ITV newsreader Mark Austin has spoken about his daughter’s heartbreaking illness.
The reporter has opened up about almost losing his little girl to her battle with anorexia on Good Morning Britain today.
Sitting with his pal Piers Morgan and co-host Susanna Reid, he said: “She was wasting away in front of our eyes – she was getting dangerously ill.”
His daughter came very close to organ failure and his family tried everything they could to make her better.
Mark revealed that luckily he has the money to be able to pay for private healthcare, but even that didn’t help.
Her weight plummeted from nine stone to six stone and needed constant care and attention so they admitted her into a special hospital.
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“That was a disaster,” he revealed. “She was living there with all these other girls who were all desperate to lose more and more weight.”
What is terrifying is what he said next…
Mark confessed that the young teens would resort to some pretty drastic methods to be as skinny as they possibly could.
“They would open windows and stand next to them shivering trying to lose weight,” he said worryingly.
A lot of people think that social media has a huge part to play in mental health of teenagers, and Mark seems to be one of them.
“There is so much pressure on them to have the perfect bodies, the perfect holidays, the perfect boyfriend,” he explained.
“I think there is a parallel between the rise in antidepressants being prescribed to teenagers and the use of social media.”
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The presenter then went on to make a bold statement about how the NHS offered the most brilliant emergency healthcare in the world for physical problems BUT help for mental health is underfunded.
“We are heading towards an epidemic in mental health and there are not the resources there to deal with it,” he added.
Mark told the programme that his daughter is now “doing fine”.