Mother tells of pride in how daughters coped with eating disorder and anxiety issues and sends message of hope to other sufferers
YOU are not alone — that’s the message from a courageous mother who rallied around her two daughters after they both struggled with their mental health.
Mother of Molly (16), Lily (13) and Max (10), Jenny Orton (46) from Portadown spoke through her tears as she recalled their incredible journey.
Her two teenagers, Molly and Lily, were overtaken by their separate struggles — one with social anxiety and the other through an eating disorder.
Initially, Jenny and husband Robert (53), thought it was teenage behaviour. They couldn’t fathom how their two happy girls could end up in such a dark place.
But Jenny is sharing her family’s story in a bid to shine a light for others — and let them know there can be a way out.
They owe a lot to their extended family, friends and their church for their support along the way. But they faced setbacks and their experience highlights the lack of suitable facilities in place for young people requiring inpatient treatment for mental ill-health. The Beechcroft Unit in south Belfast is Northern Ireland’s only inpatient facility to treat children with mental health problems.
They were helped on the road to recovery by the Niamh Louise Foundation Centre in Dungannon. It was set up in 2006 following the death of Niamh McKee (15) who died by suicide.
Niamh’s mother Catherine, step-father James, and Anne Donaghy, now chief executive of Mid and East Antrim Borough Council, co-founded it.
The family’s ordeal began with older daughter Molly who was 11 at the time.
She was starting high school and everything seemed fine until she was moved up to the top class, where she started to experience exclusion and bullying.
It began to impact on Molly, so much so that she could hardly get out of bed in the morning and dreaded going to school.
“That January going into 2014 when she turned 12, I noticed quite a difference,” Jenny said.
“There was that lethargic ‘I don’t want to go to school today’. I joked to people and said ‘she woke up one morning as a teenager’.
“Looking back, it wasn’t, it was the start of the anxiety through moving up to this class, the friendship groups had changed, which plays a huge part in young people’s lives. Who she thought were best friends weren’t, they had moved on, then there was the pressure of being in that top class.”
This anxiety continued into her second year and third year where the bullying increased.
“She closed in, wouldn’t come out of the house, wouldn’t do anything, didn’t have any friends, she just felt worthless.”
It was flagged to the school and those involved met and appeared to move on from it. Molly moved into a new friendship group — but would have been in and out of school through absence in the final year of high school in 2015. She was referred to Children and Adolescent Mental Health Services (Camhs) and through continued support sat her exams and was accepted into the college. Her family looked on her fourth year as a “fresh start”.
Part of this was because the family had been introduced to the Niamh Louise Foundation. Jenny recalled the harrowing experience of hearing what her daughter was going through.
“You don’t expect it. There is no textbook, you are winging it, you are terrified and at the same time your daughter is telling you she feels worthless.
“And you think, ‘you are a young girl how could you be depressed?’
“You just never anticipate that a young person could be so down that they felt they wanted to take their own life.”
Before she started college in 2016, Molly got a puppy which had helped her as she had to get up in the morning to look after it, but she still had the emotional stress about going to school.
Jenny said: “She would have fainted in school and in those first three weeks of September she wouldn’t have slept.
“The anxiety of going to school terrified her.”
For the first two months of term she was in and out of school again and Jenny recalled one particular incident at home where Molly was very distressed.
But unbeknown to her at the time was what was going on with her younger daughter Lily.
“You form so much concentration on one child and you assume everyone else is going to be okay,” said Jenny.
Sadly, Lily was beginning to spiral downhill also. It was around October/November 2016 when Molly remarked that Lily looked very thin and she wouldn’t eat dinner. Eventually, the school got in touch, as Lily had been going to the counsellor. Her mum was devastated to learn she had been self-harming and wasn’t eating in school. Soon she was taken over by what is known as an “anorexic voice” that had been telling her not to eat and eventually put horrific thoughts in her head, such as asking her to end her life.
At her worst, she experienced a serious breakdown while at the Foundation.
Jenny said: “It would have been October 2016 when Lily started the high school.
“I remember her coming to me and talking about being very conscious of her body and how she didn’t want bullying the way her sister was bullied.”
Her mum recalled the heartbreaking moment the school contacted her.
“It’s devastating. Because you think as a parent, God, what have I done wrong? “I have two children here, and I don’t know what I’m doing. They are two different things going on.”
