I apologise for a post of doom and gloom but I have been a follower of the forum and was hoping that someone could possibly give me some advice or words of wisdom for the predicament I find myself in.

I am 7 or so months into a science PhD (started October 2011), and find myself at the end of my tether, depressed and considering throwing it all in. Numerous setbacks and problems have arisen through my project.

The project is broad in nature and is in a field I have limited experience in and so the first 3-4 months were spent reading and getting to grips with the topic and writing a literature review. While my supervisor intially was very supportive and offered guidance, this quickly started to drop until the point where I feel I have very little support and am having to take charge of a project that has very little direction and been a bit of a non-starter. Also, external project partners seem to have different expectations about the direction of the project and I feel I am being pulled in two different directions, having to keep both sides happy.

The specifics of my project were only decided by supervisor and project partners 2 days before Christmas break and so I was only able to start lab work after the holidays. In the last 3 months, a whole range of problems arose, and justifiably so... namely because my project uses methods and approaches comletely different from fellow students and research staff they are unable and sometimes unwilling to offer any help or advice and with very limited experience, i have been left to develop methods largely through trial and error which has taken time, something my supervisor is unwilling to understand or accept.It is only in the last month or so that I have been able to make some headway and start collecting some preliminary data and getting methods for one aspect to work.

Throughout this time I have been struggling but largely pushing through by sheer determination, and while I have found it hard and have highlighted problems to my supervisor he largely shrugs them off and has said that I am doing fine.
I also get the impression that my supervisor has very little interest in my project, or in fact what the project should be focussing on!
It was to my shock and surprise I received an email after a progress meeting with independent research staff, that my supervisory team had raised concern with my lack of progress in general and that external project partners had also raised concerns about my literature review.

I was utterly shocked because not once have any members raised any concerns with me personally, quite the opposite: my supervisor said he didnt expect any problems at the progress assessment and that I should relax. All feedback I have recieved about my literature review has been positive, praising the work I had done and offering some suggestions and amendements which I had taken on board and some I wanted to discuss further. I even went through my emails and checked this to make sure I am