Newsreader Mark Austin has revealed he told his severely anorexic daughter to “starve yourself to death, just get on with it”.
Former ITV Evening News presenter Mr Austin admits he thought daughter Maddy was “crass, insensitive, selfish and pathetic” and detailed how he “failed utterly to grasp that she was seriously mentally ill”.
The broadcaster laid bare how he struggled to cope with his daughter’s mental illness in a brutally honest article written in the Sunday Times magazine in a bid to break taboos around eating disorders.
Mr Austin’s daughter Maddy became ill when she was a teenager in 2012. He described how she lost four stone and became an “emaciated, ghostlike figure” who would lie about what she had eaten.
He wrote: "I didn't understand it at first. Cancer I understand…but this was my daughter wilfully destroying herself by not eating.
"She showered me with contempt. As a father, you have to make a decision and I made the wrong one. I decided to go on the attack.
"I even remember saying, 'If you really want to starve yourself to death, just get on with it'. And at least once, exasperated and at a loss, I think I actually meant it."
More than 725,000 people are affected with eating disorders in the UK. Ms Austin, now 22, was admitted at a private inpatient unit but resisted the treatment and made threats to kill herself.
She eventually recovered thanks to an NHS unit for day patients.
Mr Austin said: “I floundered and, in the process, ended up poisoning her against me further.”
He is now encouraging people to take the illness more seriously, warning the mental illness is dangerous and can kill.
