Heartbroken parents of a 14-year-old girl says she no longer recognises her family after suffering a severe mental breakdown.
Teenager Rose Grady faces regular episodes of psychosis and hallucinations, her devastated mum says.
She now cannot perform basic tasks, such as feeding or cleaning herself.
Rose has been in the children’s ward of her local hospital for three months, and her condition has only deteriorated over time.
Rose’s mother Susie told HertfordshireLive of a desperate time for the family.
“She is very depressed," the parent said. "She doesn't want to be here. She doesn't think there's any point. She feels like she's trapped, locked in a room.
“She has no socialisation with other children, and she doesn't see her friends. She doesn't speak to her friends. She doesn't speak to her family.”
Before the pandemic, Rose was a happy teenager and had a close group of friends. She swam for her local swimming club, played the piano and was predicted top grades in school.
But when lockdown struck last year, school and all her extracurricular activities came to a crashing halt.
“I think it was very difficult for teenagers to understand why they couldn't see their friends or why they couldn’t do anything that a normal teenager does," Susie explained.
“They were just spending way too much time in their rooms and not really doing anything particularly healthy.”
The family struggled through heartbreaking news as Susie’s mother was diagnosed with a degenerative brain disease and her father fell ill with cancer.
Then the local area was placed in Tier 4 before Christmas, meaning they couldn’t celebrate as they had hoped, and a beloved pet died which tipped her over the edge.
It was around Christmas that Rose began to eat less and less. She felt compelled to restrict her food intake and she became depressed and withdrawn.
“She didn’t want to leave her bedroom," Susie added. "She was just quite unhappy really. She wasn’t thinking anything good about her life.
“School was shut again, so there was just a lot of time in our bedroom doing online learning. I think actually that was quite detrimental.”
Susie and her husband sought advice from their GP, but Rose was not given a diagnosis. The family still hasn't been given a diagnosis to this day.
“They wanted to do more tests on her because she’s always presented as quite a complex case," Susie explained.
“But then, unfortunately, Rose took matters into her own hands and basically decided that enough’s enough and she wasn’t going to continue living. So we then had to take her into A&E.”
Rose was admitted into the hospital that night on April 30. She has stayed there ever since.
The teenager is now back to a normal weight, as she has been fed more than 2000 calories a day through tubes since she was admitted, but her mental health has deteriorated in other ways as she struggles through psychosis and hallucinations.
Susie said: “They can’t get on top of it at Harlow hospital because it’s a general children’s ward. It’s not an intensive care unit for what Rose needs.
"It’s impossible really. She’s just in the wrong building.”
Susie is at the hospital every day, waiting in the corridor in case anything happens, making phone calls to try to get Rose help and staying up to date with the doctors.
“I just sit in the corridor like a vigil,” Susie said.
“I talk to the doctors, and then I go home and recharge for another day. It’s very monotonous but very stressful.”
She added: “Some of the things they have to do to Rose every day are quite high risk. She has feeding tubes they put in every day and at any point that could go wrong and I could get a call saying you need to be here in half an hour.
“It’s split the family in two,” Susie said.
“My other daughter really doesn’t understand why she can’t see her sister and is asking when her sister is going to come home. These are questions I can’t answer at the moment.”
Rose could need a PICU bed for six months to a year. If she was in a private psychiatric hospital for 12 months, it could cost the family around £350,000.
Susie added: “You can’t talk to her. She really needs talking therapies to begin, but they can’t do that at the moment because she’s so agitated and distressed so we’re still not at that point where anyone can speak to her.
“This has got a lot worse. When she was admitted, I brought her from school. She knew who her family were. She knew who I was.
"If you saw or spoke to her, you’d think there was nothing wrong at all.
“But now she’s in a whole different state. She’s very distressed. She desperately needs one of those intensive care beds.”
