One mother who put her teenage daughter in a mental health unit after she self-harmed was shocked at her treatment and now campaigns for better care

Sally will never forget the day she had to section her 13-year-old daughter. “Maisie was already in hospital. She was there because she’d taken an overdose, and she wouldn’t stop talking about death and saying she would do it again. She kept telling me she wanted to die – and I believed her.”

Sally agreed to let doctors formally assess Maisie, and then allowed her to be sectioned and detained in hospital under the Mental Health Act. “I feared for her life. I felt I had no other option.” Maisie had been moved from A&E to the children’s ward to recover from her overdose, but the hospital was planning to discharge her. “I couldn’t risk taking her home,” says Sally. “I didn’t dare. I thought she was going to kill herself. I was terrified.”

Maisie started self-harming when she was 12, shortly after her father died of cancer and Sally suffered an episode of ill health. “Maisie can’t regulate her emotions and she copes by trying to hurt herself. Everybody sees the behaviour, but not what’s behind the behaviour.”

Once Sally had signed the section, she no longer had the power to bring her daughter home again. “I didn’t have a clue how much control over my child I was giving up. After you sign the papers for a section, the doctor has more power than you over what happens to your child, and other professionals will listen to the doctor rather than you.”

She talked to other kids in the hospital. It was a game the children played: what medication are you on?

Maisie was sectioned in a specialist children’s unit for six months. “I thought I had done the right thing, and that Maisie would finally get the therapies she needed. I thought they would fix her. I was wrong.”

Instead, Maisie learned a new way to self-harm. “Maisie copied another girl in the mental health unit.” Her medication was expanded and now includes antipsychotic drugs and antidepressants as well as sleeping tablets. “They’ve given her all sorts – she’s asked for it. She talked to other kids in the hospital. It was a game the children played: what medication are you on?”

One night, Maisie grew so desperate to leave the hospital that she escaped from the ward. “I got a phonecall saying, ‘Maisie’s missing and we don’t know where she is.’”

Maisie had been gone for an hour by the time staff realised she was gone. “She was found at a National Express coach depot by the police, waiting to get a bus home.”

When Maisie was eventually released after six months, Sally felt as though her daughter had done time in prison. “No, actually, it was worse than prison.”

The family recently agreed to take part in a Channel 4 documentary on teenagers with mental health problems in conjunction with the Tavistock and Portman NHS foundation trust, hoping it would raise awareness about the need for better NHS funding. “The government takes advantage of the stigma that surrounds mental illness. That’s why children’s mental health has got such a poor budget.” Sally thinks parents are embarrassed to speak out or complain about the poor care their children receive. “It’s time to change that.”

The documentary shows Maisie’s emotions and behaviour getting out of control again. “I was exhausted, just from trying to restrain her from hurting herself,” says Sally. “It was constant, 24 hours a day. But I had no extra support.”

Sally must keep all Maisie’s medication locked in a safe, along with anything sharp. Over the summer, Maisie started barricading herself in the bathroom so she could self-harm, physically fighting her mother off when Sally tried to stop her. “I was covered in bruises – not that she’d hit me, just while I was restraining her, it would happen.”

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Sally asked for more help at home. “But it didn’t materialise. That made me very angry. Maisie disassociates, so when she comes back round and sees I have bruises, she can’t cope, knowing that she’s done that.”

Eventually, in August, Maisie herself asked to go away to an inpatient unit. “I needed to protect my mum,” Maisie explains. “Asking to go away was the only way I could do that.” Her mother, she says, is her rock.

Sally believes the way Maisie was treated from that point on was disgraceful. “I begged the doctors not to section her again, because she would go informally, without the section,” says Sally. “But they said because it’s an emergency admission, no one would take her on an informal basis.”

The head of Maisie’s local adolescent mental health service, who knows Maisie well, felt she only needed two weeks in hospital. But Maisie was sent to a secure paediatric unit 95 miles away from her mother’s home and sectioned for 28 days by a doctor she’d never met before. “As soon as she arrived at the hospital, the doctor there had control over Maisie. He totally dismissed her previous diagnoses.”

In total, Maisie – who is now 15 – has been given 15 different diagnoses over the past three years, ranging from autism to severe depression. After visiting Maisie in the mental health unit, Sally became extremely concerned about her. “Her face was very swollen and all the blood vessels had popped.” It turned out Maisie had been managing to self-harm. “The hospital staff weren’t telling me. I was only hearing because of Maisie.” Sally had never seen her daughter in such a terrible state before and complained to staff. “I don’t think they took me seriously. These people are in powerful positions making crucial decisions for your child. It’s scary.”

The relationship between the parents of mentally ill children and hospital staff can be fraught. “Professionals perceive me as a pain. They don’t have the ability to empathise. I think a lot of it is that they don’t understand. When Maisie’s gone into crisis on a weekend, the hospital doesn’t want her there because there’s nothing medically wrong with her. But there’s nowhere else for her to go if she doesn’t feel safe at home. At those times, it’s like being an alien on that ward, an inconvenience, a nuisance. I’m seen as part of that nuisance. ”

She believes some doctors and hospital staff make judgments about the parents of children with mental health problems. “They think, ‘Bad home.’ Or they think, ‘Mum’s not set enough boundaries.’ There’s a culture of: ‘We can’t help you because it’s your parenting skills.’”

I failed her and I don’t want to fail her again. That’s why I fight like I do

Mental illness is an invisible disease, she says, so people – parents, particularly – need to get more clued up about it. “We were happily going along in our lives and didn’t realise that one day it would affect us. I failed her and I don’t want to fail her again. That’s why I fight like I do.”

Sarah Brennan, chief executive of YoungMinds, says: “We often hear from parents who are furious that they can only visit their children once a week or once a fortnight, because the distances are so far and travel costs are so expensive. It can also be incredibly stressful for young people to be cut off from their families and friends.

“Inpatient care should be a last resort. We need to ensure that help is available locally, in the community, when problems first emerge. Draining money from early intervention is incredibly short-sighted, and just stores up problems for the future.”

Last year, Sally launched a successful petition to get a local mental health unit for children reopened, and convinced her NHS foundation trust to introduce a 24/7 crisis team. But she admits there are days when she struggles, and she is now having counselling. “Maisie’s illness has definitely made me a more confident mum in many ways. However, it’s also made me a very angry person. I don’t trust the system.”

Maisie is back home now. Eventually, after Sally highlighted her concerns about Maisie’s treatment to her MP and got a good package of care put in place for Maisie at home, she was discharged from the hospital. Reunited with her mother and her dog, Honey, she has recently started attending a school for children with autism. But Sally still locks herself in her own bedroom at night with the safe, so that Maisie cannot try to open it while Sally is sleeping.

“It’s hard having Maisie home. I can’t lie to you and say it’s a breeze. But when you’re a parent, you make sacrifices.”

She loves her clever, articulate daughter unconditionally. “I want her to be happy one day. I hope she will be. I always just cling on to hope, and that’s what I tell all the other parents I meet to do, too. Never, ever let go of hope. Because without hope, it’s really bleak.”

She never wants Maisie to be sectioned again. “The most challenging part, as a parent, is feeling absolutely helpless. When a doctor sends your child miles away, for a long time, and you know it will be difficult to bring her home … it’s like torture. It could slowly drive a parent insane.”

• Kids on the Edge: Troubled Girls is on 30 November at 10pm on Channel 4.

In the UK, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14.

YoungMinds parents helpline, 0808 802 5544

childline.org.uk, 0800 1111