But now shes got people around her that are experienced in all, all the areas, not just, it’s not a specialist eating disorder unit. They’re there for everything. Obviously, no sharp objects are allowed and they’re, they’re very mindful of what the young people have access to and it’s, it’s talked about and theres other people there that have got similar issues. She has individual therapy with a named nurse. She speaks to a psychiatrist as well, well he tries to speak to her. Shes [laughs] shes not keen on chatting to him but we also have, weve started family therapy as well now.

I struggled. I found that really hard. Wed never been apart and none of, all my children kind of always been here. I don’t go anywhere really without them and she went into hospital on this Thursday evening and they took her in. Didn’t, I was in for the first interview bit of saying what was going on and then we was told to leave. We wasn’t shown where she was, her room, we didn’t know where she was sleeping and, from that point on, we wasn’t allowed back on the ward. We had to meet in a room out on reception. I visited every day.

We got comments that I was jeopardising her recovery because I was visiting every day. They told my daughter that she needs to get out of her mother’s womb. She needs to separate herself. We would phone every night but I’d leave because it was quite a distance so I drove, travelled home, shed worry because her OCD was related to keeping her family safe, shed worry on the drive home that something bad was going to happen so I would have to phone when I got home, to make sure that I was okay. Shed then go to bed. Wed get comments. They would stop her using the phone. They would pretend that she wasn’t there so I couldn’t talk to her. I’d had meeting upon meeting with the hospital saying that, I don’t understand what you’re doing because you don’t want to stigmatise mental health yet I feel that, as a profession, that’s what you’re doing because if took my daughter into a general hospital with a physical complaint, I’d be by her side. I wouldn’t be questioned. I wouldn’t be judged. I said, But I feel like I’m being judged here. I said, I’m here because I want to help my daughter recover. I fought so hard to get help and now it’s as if I was handing my car over for a service and they would give it back to me when it was mended.

Yes.

And they said that they would have a look into it and do meetings. We wasn’t told. We had a ward round every week. They would phone us up. They was never phoning me. They always forgot to phone. I’d have to go in on the Tuesday and say, What happened on the ward round? When she came home on weekend leave, we got a great diary that we had to fill in, her mood, what shed eaten, had she self-harmed, how she, her physical state, was she clean, did she wash? But yet, she was in hospital all week and I never got any of that. I never got told whether shed eaten. Whether she was, got out of bed. Whether she went to the school. Whether she self-harmed.

On one occasion, she was in hospital, she smuggled a blade in. She self-harmed in the toilet and nobody told me. Only, luckily, I’ve got a relationship with my daughter, she come out that night and said, Mum, I need to tell you, I’ve self-harmed today. And I asked them why they didn’t tell me and they said because of confidentiality. And I said, This is my sixteen, fifteen. Well, at the time she was fifteen, This is my fifteen year old daughter. I need to know. And they said, You don’t need to know. We can only tell you if [your daughter] kind of lets us know. At one point she tried to hang herself in her bedroom and I was downstairs and they didn’t tell me. So bad, bad, awful time, which has probably led me to kind of do this really.

Yes.

To highlight how important it is for parents to be involved, because

And it isn’t just me. I’ve spoken to various families now that have had this problem with inpatient services. The only good thing from the hospital was they got her into a different department so were not under our local CAMHS any more. We go up to London and shes under a service up there, which is thank goodness, that she got the funding and shes getting the treatment she needs now.

What sort of treatment is she having now? Shes in.

Shes in hospital.

An inpatient.

Shes on a waiting list again to receive DBT therapy [dialectical behaviour therapy*].

Oh yeah.

But the problem is, she needs to go to London for that and shes not safe enough because shes suicidal so shes on a section three now so, at the moment, it is just a case of weve just got to get her safe enough to be able to travel. Weve also looked at moving her to a more therapeutic hospital and there is one that weve got in mind, subject to funding, which we hope but it is the last chance sort of hospital and they do give a hundred per cent success rate and it is more therapeutic. It is not, where she is at the moment, you’ve got all types of mental illness and it’s just not the right place for her.

