I am Flora, mum of Samantha aged almost 16 and poorly on and off since aged 6. It’s been horrendous with doctors saying, ‘pull yourself together’ ‘low pain threshold’ ‘school phobia’ etc.

Sam was eventually diagnosed 2 years ago and has been out of school almost 4 years. She was severely affected, still is ,but at beginning of 2003 she was seen by a psychiatrist. We had no choice but to see her ..we needed some help. Fortunately the young girl was nice and not one for "pushing" depression or psychiatric issues.

She did advise CBT however and we took Sam. Firstly ..they don’t have a clue and arranged her appointments early in the morning.. we had a 15 mile each way drive. 1st visit we all saw two therapists. We were asked family history etc and really made to feel it was in some way our fault. 2nd visit Sam saw therapist alone. She talked about Sams thoughts and views on various things and according to Sam made her feel about 5 years of age.

3rd and final time ,after then not being willing to give later appointments Sam came home in tears. She had been asked to draw her picture of different feelings she had..happy,sad..angry etc. She was then asked questions like" if the neighbours dog did a toilet on your path who would you get to clean it?? How would you feel and what would you do about it?"

This was the final straw and we never went back. Samantha's words were " I feel so belittled mum".

GET: We had a physio come to the house at the same time as above. She wanted to get Sam walking 50 yards ASAP. Her first method was to have Sam on her knees in our front room picking up sweets off a plate with her mouth. Needless to say we stopped that rubbish too.

Sam can now manage a visit to a shop in wheelchair occasionally and isn’t bedbound (even if almost housebound). [CBT and GET are] useless, stupid and WRONG, that’s our opinion.