Sky News journalist Mark Austin has opened up about how he dealt with his daughter’s anorexia, claiming his ignorance about the disease led him to tell her to “get on with it”.
The reporter has spoken about his reaction to daughter Maddy’s eating disorder in his memoir, And Thank You For Watching, in an excerpt published by the Daily Mail.
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Mark claimed that when his wife, Catherine, first became concerned about Maddy’s eating, he brushed it off.
Maddy was a runner, who’d been training all summer after competing in the Olympic trials, and her father didn’t think her weight loss was a problem.
But as the months past, the disease progressed, until finally Mark and Catherine took her to an eating disorder specialist, who diagnosed her with anorexia nervosa.
But even after the diagnosis, Mark was sure he could deal with his daughter’s illness by “making her see sense” – not appreciating the extent of the mental illness.
“By now, sense to her was not eating,” he said. “Sense to her was to take as much exercise as possible. And sense to her was that we, her parents, were now the enemy.”
Mark claims that Maddy went from being a “strong and energetic young woman,” to a “ghost-like figure”.
“I didn’t understand it at first,” he said. “Until I began to understand. And I deliberately say ‘began’ to understand, because even now, several years on, I don’t properly understand. Not fully. Not really.”
Eventually he and his wife admitted Maddy to a private inpatient centre – only to find they treated patients physically, without catering to the fact that they were suffering from a mental illness.
Patients were force fed and prevented from exercising, while the real disease was allowed to run free.
Eventually the right counsellor helped Maddy to begin fighting the disease – and she began to get better.
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But Mark stresses that this was down to luck – to the NHS centre that happened to be local to the family, and that the resources available to everyone are insufficient.
As he tweeted a link to the Daily Mail’s excerpt, he said “The Mail is serialising my book And Thank You For Watching. This was the hardest chapter to write.
“We desperately need more resources for eating disorders. Still. Now.”
If you’re concerned that you or someone you know may have an eating disorder, find your local NHS support centre, or call the Beat helpline.
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