It’s just like a holding place I think now. Shes beyond help for there. The psychologist that she is supposed to see is a man, which due to circumstances doesn’t help so I know that you can’t pick and choose but it just doesn’t help that she just does not want to talk to him.

Understandably because of her issues with men.

And what about the other therapeutic hospital. Do you think that’s a possibility?

Yes, were hoping. It’s, yes, she can’t be moved yet because shes not safe and very, very suicidal, is always trying to run out as soon as the doors are opened.

Yes.

But they have said that they would take her even on a section three but her mental health has got to be a lot better than what it is now because what weve got is shes disassociating and shes thinking that shes dead and that shes not here so shes in the depths of depression and this is one of the effects of this depression and that is what weve got to treat before we can make her get properly better.

* This is a form of therapy (using individual and group work) that helps the young person to learn skills to manage their emotions, cope with distress and improve their relationships. DBT helps the young person see that their suicidal and other unhelpful behaviours are part of their way of coping with problems and encourages them to develop more helpful behaviours and solutions.

And, while she was in the adolescent inpatient unit, she still managed to cut herself. They knew that she was a self-harm risk and they allowed her scissors because she was doing cross-stitch and she did a lot of cross-stitch at that time to try and relax and to distract and they allowed her scissors and she cut herself. Not very badly but, when she first went in she was on twenty four hour watch, so we went from being on twenty four hour watch with somebody outside her room to being allowed a pair of scissors and I was deeply, deeply angry about that. Because, obviously I was looking for someone to blame and I thought I could have done a better job quite honestly. At the very least, I wouldn’t have allowed her a pair of scissors.

I was on the phone to the hospital and I think, with hindsight, they were very good keeping those strict boundaries because they was saying, We can’t have her here tonight. She has to be with you. She has to be at home. She has to learn that shes at home.

Yeah.

But they were they were quite amazing because they rang me up every fifteen minutes and then they rang me up every half hour throughout the night, checking how things were going, telling me what to do and yeah. Her sister, my daughter’s sister, my other daughter, who was two years older, and so she was sixteen at the time. She was amazing too because she could have freaked out but she didn’t so we took it in turns staying physically very close to her and her sister was saying, Look, it’s fine. I’m here. Were here. Shes not coming to get you. Were keeping you safe. Yeah [sighs].

I was glad that they decided that she would be at home in the evening because by the time she was discharged, which was about three months later from the hospital, it meant that I knew who she was.

When I took her home. If I had left her there as an inpatient, I would have probably seen her once a day during visiting hours, seen her there during therapy, because we had family therapy, but I wouldn’t have really known who she was.

And can you say a bit about your experience of professional help so how did it first start and what sort of things have you had and what have you felt about it?

I think there have been quite a lot of problems. My son is a bright lad and he can argue the hind leg off a donkey. It is very, very difficult to interact with him and get the results you want, let’s put it that way. Hes had he had very unfortunate experiences at university because he went to the university counsellor and said he was having difficulty coping and at about the third session he had with him, he mentioned his suicidal ideation and the counsellor just freaked out and called in the local mental health team and because my son who, is also very literal minded, he was asked to promise not to kill himself and said, quite reasonably, How can I promise that? I cannot give my word never to kill myself. And they sectioned him and he was put in an ambulance and driven sixty miles away, because there wasn’t a place locally for him. He didn’t know where he was. He suffers terribly from car sickness and ended up on a locked ward and was, not surprisingly, totally freaked out.

And I don’t think hes trusted anybody since. He was simply released into our custody and, in fact, after a week, went back to university because all the other professionals were sort of saying, Well, you know, he just needs to get some treatment. And hes not been wildly cooperative ever since because he hasn’t, just hasn’t, hes terrified of being put back on a locked ward.