In the weeks following Halloween, three students at our local high school committed suicide. So when a frantic mother called about her 16 year old daughter in late November, I was very worried. Her daughter, Jenny, was a sophomore at the same high school. Jenny had told her best friend that she wanted to end her life and that she had taken some pills. Frightened, the friend told her mother who immediately called Jenny's mother.
When Jenny and her mother Geri were in my office the next day, I was puzzled. Jenny was as bright-eyed and chirpy as ever. I had seen her a few times over the years for some minor issues—problems with friends, disagreements with her parents. Today she was not looking depressed. Her affect was not sad. Geri said Jenny had not been withdrawn or showing any signs of depression. Her grades were good. She went out with friends on weekends. She seemed her normal self. Then the call came from her friend's mother and she became very worried. What was going on?
Looking more closely at mother and daughter, I noticed that the mother was the one who looked depressed. She had black circles under her eyes and puffy cheeks which looked as if she had been crying. At the same time, Jenny was telling me with her eyes that her mother was the one I should focus on.
The story came out. Geri's mother, Jenny's grandmother, had been hospitalized for the past three months with cancer. She had undergone several surgeries. One night, when she was alone in her hospital room, she pulled out her IV line and the other tubes that were attached to her. When the nurse cam running in, she said she wanted to die. She did not want to go on living with the quality of life she would have after her surgeries. She cried when the nurse reattached the tubes.
When Geri had heard about this, she felt sad and also conflicted. She loved her mother and wanted her to live, but at the same time she understood her mother's wish to die. Unfortunately, her mother had not set forth her wishes in a living will, so the doctors had no choice but to keep her alive. Geri cried as she told me the story.
We spent the session talking about ways that Geri could be supportive of her mother. When our time was up, she said to me through her tears, "I didn't know that this session was going to be about me." I gently explained that often a daughter will act out in order to bring her mother to therapy. It was her grandmother's wanting to die that gave her the idea about how to do it.
"But Jenny didn't know about my mother," Geri said. "She didn't know that my mother said she wanted to die." I looked at Jenny. "You did know, didn't you? That's what gave you the idea?" Jenny bashfully replied that her father had told her about what her grandmother had done. She had known. "What about the pills?" Geri asked her daughter. "Just some aspirin from the bathroom cabinet," Jenny replied sheepishly.
Jenny knew me and how I worked with families. She had gotten her mother to therapy by echoing her grandmother's wish to die and she knew I would help her mother. Sometimes this happens unconsciously. But in this situation, Jenny was acting. That's how it is in loving families. I looked at Jenny. "Next time, you don't have to go through all this. If your mother feels sad, just call me. I'll make sure she comes in." With Geri looking a little dazed, still not comprehending, Jenny told me that she would.
