. We are therapists, mediators, and a bulwark against violence, and we do it because we have no alternative, because there is no public support system. We don't want medals. We want support," says Sònia Cebrian. For the past two weeks, until this past Wednesday, she went to Santa Caterina Hospital every afternoon to spend a few hours with her daughter Cristina, who was admitted after a suicide attempt. This isn't the first time; there was another attempt two years ago, after a series of self-harming episodes, painful crises at home due to behaviors that went beyond "typical teenage problems," and academic failures not because of bad grades but because of relationship problems and a lack of understanding of her "different attitude towards school."

Cristina was diagnosed with Asperger's (a form of high-functioning autism) at age 14 during a private consultation. Her family went because they urgently needed to know what kind of disorder was making their daughter's life a living hell. "When you receive the diagnosis, an unknown world opens up. You realize there are no resources and you cling to what you can, like support groups for parents going through the same thing," says Sonia. "You become aware that the problem isn't going to disappear with adolescence and that the family—which almost always means the mother—has to take on roles for which no one has prepared us: we read about diagnoses in the early hours of the morning because we need to understand what's happening, we learn to detect even the slightest changes in mood or environment, we try to figure out how to talk to the school. And the next day we're back to work. As if none of this were happening."

In the last two years, leading up to her suicide attempt two weeks ago, Sonia's daughter has alternated between periods of calm and relapses with severe crises. The care she received at the CSMIJ (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Center), with appointments every two weeks with the psychiatrist at first and less frequent appointments later, has been entirely ineffective.

"After the first suicide attempt and the diagnosis, Cristina's distress increased, and there came a point when she locked herself in her room. I was lucky that my job allowed me to work from home. Those who haven't experienced it can't imagine what it's like to be locked up with your daughter. We tried everything, we tried everything, desperately searching for a place to admit her because she begged to be in a safe place," explains Sonia.

After "moving heaven and earth," Sonia was finally able to get her daughter admitted to the child and adolescent psychiatric inpatient unit at Sant Joan de Déu Hospital. She was there for a month, and according to Sonia, the hospitalization and the care she received helped to "cush the blow" and "stabilize" the young woman's condition. Upon discharge, she resumed her secondary school studies and graduated. This year, she enrolled in a vocational training program to become a nursing assistant. However, last December, anxiety and sadness struck her again, and she retreated to her room once more. Then, two weeks ago, while at work, Sonia received an alarming WhatsApp message from her daughter. It was another suicide attempt, one that Sonia had foreseen. After two weeks in the hospital, and now discharged, mother and daughter are preparing for an uncertain future. "Cristina says she doesn't want to die, but she's aware that she'll face difficulties in life because she knows that her disorder will always be with her," Sonia explains. "Being discharged from the hospital isn't a happy ending. It's just one more step. I'm eager for her to go home, but I also know that going home doesn't mean everything is resolved. We don't go back to normal at home. We learn to live with a different kind of normal, very fragile and very real," she concludes.