Unraveling the Knot

At the age of 14, Meghan B. attempted to end her life by taking approximately 20 pain-reliever tablets. Meghan took the pills after an explosive fight with her mother over Meghan’s grades and a boy she was dating. Meghan was in her room when she impulsively took the pills, but shortly afterward she told her mother what she had done. Her parents rushed Meghan to the emergency room, where her vital signs were closely monitored. As the crisis was coming to an end, Meghan’s parents agreed that she should be hospitalised to make sure that she was safe and to begin to treat her problems. Meghan talked freely during the 30 days she spent on the adolescent unit of a private psychiatric hospital. Most of her complaints focused on her mother. Meghan insisted that her mother was always “in her face,” telling her what to do and when and how to do it. Her father was “great,” but he was too busy with his job as a chemical engineer to spend much time with her. Meghan also had long-standing problems in school. She barely maintained a C average despite considerable efforts to do better. Meghan said she didn’t care about school, and her mother’s insistence that she could do much better was a major source of conflict between them. Meghan also complained that she had few friends, either in or outside of school. She described her classmates as “straight” and said she had no interest in them. Meghan was obviously angry as she described her family, school, and friends, but she also seemed sad. She often called herself “stupid,” and she cried about being a “reject” when discussing why no friends, including her boyfriend, came to see her at the hospital. Mrs. B. provided details on the history of Meghan’s problems. Mr. and Mrs. B. could not have children of their own, and they adopted Meghan when she was two years old. According to the adoption agency, Meghan’s birth mother was 16 years old when she had the baby. Meghan’s biological mother was a drug user, and she haphazardly left the baby in the care of friends and relatives for weeks at a time. Little was known about Meghan’s biological father except that he had had some trouble with the law. Meghan’s mother had known him only briefly. After a six-month legal investigation, Meghan’s mother agreed to give her up for adoption. Meghan came to live with Mr. and Mrs. B. shortly thereafter. Mrs. B. happily doted on her daughter. She said that Mr. B. was a loving father but agreed with Meghan that he was rarely at home. Meghan seemed fine until Grade 1, when teachers began to complain about her. She disrupted the classroom with her restlessness, and she did not complete her schoolwork. In Grade 2, a school psychologist suggested that Meghan was a “hyperactive” child who also had a learning disability. Her paediatrician recommended medication. Mrs. B. was horrified by the thought of medication or of sending Meghan to a “resource room” for part of the school day. Instead, she redoubled her efforts at parenting. Meghan’s grades and classroom behaviour remained acceptable as long as Mrs. B. consulted repeatedly with the school. Mrs. B. noted with bitterness, however, that the one problem that she could not solve was Meghan’s friendships. The daughters of Mrs. B.’s friends and neighbours were well behaved and excellent students. Meghan did not fit in, and she never got invited to play with the other girls. Mrs. B. was obviously sad when discussing Meghan’s past, but she became agitated and angry when discussing the present. She was very concerned about Meghan, but she wondered out loud if the suicide attempt had been manipulative. Mrs. B. said that she had had major conflicts with Meghan ever since Meghan started middle school. Meghan would no longer work with her mother on her homework for the usual two hours each night. She began arguing about everything from packing up her room to her boyfriend, an 18-year-old whom Mrs. B. despised. Mrs. B. complained that she did not understand what had happened to her daughter. She clearly stated, however, that whatever it was, she would fix it. Create a story with the above of a session that occurs between a psychologist and their client. do not include the diagnosis as the point is for the reader to diagnose meghan.