Woman who refused to eat for first decade of her life dies aged 26
A young woman who refused to eat any food for the first decade of her life has died at the age of 26.
Tia-Mae McCarthy had to have nutrients pumped directly into her digestive system while she slept during her childhood.
She was the subject of a TV documentary as Sue, her mother, searched for answers. She even travelled abroad to find help for her daughter.
The mystery was never solved – though Tia-Mae eventually started eating and by 15 had a normal diet and appetite.
Her family have expressed their 'shock' at her sudden death and described the loss as 'unexpected'. Her cause of death is not yet known.
Tia-Mae was born 12 weeks premature and weighed 2lb 3oz. She also had a rare congenital disorder called oesophageal atresia, which meant her oesophagus and stomach did not connect.
She spent most of her first year of life in hospital and had an operation when she was three months old to move her stomach into her chest.
While Tia-Mae did have other disabilities, there was no medical reason after the surgery why she could not eat food, and her case baffled experts.
Her mother suspected it was a psychological problem that stemmed from the early months of her life when Tia-Mae stopped breathing multiple times and had to be resuscitated.
When she was seven, she featured in a 2006 documentary called The Girl Who Never Ate. Her mother took her to a specialist clinic in Austria that ran a controversial research programme, which included periods of controlled starvation.
When she was 10, Tia-Mae started to show an interest in food. The tube that had kept her alive was removed in December 2012 and by the age of 15 she had a normal diet.
Tia-Mae remained under observation by a dietitian and continued to live at the family home in Alderholt, Dorset. Tia-Mae was never able to live independently because of her disabilities.
Her brother Fin, 22, said: 'There was nothing abnormal. She had a bit of a cough, but was otherwise well.
'Her mindset was a lot younger than her physical age, so she couldn't live independently or have a job but she had a very full life. She loved horse riding and she was really into her arts and crafts.
'It's a real shock to all of us that she's gone.
'Everyone loved Tia, she put a smile on everybody's faces. She brightened every room she entered and to lose her so unexpectedly has been incredibly difficult for all who loved her.'
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BBC News
an hour ago
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Alice Figueiredo: We quit our jobs, sold our home twice and spent 10 years fighting the NHS
WARNING: This article contains upsetting details and reference to suicide There didn't seem to be anything out of the ordinary when Jane Figueiredo spoke to her daughter that night on the phone."Alice asked me to bring her some snacks for the next time we visited," Jane says. But that call, at 22:15 on 6 July 2015, was the last conversation they ever three hours later, Jane and her husband, Max, were being driven to hospital in a police car at speed. They had been told their daughter was gravely had got into a communal toilet at Goodmayes Hospital, in Ilford, east London, where she was a mental health patient, and took her own life using a bin liner. 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They've sometimes been overwhelmed, leaving the court angry or in tears, as they felt their voices - and that of Alice - were not being Jane hopes the verdicts will bring major change to psychiatric care providers around the country. "You need to do far, far better to stop failing those people who you have a duty of care to," she said after the verdict. Weeks earlier, in mid-March this year, the Figueiredos were living in a hotel room in central folding their clothes, they spoke to the BBC during a break in the trial, which was already running months longer than had been living out of suitcases since the end of October, when court hearings before the pain of hearing evidence about their daughter's death, they said simply existing like this had been a huge challenge. For the couple, it was important to be at the Old Bailey every day in person - no matter the cost - because they felt this was their only chance to see the Trust held to account for their daughter's death. Sensitive and caring Alice was born in 1992, the second of three daughters. She was a bright and energetic child, and often the centre of attention. She loved music, poetry, reading and, in particular, art. Family and friends say she had a big personality."She had a really deeply thoughtful, sensitive, caring nature. She was really kind. She was really generous," remembers a child, Alice started to develop what became an eating disorder, and by 15 she was showing symptoms of severe depression and was admitted to a mental health the following years she would be hospitalised on many more 2012, then 19, she was admitted to the Hepworth Ward, at Goodmayes Hospital, for the first time. It is an inpatient mental health unit for women, run by NELFT. She was admitted there a total of seven times over the following three years."She needed safety. She was a risk to herself," says Jane. "It was a question of, somehow managing the crisis and trusting the medical profession to make the right decisions," adds Max, Alice's admissions, Alice had long periods when hospital treatment wasn't needed. She had been applying to go to university and was planning a brighter on 13 February 2015, as her mental health took a serious turn for the worse, Alice was admitted to the Hepworth Ward for what would prove to be the final days later, Alice was detained on the unit under section three of the Mental Health Act to undergo treatment for her own safety and could not leave without her consultant's was put