EXPOSED: CRISIS IN
FOUR heartbreaking words revealed six-year-old Briena’s torment as she told her mum: “I want to die.”
The depressed schoolgirl then added: “I don’t want to be here any more. Nobody loves me.”
Mum Nikki could only hold Briena tight and reassure her she was safe – and loved.
It was the start of a hellish journey which climaxed four years later when Briena tried to throw herself out of her bedroom window.
Distraught Nikki and husband Lee describe holding their girl tightly through the night, pleading: “Don’t do this. Please stay.”
For months, Briena slept in their room. Now, aged 11 and a year after her suicide bid, they keep a baby monitor in her room.
Briena struggles with severe depression, anxiety and panic attacks. And her plight is captured in a Channel 4 series which shines a light on Britain’s cash-strapped NHS mental health services.
Suicide rates in young girls have risen 84 per cent in six years and the family want to raise awareness.
Nikki, 40, and estate agent Lee, 42, fought for years to get help for Briena but were repeatedly told her age meant she was not at risk.
HURTING
There were countless trips to the GP and A&E and the parents lost track of how many times they asked for help. Nikki, who works with children, says: “It was heartbreaking.
“Briena told me she didn’t want to be alive and she meant it. I could see she was hurting. I remember thinking, ‘She’s six, this isn’t right’.
“She said she felt she was in a deep, dark pit alone and didn’t know how to get out. I held her tightly and pleaded with her, ‘Don’t leave me. Don’t do this. You’re safe, we love you’.”
Briena reveals the urge to end her life was unbearably strong. She says: “I wanted to be with my mum and dad, but I also wanted to die, to get away from all of the bad stuff. Life was horrible. Nothing seemed fun, it was a horrible, heavy feeling. I wanted it to be over and the only way I could see it was ending it all.
“I sometimes felt really low and sad, sometimes I felt really angry and other times I felt really anxious. Sometimes I’d feel them all at once. It was overwhelming.”
Aged six, Briena was referred to Child and Adolescent Mental Health
Services (CAMHS) in Farnborough, Hants. But Nikki recalls: “We got a phone call and they said, ‘She is too young, she’s not a concern because she has always
I felt angry, rejected, as if doctors didn’t want to help me SCHOOLGIRL BRIENA ON BATTLE FOR HELP
got somebody with her, so she’s not at risk.’ Unless she was a teenager stood on a bridge threatening to jump, there’s not much they can do.
“But I don’t want her to get to the point of being on a bridge. I said ‘I want it sorted now’. They just don’t have resources. There’s no help.”
The family moved to Nottingham and
Briena was repeatedly referred to CAMHS over the next four years.
“I felt angry, because I didn’t see why the doctors couldn’t help,” Briena says. “I felt a bit rejected, like they didn’t want to help me.”
Last year, things got so bad that she began suffering violent seizures, triggered by her overwhelming emotions and panic attacks. She had time off school and was spiralling further into a deep depression.
It took the suicide attempt and