At that point things weren’t great with either sister — but around the end of November 2016 they received an unexpected glimmer of hope.
The Foundation send out cards to anyone that has engaged with its services — and it was an extremely emotional moment when Jenny received one for Molly.
Jenny said: “It was a card saying ‘how are you doing Molly? Hope you are doing okay’. The card came through the door, and I thought, ‘why did I not see this sooner?’.
“These are the people I needed.
“I was trying to treat them separately, but I needed to bring them together and this was the place I could do it. It really was like someone handed me a lifeline.” The family then took both girls to the Foundation in December 2016 and Lily was referred to an eating disorder clinic in Armagh.
By Easter 2017, Molly was in a slightly better place and the Education Board had provided tuition at home, which had helped ease the pressure.
But that’s when Lily became quite ill.
She had collapsed a few times and was devastated to have to take time off school. She was then referred for an intensive stint at the eating disorder clinic. But when she came home she would be very angry.
Jenny said: “She was very vocal about the anorexic voice in her head. The voice would tell her, if you eat that piece of food something bad is going to happen to someone.
“Whether that was part of the physical lack of food and the medical side of things, but that voice is very, very strong.
“That eating disorder voice becomes a bully in their life.”
Jenny began to feel helpless as she struggled to get her daughter to eat.
Towards the end of May 2017 Lily told her she didn’t feel safe in the house any more.
Jenny said: “She wanted to take her own life.
“She would have snuck out of the house we would have found her walking. You could see this gradual decline. We had to lock windows and doors, we couldn’t keep her safe.”
There was then a series of short-term hospital admissions. The family felt she would have benefited from being in a dedicated inpatient environment specifically for her needs.
After she left hospital on one occasion she was taken to the Foundation because she didn’t want to go home.
“Basically the voice said to her if you go into that house someone is going to die”, said Jenny.
This was when Lily took a “psychotic episode”.
“She kept saying, ‘I have to get away’, she was like a wild animal we had to hold her down,” Jenny recalled.
Even the ambulance crew expressed their shock at what was happening as they took her to Craigavon Hospital where she came around after being admitted. When she was discharged the family looked into private treatment and saw a psychiatrist in Belfast who confirmed she would benefit from specialist inpatient care.
“There is nowhere adequate, Beechcroft is the only psychiatric unit for young people — and there are loads of different extremes in there.
“This is what our story is about. You are left with that void of where do we go then?”
Thankfully, by Christmas 2017 Lily seemed to get on top of her eating — she also got a kitten — which gave her a new focus, but would still have had bouts of self-harm.
The Foundation urged her mum to engage with her about the self-harm and they developed a safe-word that Lily would text
❝ You don’t expect it to happen. There is no textbook, you are winging it and you are terrified
her mum when she felt like doing it which helped it get lesser and lesser.
Through time and continued support — both Molly and Lily got back to school — and Jenny said sometimes when she looks back she finds it hard to believe how they got to this point.
She says she owes it to her children’s strength and the Foundation.
“When you walk in (to the Foundation), the first place you go is the kitchen table and the teapot is put on.
“Any therapy starts at the kitchen table.”
She added: “It’s the fact it’s someone there saying, ‘you aren’t on your own’.
“The support they give parents as well as the children, I don’t think I could quantify. There is no judgement.”
But overall, Jenny said she is full of pride for each of their children and how far they have come, and how her son Max is so protective of his sisters.
She said: “Molly’s personality was never allowed to shine and now it’s like I can’t keep her in the house. She is going to concerts and she’s living her life and being a teenager. And Lily as well, because she has a fantastic singing voice. And she lost that when she was ill. It’s great to see that shining again.”
And to any parents or young people who feel they may need help, Jenny urged: “Even if you think it’s nothing, because that’s what I did, even if you think it’s just teenagers, listen to them. If you do feel you need to flag something, do it, don’t ignore it.”
The Health and Social Care Board said Beechcroft is the “regional inpatient unit for young people presenting with complex acute mental health needs and is provided by the Belfast Trust”.
It added: “There is no plan to increase inpatient facilities although there is a recognised gap in existing provision for forensic secure mental health beds in NI which can mean young people remaining for longer period in Beechcroft.
“This is currently under consideration by relevant government departments.”
If you are in distress contact Samaritans on 116123. For more info on the Niamh Louise Foundation visit www.niamhlouisefoundation.com