on one of the highest observation levels, reserved for patients at most risk of harming themselves. It meant a member of staff had to stay within arm's length of her a letter to staff just over a month into her admission, Max and Jane wrote: "She cannot contain the sense of sheer torment, intense depression and overwhelming despair she is experiencing." The manager for Hepworth Ward at the time was Benjamin Aninakwa. The now 53-year-old had been working on the unit since it opened, in 2011. He was in charge of the unit during each of Alice's previous admissions, so knew her other things on the ward had changed. The nurse and the consultant, who had previously cared for Alice, had both moved on and there was a high level of temporary agency staff filling long-standing gaps in the rota. Her parents say Alice felt unsettled."I think it became clear that there was an element of chaos in the ward," says who was a chaplain to the mental health trust, would visit Alice every day; Max, who worked for the NHS as an accountant, would stop by a few times a week, often with told her parents that staff weren't carrying out observations properly. On one occasion, within the first fortnight of her admission, she said an agency health care assistant who was supposed to be staying close to her, was instead making a phone family later saw an internal email saying Alice had been left alone while the care worker continued this conversation. In that time, Alice attempted to harm herself using her same email said that once the care assistant returned and found Alice she slapped her. "Nothing was done about that. There was no safeguarding," says Jane. During the trial, the court heard that Alice had attempted to harm herself on at least 39 occasions during her admission - many of these involved plastic bags or bin though they were in the dark about many of these incidents, her parents became so concerned they started raising it with staff at the hospital, in person and in several 16 May, three months into Alice's stay, Jane emailed the consultant for Hepworth Ward, Dr Anju Soni, about an incident of self-harm with a plastic bag in which Alice lost consciousness."If it had been a few minutes longer before she was found, the outcome could have been very different - she could have died," she court heard that many of these incidents were not recorded properly by staff, nor communicated to the several months, Alice's depression began to ease. In June, her observation levels were lowered to reflect her progress, and they were eventually reduced to hourly was able to leave the unit for short periods, even going to a Fleetwood Mac concert with her boyfriend her eating disorder remained a serious challenge, and she was still under section. She asked to be moved to a specialist unit to help her recovery. On 30 June, Alice complained of chest pain and was transferred to nearby King George Hospital. When she came back to Hepworth Ward a couple of days later, the court heard she was told she was too frail to go on planned family remember intense fluctuations in her mood around this time. They say she was frustrated that her eating disorder wasn't improving, little progress was being made on her moving to another unit and she was getting bullied by other patients on the 4 July, three days before Alice died, Jane and Max went to visit her. The eating disorder was taking its toll. They could see their daughter was struggling."She sat there almost in silence, tears were rolling down her face," remembers on the night of 6 July, Alice and her boyfriend exchanged messages with each other, talking about their love of Bob Dylan's music. At 23:30 he wrote: "I can't stop thinking about you, x."The court heard that around that time Alice had asked to speak to a care assistant she got on care assistant was called away to an emergency elsewhere in the hospital. When she returned to Hepworth Ward she looked for Alice. She eventually found her slumped in the communal by two nurses on duty on Hepworth Ward slowed the arrival of an on-call doctor and paramedics. Alice was eventually taken to another hospital where she died."It's a moment where your entire life has changed and will never be the same. That's what we have had to learn to live with," says Jane. Still dealing with the devastating shock of losing their daughter, the Figueiredos set about piecing together what had happened to Trust produced a Serious Incident (SI) report. These investigations are meant to help prevent similar incidents the Figueiredos felt it was incomplete and the Trust was avoiding accepting responsibility for Alice's their concerns, the report contained information that was new and troubling. It mentioned 13 incidents in which Alice had used a plastic bag or bin bag to self-harm."I was shocked and horrified when I saw that," says Jane. "I thought, [the Trust] knew this had happened, and [they] still let her carry on doing this, and she died," she family felt the risk of plastic bags for patients on an acute mental health ward, particularly Alice, should have been a previous admission to Hepworth Ward the year before, Alice tried to harm herself using plastic bags on at least three occasions. In November 2015, sensing there was more to uncover, the couple holed themselves up in a hotel in Lindisfarne, off the Northumbria coast, and started piecing together their suspicions."We went very quickly into actually writing our own report and sending it to all the authorities that we knew of," says used their insiders' knowledge from working in the health service, to get their report in front of senior NHS people and regulators. They wrote to Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, then head of London's Metropolitan wrote back and a police investigation into what happened to Alice was launched. The Nursing and Midwifery