Hi, my3girls64. Welcome back, but I'm sorry you had to come back under these circumstances. My son was diagnosis as bipolar at around the age of 16 (he's almost 25 now). I'm not sure how old your difficult child is, but a couple of things from your post jumped out at me. We went through a year of trying different medications for my son (he was originally diagnosis ADD/ODD), and we reached a point where I thought an antidepressant was going to be recommended next for him. I had done a lot of reading about bipolar teens and antidepressants, and I came to the decision that I would not let him take one. I know a lot of bipolar adults who do well on them, and some bipolar teens, but he had been in a lot of trouble, and I knew an antidepressant could make a bipolar teen very manic, and we really did not need to go there. Thankfully, his psychiatrist agreed and put him on a mood stabilizer (Lamictal). He was already on an antipsychotic (Seroquel), which had helped a lot with the moodiness and raging. This combination was a life saver for us. My son was like a different person. He was still somewhat impulsive (he still seems to have ADD symptoms, even today), but his disposition was pleasant, and he got serious about school and work. The psychologist that tested him before he was put on Lamictal had told us that no amount of counseling (and we had a therapist who wanted us to do the expectations/consequences thing, too) would be effective for our son until he was stable on medication. He turned out to be 100% correct.
I don't agree with MWM that if your daughter is an older teen there isn't much you can do. As long as your daughter is a minor, there is plenty you can do. For one, keep spying on her. We became amateur detectives in trying to check up on our son and keep him in check to the best of our ability. No, we weren't always successful, but we kept trying. We stopped a lot of things he was planning to do that way. I don't know how we survived the two or so years where my son was so out of control, but we hung on, and we all got through it. Today my son is not on medication, so he's very moody and he's not Mr. Sunshine, but he holds down a steady job and stays out of trouble. That's all I can ask.