Hi Kit,


Thank you so much for your reply and for pointing out that her condition could be more serious than it seems. You are right, my daughter does refer to her mental health issue as depression, after reading a lot on the internet about it. She does not have a formal diagnosis yet and she trusts her therapist for now.

It does help a lot to hear from people that are familiar with this scenario: continuing your studies while battling mental illness. It is even harder to focus on your studies while suffering from depression during the covid-19 lockdowns: alone in your room, expected to watch pre-recorded lectures, with no human interaction beyond a chat with tens of people you never met, not allowed to visit your family or to have guests etc

My daughter is at home now and she acts "OK" but I know she isn't. We used to be close and now I am making an effort to respect her privacy and ask no questions beyond what she willingly shares. I am slowly getting an idea about what type of memories overwhelmed her during the lockdown and it seems that it all stems from burnout during high school. Looking back, I can see now some red flags that I missed at the time out of ignorance.

The marks did drop significantly during this term and, even after a few appointments with the therapist, there is no progress on the motivation front. My daughter has a slightly better schedule at home because she makes an effort to join some of the family activities. We are trying to focus on being calm and supportive but we would like to know what is a realistic timeline for her treatment: should we just decide now to take a gap year and focus on the therapy, to avoid further frustration and guilt or we should just wait and see what happens in a few months, after more therapy and... more lockdowns? Obviously there are a lot of factors that determine the length of the treatment but I have no idea if we are looking at min 3 months of therapy or min 6 months before we should expect a significant change in her outlook on life in general.

I did not raise these questions with my daughter since she is optimistic about the success of therapy and I do not want to give her another reason to worry even more than she does right now about her future.

Thank you Kit and all PC contributors for your invaluable advice.