TRIGGER WARNING: This story contains references to suicide attempts and sexual assault. Stories like this can sometimes cause disturbing or negative feelings or responses, or remind you of trauma that you've gone through. If you need help, please reach out to Oakland Family Services for help at 248.858.7766.

It started out as a typical morning for Susan, with her granddaughter, Emma, refusing to go to school. Ever since elementary school when a bully picked on Emma, the girl hated school and didn’t feel like she fit in. Her anger and frequent meltdowns in class often landed her in the principal’s office, and she even ran out of the building a few times.

On this particular October morning in 2019, Emma was even more defiant and not budging. Susan and Emma got into a screaming match, and Susan felt so overwhelmed that she walked away to get her thoughts together. Feeling frustrated, Susan picked up the phone and called the crisis line for Oakland Family Services’ Specialized Services for Youth program. Unbeknownst to Susan, Emma had gone into the kitchen to grab a knife. When Susan got off the phone, she turned around and found the 12-year-old girl pointing a knife at her own neck. “I’m going to do it!” she told her grandmother. Terror gripped Susan as flashes of her youngest child’s suicide ran through her mind. One of her daughters, who had no known history of mental illness, died of suicide at 15 years old.

“I thought to myself, I am not going to go through this again, not in my lifetime,” she recalled. “I called Oakland Family Services and told them to find someone for me to talk to because my granddaughter was holding a knife to her neck. They got a supervisor who kept talking to me on the phone, reassuring me I was doing OK and helping me to find a way to get the knife away. I asked Emma what I could do to make her feel better. She wanted me to take her to Kmart. I told her, ‘OK,’ and I was able to get the knife from her. It was the worst day of my life. I thought she was going to kill herself. I fell apart. I was hysterical.”

Susan first noticed signs of depression in her granddaughter when Emma was about 9 years old. They were going for a walk when Emma told her she didn’t want to live. After briefly having Emma attend a daily therapy and treatment program, the girl was referred to Oakland Family Services’ Specialized Services for Youth program.

Emma suffers from depression, post traumatic stress disorder and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Over the years she has threatened to kill herself, which one time resulted in her having to stay at a psychiatric hospital with her arms strapped down to the bed.

Susan’s daughter was 13 years old when she gave birth to Emma. Susan, Emma and Emma’s mother all lived together until 2018, when Emma’s mother took her to Detroit to live with her boyfriend and grandfather. During this 8-month period, Emma missed a lot of school and therapy appointments and didn’t take her medication regularly.

She returned to Susan’s home and her mother moved in a few months later. Emma began therapy again, but about a year later experienced some very traumatic events in her life, including a sexual assault.

Through it all, Oakland Family Services Specialized Services for Youth was there to help Emma and Susan.

“They helped me learn how to control my anger,” Emma said. “I didn’t know about any skills. Now I know I can walk away, take a 5-minute break, color or listen to music. I like rap, and I like to sing, too.”

Besides therapy, Emma and her grandmother also say they have benefited from attending the agency’s Parent Advisory Council/Teen Advisory Council (PAC/TAC) meetings. TAC includes teens who struggle with depression, anxiety or other emotional or mental challenges while PAC serves as an advocate for families who have children experiencing those types of challenges.

“I made a lot of friends through PAC/TAC and share with them things I don’t want to talk about at school,” Emma said.

Over the course of five years of treatment through Specialized Services for Youth, Emma has made significant progress. She has gone from weekly home-based therapy to outpatient therapy every two weeks. She also previously attended a school with students who had behavioral issues and now attends regular classes at a junior high and enjoys school.

“Emma was in a dark, dark, deep place,” Susan said. “It was bad. She was drowning, and I was drowning with her and didn’t know what to do with her. When I got Oakland Family Services in her life, it took some time but she is amazing today. She sees the light. She still has her ups and downs, but she is happier and feeling good. She smiles and thinks life is not so bad.”