Council launched inquiries into several of the nurses involved in Alice's with the police involved, the Figueiredos kept digging, getting hold of as much documentation as they possibly could. When they weren't able to get documents through official routes, they'd find other ways to get them, working like seasoned they had them, they'd analyse them and produce detailed reports that they sent to the police and regulators."If I could discover something that would be helpful to their investigation. I would try to do that. We were a parallel investigation," says Jane. All this digging came at a financial cost."We were in our 50s, we both stopped working and actually sold our house and lived off that to be able to do this," says emotional price was even higher. "You can't underestimate or even find the words to say, the toll that that takes on you. It's profoundly re-traumatising," she were further shocks to come in Alice's medical notes, which showed gaps in the hospital's official SI report. They had been told Alice had attempted to self-harm with plastic bags on 13 occasions, in fact it happened at least 18 of these incidents weren't recorded in logs as they should have been."It still shocks us to the core today," says the unit, plastic bags were not used in the bins in patient bedrooms for safety reasons, but they were in a few communal locations, including a toilet that was often left unlocked. Alice used these bags to self-harm on multiple occasions, including the incident that led to her trial heard there was little evidence that ward manager Benjamin Aninakwa made any attempt to restrict access to those bin bags, despite the issue being raised with him, and it appearing in Alice's care did not appear as a witness in court but told police the toilet door was locked and he had been overruled when he tried to remove the bin bags. The court heard there were no emails or evidence in Alice's clinical notes and records to corroborate this.A Care Quality Commission inspection in April 2016, the year after Alice's death, found bin bags still being used on the unit. The bags were eventually court heard that around the time Alice was admitted to the hospital for the final time, the Trust was carrying out a "scoping exercise", which looked at removing all plastic bin bags from the hospital's wards. It was revealed a bin which didn't need a plastic liner had been considered – it would have cost just £1.26."NELFT placed more value on their rubbish bins than they did on my daughter's life," says a statement, the Trust said: "Our thoughts are with Alice's family and loved ones, who lost her at such a young age. We extend our deepest sympathy for the pain and heartbreak they have suffered this past 10 years."We will reflect on the verdict and its implications, both for the trust and mental health provision more broadly as we continue to work to develop services for the communities we serve."Jane and Max Figueiredo say they wanted to hold those at the Trust to account, but that they also wanted change for the future. But there will be no celebration at Monday's verdicts."Nothing will ever bring Alice back to us and we will never stop thinking of her and missing her," says Jane. "There's always one place empty at our table, one very special voice silent that we long to hear in our conversations." If you are suffering distress or despair, details of help and support in the UK are available at BBC Action Line.
Times
2 hours ago
- Times
Save a life in 20 minutes — while eating a biscuit
We are told, all the time, to be grateful. To practise gratitude. To keep a gratitude journal, to list all we are thankful for. In my later years I have started to augment all this with something else. Something a little more fundamental. I do grateful, as well. I do it here, in this church hall — which smells, as all church halls do, of old radiators, hot dust, floor polish and tea. Tea: a huge samovar clanks quietly at the back. Today it is in constant use. For while all church halls need a constant production of tea — for the mother-and-child groups, for the OAP yoga lessons, for the tea stall of a jumble sale — today, tea is needed on another level entirely. Today, the tea is literally medical. Today, north London is giving its blood. 'Name, age and address, please?' The car park outside is full of massive lorries. It looks like a film crew have parked up. You almost expect to see eg Emma Thompson coming out of a trailer in a crinoline with her hair in curlers, or maybe a couple of alien extras, wagging their tentacles, from Doctor Who. • Read more expert advice on healthy living, fitness and wellbeing But this isn't a film crew: it's the blood donation service. The story we are telling is: the continuing, shambolic miracle of the NHS. Coming, through the year, to every neighbourhood in turn, to see who wants to join in with one of the most miraculous things we ever invented: the ability to send our blood to someone who is dying. I take the clipboard and go and sit on a chair. I enjoy ticking 'no' on every question: I do not have a heart condition. I have not been pregnant in the past six months. I have not been tattooed, I do not have a cough or an active cold sore, and I haven't had unprotected sex with a new partner in the past six months: all things to be grateful for. My life is wonderfully boring. I would not like to have had unprotected sex with a new partner in the past six months. Imagine having to learn a new willy, from scratch, at my age. It would be harder than breaking in new boots. 