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No parent should ever have to read their child’s suicide note. In 2021, my daughter Ella was 16 and had just suffered a nervous breakdown. I was tidying her bedroom and found a sheaf of notes she’d written.
Some of them said — bleakly — that she didn’t want to live. Another was a letter to all of us — myself, my husband and her older sister — saying she was really sad, she loved us but leaving us was the best thing because she was such a burden. As a mother, you’d think that I’d break down. But, by this point we had already travelled so far, that all I felt was a numb horror.
Sadly, our family’s story is far from unique. We all know there’s a mental health crisis; in 2021 it was thought that one in six children aged five to 16 probably had a mental health problem, and around 7 per cent of all UK children has attempted suicide by the age of 17, with one in four saying they had self-harmed. So our experience will probably resonate with many parents.
In 2021 it was thought that one in six children aged five to 16 probably had a mental health problem, and around 7 per cent of all UK children has attempted suicide by the age of 17
When you are looking after a child with life-threatening mental illness, you live in the moment, day to day. There isn’t the headspace to think about yourself. Parents are the afterthought of any mental health service, and are left to cope — or not — by themselves. But the impact of a suicidal child is devastating for the entire family, and not knowing how to support them leaves us searching for answers ourselves.
Ella’s mental health challenges started with physical health problems. She was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, where parts of the digestive system become inflamed, at the beginning of 2019 when she was only 13.
By the time we had a diagnosis, she was suffering from anorexia and OCD. I’ve realised that mental health problems are rarely straightforward; one element blends into another.
Finding the right treatment took a long time and before we managed it the pandemic hit.
During the first lockdown, Ella’s OCD started to manifest, with constant washing of her hands, and then she gradually stopped eating. In the second lockdown, she had major surgery which caused enormous trauma and pain. She said later she thought she was going to die, and that she wanted to, because she was in such agony. I now know that the psychologists she was seeing knew she’d had suicidal thoughts, but it wasn’t directly expressed to us.
Once a child is 16, parents aren’t given information without their permission, because they are considered adult enough to make their own choices.
There are very practical considerations to being the parent of an unwell child. I’m self-employed and I stopped work completely six months after her surgery and breakdown in 2021. With help from my aunt, we were able to ride this loss of income and keep Ella at home. I shudder to think how things might have been had we not been able to do this.
But her older sister suffered enormously, as my husband and I weren’t as present as we needed to be for her.
We then realised Ella was self-harming and found blades hidden in her bedroom. We did a sweep of the entire house and hid anything sharp. I hid scissors on high shelves and kitchen knives were rolled up in a towel and stuffed in a saucepan. I didn’t let her leave my sight and slept on a mattress in her room for fear of her harming herself again. I felt abandoned as a parent. It took a long time to navigate CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services, run by the NHS) — what to ask for, who to ring out of hours when we had a crisis. They are terribly understaffed and underfunded, and struggling to deal with the hundreds of thousands of children who need support.
Once a child is 16, parents aren’t given information without their permission, because they are considered adult enough to make their own choices
A lot of responsibility is put on parents, and yet we’re hardly qualified to deal with such severe problems. Sometimes the self-harming meant we had to rush her to A&E. They weren’t really deep cuts, but I felt I couldn’t deal with them myself.
I coped by putting my feelings to one side and shutting down my emotions. We feared for Ella’s life on so many occasions and eventually the brain stops being able to absorb more trauma. I never stopped hoping she’d return to school, but I coped by just doing what needed to be done. It was my husband who went and screamed in the car.
There was a lot of friction in the family, and we’re still repairing as a couple. I’m an older mother, and had I been younger I’d have questioned why me. It was gruelling, and I couldn’t do anything that was just for me. I’ve only now, two years later, started to pick up my hobbies again.
There were three things that finally saved Ella and us, all of which took place just over a year ago. By this point I was exhausted and desperate for solutions. We felt we’d reached the end of the road with medication and therapy.
First was a 12-session trial into pain at King’s College Hospital using the complementary pranic healing therapy. Led by Les Flitcroft, founder and director of the Institute of Pranic Healing UK and Ireland, this is an energy therapy and non-invasive healing technique based on the principle that the body has the inate ability to heal itself and which was completely transformational for Ella. The second was a puppy. We put eight-week-old Eric, a beautiful, snuffling labrador on to her lap and he instantly put his paws around her neck. Eric gave her a reason to get out of bed each morning.
The third saviour was as much for me, her mother, as it was for Ella. We heard about the charity Body & Soul in 2022 through a friend of mine, and they invited me on to their parents’ and carers’ course — Braver Together. I was initially reluctant because I thought I didn’t want to be my daughter’s therapist, or learn how to do something new.
The aim of the 12-week programme is to increase knowledge of symptoms and behaviours for friends, family members, partner and siblings, and to understand their own responses to their loved ones. It drags your focus — reluctantly — back to yourself and creates a sense of community with those who have felt equally alone and left out of the system, which helps expedite a sense of healing.
I was able to separate myself from Ella’s problems in order to help her more effectively. It was only two hours a week online, and it gave me many practical skills and resources. It was the first time that I’d heard it acknowledged that there isn’t support for parents, and that there needs to be — especially mothers. The lead therapist shifted the onus from us, by pointing out that you can’t save someone, you’ve got to first equip yourself with the skills to help you manage.
Ella is now 18 and is far more stable. She’s in remission from Crohn’s and anorexia and is fully weight restored. She has stopped self-harming and is back in full-time education, planning to work in the NHS in some capacity because she was helped and received so much kindness there. Having suffered so much, she would make a very compassionate nurse!
Recently we needed to clear out our shed. As I moved tools to one side, I saw a bag filled with needles, pins and nail scissors — everything sharp you can imagine — that we’d had to remove from the house. It was a reminder of how bad things had been, and of how fortunate it was that we got support to help us through.
I just wish everyone in our situation could be so lucky.
As told to Alice Smellie
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