No parent should have to read their child’s suicide note. In 2021, my daughter Ella was 16 years old and had just suffered a nervous breakdown. She was tidying up her bedroom and I found a sheaf of notes she had written.
Some of them said, somberly, that she did not want to live. Another was a letter to all of us (me, my husband and his older sister) saying that she was very sad, that she loved us but that leaving us was the best thing because it was a big burden. As a mother, you would think I would break down. But by now we had traveled so far that all I felt was numb horror.
Unfortunately, our family’s story is far from unique. We all know there is a mental health crisis; In 2021, one in six children aged five to 16 were thought to likely have a mental health problem, and around 7 per cent of all UK children had attempted suicide before the age of 17, and one in every four said they had self-harmed. So our experience will likely resonate with many parents.
In 2021, one in six children aged five to 16 were thought to likely have a mental health problem, and around 7 per cent of all UK children had attempted suicide before the age of 17.
When you care for a child with a life-threatening mental illness, you live in the moment, day by day. There is no mental space to think about yourself. Parents are an afterthought in any mental health service and must fend for themselves, or not. 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 on our own.
Ella’s mental health problems began with physical health problems. She was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, where parts of the digestive system become inflamed, in early 2019, when she was just 13 years old.
When we had the diagnosis, she suffered from anorexia and OCD. I have realized that mental health issues are rarely simple; one element mixes with another.
Finding the right treatment took a long time and before we did, the pandemic arrived.
During the first lockdown, Ella’s OCD began to manifest itself, with constant hand washing, and then she slowly stopped eating. In the second lockdown, she had to undergo major surgery which caused enormous trauma and pain. She later said that she thought she was going to die and that she wanted to do it because she was in so much agony. I now know that the psychologists she was seeing knew that she had had suicidal thoughts, but they did not express them directly to us.
Once a child turns 16, parents are not given information without their permission, because they are considered adult enough to make their own decisions.
There are very practical considerations when parenting a sick child. I am self-employed and stopped working completely six months after her surgery and her nervous breakdown in 2021. With the help of my aunt, we were able to cope with this loss of income and keep Ella at home. I shudder to think what things would have been like if we hadn’t been able to do this.
But her older sister suffered greatly, as my husband and I were not as present for her as we needed to be.
Then we realized Ella was self-harming and found swords hidden in her bedroom. We swept the entire house and hid any sharp objects. I hid the scissors on high shelves and the kitchen knives were rolled up in a towel and stuffed in a saucepan. I didn’t let her out of my sight and I slept on a mattress in her room for fear that she would hurt herself again. I felt abandoned as a father. It took us a long time to navigate CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services, run by the NHS): what to ask, who to call out of hours when we had a crisis. They are desperately understaffed and underfunded and struggle to care for the hundreds of thousands of children who need support.
Once a child turns 16, parents are not given information without their permission, because they are considered adult enough to make their own decisions.
A great responsibility is placed on parents and yet we are not qualified to deal with such serious problems. Sometimes self-harm meant we had to rush her to the ER. They weren’t really deep cuts, but I felt like I couldn’t deal with them myself.
I managed by putting my feelings aside and turning off my emotions. We feared for Ella’s life on so many occasions and eventually her brain stopped being able to absorb any more trauma. I never stopped waiting for her to return to school, but I managed by 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 are still healing as a couple. I am an older mother and if I had been younger I would have wondered why. It was exhausting and I couldn’t do anything that was just for me. Only now, two years later, did I begin to return to my hobbies.
There were three things that ultimately saved Ella and us, and they all happened a little over a year ago. At that point he was exhausted and desperate for solutions. We felt like we had reached the end of the road with medication and therapy.
The first was a 12-session pain trial at King’s College Hospital using complementary pranic healing therapy. Led by Les Flitcroft, Founder and Director of the Institute of Pranic Healing UK and Ireland, this is a non-invasive energy therapy and healing technique based on the principle that the body has the innate ability to heal itself and was completely transformative for Her. . The second was a puppy. We placed Eric, a beautiful eight-week-old Labrador, on her lap and he instantly wrapped his paws around his neck. Eric gave him a reason to get up every morning.
The third savior was both for me, her mother, and for Ella. We found out about the Body & Soul charity in 2022 through a friend and I was invited to the parent and carer course: Braver Together. At first I resisted because I thought I didn’t want to be my daughter’s therapist or learn how to do something new.
The goal of the 12-week program is to increase awareness of the symptoms and behaviors of friends, family, partners, and siblings, and to understand your own responses to loved ones. You draw your attention, reluctantly, onto yourself and create a sense of community with those who have felt similarly alone and left out of the system, which helps accelerate a sense of healing.
I was able to separate myself from Ella’s problems so I could help her more effectively. I only spent two hours a week online and she gave me a lot of practical skills and resources. It was the first time I heard it acknowledged that there is no support for parents and that there needs to be support, especially for mothers. The lead therapist took the responsibility off of us by pointing out that you can’t save someone, you must first equip yourself with the skills that will help you handle them.
She is now 18 years old and much more stable. She is in remission from Crohn’s disease and anorexia and has completely regained her weight. She has stopped self-harming and has returned to full-time education and plans to work in the NHS in some capacity because they helped her there and she received a lot of kindness. After having suffered so much, she would make a very compassionate nurse!
We recently needed to clean out our shed. As I moved the tools to the side, I saw a bag full of needles, pins, and nail scissors (everything sharp you can imagine) that we had had to take out of the house. It was a reminder of how bad things had been and how lucky we were to have support to help us get through.
I just wish everyone in our situation were as lucky.
As told to Alice Smellie