'Let's take you through for your blood test.' They need to check if I'm anaemic. I have been, before. I didn't realise that if you take your iron supplements in the morning, then have — as is only right and proper! — a massive mug of tea, for breakfast, the tea counteracts the iron. Three times I came here only to be sent away, because my blood was too spindly. Too wan. Today, they prick my fingertip — then squeeze a blood-drop into a small glass phial of copper sulphate. The blood drop looks like a solid thing: a glass bead; a tiny red world, hanging in the liquid. It is an interesting thing to watch, the silent, simple chemistry telling the nurse if my blood is good enough — if it's heavy enough, with good iron — to sink to the bottom and qualify my blood as useful. Slowly, it sinks. I feel absurdly proud. 'Someone's been eating their spinach!' I have! I have been eating my spinach! But, more usefully, taking my iron supplement at night, before withdrawing from tea — or, as it's otherwise known, 'sleeping'. I get to go through into the main room, to give my pint. This room is always fascinating. Everyone has come here to do A Good Thing — to literally give a part of themselves to someone they will never meet. There's a father in his mid-thirties who has brought his toddler: she sits in her buggy while he talks her through what's happening. He is doing that most north London of things — being a fruitlessly overqualified parent. '… and so the blood is made of white platelets and red platelets!' he says pointlessly: no two-year-old has ever cared about white platelets. 'If you want to separate them out, you put them in a centrifuge, Miranda. Remember when we went to see the centrifuge — at Farnham air museum?' The two-year-old continues, inevitably and correctly, to ignore him. I'm fairly sure she would have hated Farnham air museum. Next to the dad is a Busy Businessman. He has the air of being, in every other circumstance life gives him, utterly dreadful. The cut of his suit, the angle of his shoulder, the repeatedly compressed thinness of his upper lip suggests this is a man who spends a lot of time shouting things like, 'We need to circle back and kick his ass!' on his mobile. But today, he has given himself the day off from being an arsehole. For whatever reason or backstory — whatever tender, noble or terrified moment in his life — the Busy Businessman has walked out of his office, turned off his phone and come here. I always forget that I cry when I'm here. And I always do. For, as I take my place on my bed and watch the needle — thin as an eyelash, an eyelash made of steel — go into my vein, and the blood jumping from inside me down the artery-thin tubing and into the collection bag, I marvel all over again at what this room is. At what this place is. Because this is the place where you are asked to give love. Not to someone or something specific — you never look into someone's eyes and respond to their call for help. No — here you give love freely, and unconditionally, to the world. You prove, practically and physically, that you buy into this whole planet, after all. You deal yourself back into the game. You indicate that you are a fan of your species. That, despite every disappointment, you still believe something elemental: you would never let someone die in front of you. Somewhere out there, one day soon, one of your fellow confused, well-meaning, frangible mammals will suddenly have their life explode. There will be a crash, a clutching of the heart, a fall — and then: blue lights and wailing sirens. Machines bleeping, and screaming. And loved ones sitting next to them, fists clenched tight, offering anything — everything — to God to make it better. For the universe to send something, anything, to keep them here. And the thing that will make it better, the thing that is sent, is you. You, on some distant day, will be someone's astonishing, life-saving miracle. I lie on the chair in the church hall, watching the dust motes catch the sunlight as I lie, quietly draining, and think of what an extraordinary thing it is: to give so easily so something utterly magical. How often can we really make someone's day better, let alone save their lives? Young boys and girls dream of being heroes, of saving a comrade on the battlefield, of giving the speech that starts the righteous revolution. In the end, hardly anyone ever does this. We are all so ready to be tested — to give — but in the modern world the call doesn't come. But, in all honesty, this will probably be the greatest thing you ever do. Fill out some paperwork, lie on a bed, watch a father try to give a toddler a biscuit without tangling her arms up in his tubing, then eat a biscuit. Your true effect on the world will almost certainly not be measured in the size of your efforts but in how smart they were instead. What's the inflection point? Where are you most needed? where shuffling nurses in cardigans quietly build up the blood banks for when a train crashes, or a bomb explodes, or there's just a medium-to-hard day in A&E. The only universal bank — a blood bank. One you too may be a borrower from, one day. You cannot know if you will live your life entirely on this side of the donation. When you give, you're giving to everyone — including, potentially, yourself. On the way home I allow myself a pleasurable dwell on how wonderful the world always looks when you have left a good, useful place. This is the same high I get when I leave a museum, or cathedral, or festival: all the places where humans are at their best. How magical that we have all these places dedicated, simply, to how inventive, clever and kind we can be. If you want to be hopeful, give blood. Save a life in 20 minutes, while eating a biscuit. Be the most relaxed hero it's possible to be. Three weeks later, I get a text — right after the one that tells me the spade I ordered from Argos, Wood Green, is ready for collection. 'Your blood donation was used today at Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge. Thank you.' There will be no better text this year. I am grateful. I do out how to become a blood donor at
