"Ongoing stays and support for my teenage child"

My teenager had a number of long stays at EMYU last year due to an eating disorder, depression, borderline personality disorder and post-traumatic stress. I can't speak for my child but I would like to thank the wonderful nurses - sorry I don't know all your names - who helped them, the staff who fought to find accommodation for my child, and also psychiatric registrar, Matthew, who took the time to keep me informed about their progress. My teenager had other hospital and youth unit stays in 2021 but EMYU was the only place that I was kept in the loop as a parent.

Good things about EMYU based on our experience:

- my child has stayed out of hospital since their last admission thanks to the support that EMYU helped put in place

- EMYU recognised that my child needed stable accommodation to remain out of hospital

- my child recently commented how unhelpful it can be for patients with anorexia to eat meals with other patients with anorexia and told me one of the most helpful things at EMYU was when nurses would sit and eat their own meal with them. Being with someone who was just eating and chatting and not making a big issue out of food, worked much better than being encouraged to eat or having to watch other patients refuse food. So thank you to those understanding staff.

- compared with the other youth units, I feel that EMYU was more careful with addictive drugs like Lorazepam

Things that I feel need to improve about EMYU:

- at one of last year's discharges my teenager was prescribed Zopiclone for sleep but was not told when to stop taking it (at this stage they were in short-term accommodation and did not have regular psychiatrist or GP visits due to all the hospital stays). After a few weeks they realised they were having hallucinations and memory loss at night after taking it, and the GP stopped it. After reading about this drug I think people should be careful with it especially in adolescents.

- I would love to try to help fix up the front garden if that's possible, to make it a nicer place for patients and nurses to spend time. I would like to try to raise some money for that.