In February, I completed a 2-day workshop at Roses in the Ocean about how to use my lived experience of suicide to advocate for change. This is what I wrote and presented as part of it (in 30 minutes!)…
“Mum, you’re going to get a call. You need to answer.”
I was sitting in my room doing some work when my daughter, Soraya, walked in and said this.
She said it with such seriousness that I immediately gave it all my attention.
“Why? What’s wrong?”
She refused to answer but stayed with me until a couple of minutes later when my phone rung. It was someone from Kids Helpline. My amazing 14 year old daughter had rung them and told them she planned to kill herself that night. Thankfully, she had given them my name and number instead.
The advice was to take her to an emergency room. So we did. Later that night, she was admitted into a youth mental health ward.
This was the start of nine days of worry and panic for me.
I couldn’t concentrate on my work.
I struggled to sleep.
I tried to parent my younger sons who were starting school again the next day – the oldest one had his first day of high school.
I visited her each day and had a few different meetings with her different psychiatrists and case workers at the hospital.
The Soraya I visited was not the vivacious, larger-than-life daughter I thought I knew so well.
She was withdrawn, quiet. It felt like she was disappearing in front of my eyes. I didn’t realise that she was.
At the meetings with her carers, they said she had depression, that she didn’t feel safe and we learned about bullying at her school the previous year.
I was so utterly overwhelmed that I never even asked a question. I trusted what they were telling me.
It never occurred to me that it wasn’t the whole story. I had never dealt with depression or the mental health system before. I had no idea how to navigate any of it.
When they finally discharged her, I was so relieved. I would be able to sleep again with my baby girl at home.
At the discharge meeting, they talked about her return to school, her assigned outpatient case worker and what would happen next.
No one mentioned the word suicidal. No one mentioned her still having problems. The meeting was upbeat and about returning to regular life.
I assumed that meant she was better.
It was the worst assumption of my life.
12 days later, my gorgeous baby girl died by suicide in the next room.
Those early days were tough.
I was in total shock.
Despite taking her to the hospital, despite the inpatient stay, I really had no idea how bad things were for Soraya.
So we requested her medical records and could not believe what we read.
The hospital and outpatient staff did not share 90% of what Soraya was saying and experiencing.
We did not know she had made an attempt before.
We did not know she had experienced suicidal ideation for over 4 years and was still experiencing it when she was discharged.
We did not know she was always rated at least a moderate suicide risk.
We did not know she was having visual and aural hallucinations with voices that continually urged her to kill herself with descriptions on how to do it.
We did not know the method she wanted to use so we could have prevented it.
We did not know all her diagnoses.
We did not know the real purpose of one of her medications (to stop the hallucinations we did not know about).
The list goes on and on.
Our daughter was just 14.
We thought we were being told everything. Soraya gave permission whenever asked by a clinician if they could tell us what she was saying.
Worst of all, we found out that she told her case worker the day before she died exactly how she planned to kill herself and gave permission to tell me.
He didn’t.
We could have prevented her death on 18 Feb 2025 with that one piece of information.
I wish I could say this was a one off experience. That this was an isolated account of negligence by the mental healthcare system.
But suicide bereavement groups are full of similar stories.
Families are often left out of the care of their children and young people in mental health.
It often seems ignored that families know their child best. The reality is that the family are going to be the ones that provide the majority of the care for their children.
Hospitals don’t look after suicidal children for months on end. Families do.
So families have to be informed, supported and educated to help their child survive.
It should be fundamental that families are part of the care plan.
The hospital can’t tell us why no one told us Soraya was suicidal or any of the other things they left out. Their only excuse was that her psychiatrists/case workers must have thought that we already knew our daughter’s condition.
They don’t agree they were negligent.
Their review into her care showed no fault of theirs.
The case worker who saw her the day before, who ignored her suicide plan, who didn’t tell me what she gave permission to tell me, is facing no action whatsoever.
Apparently, he did the right thing.
He killed my daughter and doesn’t even face displinary action. Just empathy that this happened under his watch.
The hospital, Safer Care Victoria, AHPRA, the Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission, and maybe the coroner (who keep delaying any findings) all think it is perfectly fine to not tell families of 14 year old children that their kids have a possibly fatal illness. That their children need help and support.
Can you imagine if a cancer ward did not tell parents that that their child was sick? That they need help, support and medication? There would be a huge outcry.
It is unimaginable.
But why is it ok with mental illness? With the biggest killer of young people?
It’s become fine to keep their mouths shut. To let our children die. To do absolutely nothing but a bare minimum that is so minimal it doesn’t amount to care,
They sent Soraya home without any changes, without any help or support, without telling us the truth of her condition and expected her to live.
The hospital should have worked with us. We should have been a team supporting and caring for Soraya.
Instead, we worked in isolation.
We didn’t know how ill our daughter was because they decided not to tell us.
And she died.
This needs to change.
The mental healthcare system needs to not treat children in isolation from their families. Parents need help and guidance too.
Together, we may have been able to save Soraya’s life.
Alone, we could not.
We would have done absolutely anything for our daughter and it’s impossibly painful that we weren’t given the opportunity to try to help her.
Hospitals have to be told that this isn’t ok. We have to stop them ignoring childens’ pleas for help. They have to stop ignoring families. Anything less is murder.
It should never be ok to withhold information from the parents of sick children.
Whether it’s cancer, whether it’s mental illness. It’s never ok. It kills.
