As part of Children’s Mental Health Awareness Week, Molly has shared her story and how she turned her journey into a source of hope and strength for others.
Now, as an Expert by Experience for Cygnet, she advocates on behalf of patients and shares her coping strategies, providing a compassionate voice for those in need of support.
“I grew up as undiagnosed autistic child and teenager. I always struggled with my mental health, I was an anxious child,” Molly, now 23, of Warrington, Cheshire, said.
“My parents separated when I was young which had more of an impact on me than anyone realised at the time.”
It was when Molly went to secondary school that things really got difficult.
“I really struggled with the transition from a small, friendly primary school into this huge, overwhelming high school where I didn’t know anyone and I didn’t really know how to make friends,” she explained.
“I felt persistently overwhelmed with everything and my mental health really started to decline.
“I always really struggled with my body image and there were many days when I genuinely didn’t think I could go into school because I was so self-conscious of how I looked. I had to avoid going to the toilets all day in school out of fear of seeing my reflection in the mirrors.
“I had a disordered relationship with food from quite a young age but I was managing. When I turned 13, it really got a lot worse.”
Molly began self-harming as a way of coping and when she experienced grief for the first time at 13, having lost her grandmother, her mental health took a turn for the worse and it evolved into anorexia.
“Within the space of three months, my life went from being difficult and me being able to mask most of my mental health struggles to things being completely unmanageable. I couldn’t hide how bad things were anymore. We had a really stressful financial situation at home, which just exacerbated things.
“I quite quickly declined into anorexia.
“I went from being a ‘top student’ at school to not being able to go to school at all because I was too unwell.
“I find it really hard to think that I missed out on most of my teenage years. I never went to parties, I didn’t attend education full time. I lost most of my friends and I had to teach myself the majority of my GCSEs and A levels. My life was so small, I lived in this tiny little bubble with just me and my mum. We felt trapped and our entire world revolved around food and weight and appointments.
“I do feel like I missed out on a massive chunk of my life because of the fact that I struggled with my mental health and because of the fact that the help wasn’t there when I needed it. That’s a real source of frustration for me.”
Molly sought help from community, outpatient services but found it didn’t give her the support she needed.
“My mum and I tried to cope with my illness at home but it became really distressing. She couldn’t go to work because she needed to be at home with me. She couldn’t even spend time on her own because I relied on her for absolutely everything. I couldn’t eat without her, it became awful and really scary.
“I desperately wanted help at the beginning but it wasn’t there for me. It got to a point where my mental health hit rock bottom and I wasn’t safe to be at home. I was in my first year of College, at 17 years old, when I was admitted onto a CAMHS eating disorders unit in London, 200 miles away from home.
“Although it was terrifying, it was also a relief, to finally have help and be taken seriously.”
Molly was a patient at the unit for nine months.
“For the first time, I actually felt understood and I felt like people were taking me seriously. People were supporting me and I met the most incredible friends. What you don’t get at home is that wrap around support of having people there when you need them. I engaged with the therapy and found myself in a better place, for a while.
“However, I was really naïve. I thought once I was discharged things were going to be fine. But I was discharged in February and then we had COVID in the March. Everything changed again”.
The pandemic meant Molly didn’t have the continuity of care in the community and she found herself experiencing two further admissions onto acute wards, the last being in January 2023.
In 2021, she went to university with the hopes of gaining a degree in Medicine, but she had to withdraw as a result of still being undiagnosed Autistic and therefore being misunderstood rather than offered the right support.
“It had always been my dream to become a Doctor. Everyone in hospital knew me as “Doctor Molly” and that was my main source of motivation for recovery. Leaving broke my heart and left me feeling as though my entire life was over.
“It was the one thing I’d always wanted to do, and the one thing that I’d worked really hard to get better for, and it had been taken away from me.”
After having different jobs whilst deciding whether to return to University, Molly ended up working for NHS England as an Expert by Experience and after crossing paths with Raf Hamaizia, Cygnet’s Expert by Experience Lead, Molly was given the chance to use her lived experience and work with patients at Cygnet services.
“Working as an Expert by Experience instantly reignited the passion I had previously for medicine. When I started working with Cygnet, spending time working directly with patients experiencing similar struggles to me, I knew it was so much more than just a job to me.
“I was able to advocate for myself and for others, and it was something that made me really passionate.
“I hadn’t had this feeling with any other job I’d ever done. I was excited to go to work and be able to make a real difference which is something I had lost all hope of when leaving medicine.
Molly has been a frequent visitor to Cygnet Nield House, a 29-bed mental health hospital for women in Crewe, including a ward for women with disordered eating.
She is also advising the company on one of its new build hospitals, Cygnet Elowen Hospital in Derbyshire, sharing her ideas on the best in-built environments for patients.
The fact that the voice of lived experience is being involved from the very beginning is incredibly powerful.
“I think the most important thing for me is being that person who truly understands and can relate to the patients. When I was in hospital, I could tell from a million miles away the staff who had true lived experience.
“They would be really authentic and the power of what they were saying just felt different. They are the ones who helped me the most. I wanted to be that person who could sit there and truly say ‘I know what you’re going through and it does get better’.
“I want to be able to be there for patients in their darkest moments and be the person who can either give them a hug or just sit in silence with them. Being able to then celebrate their small wins feels even more incredible.
“I want to be able to help them find their voice. When you are sectioned and feel you have very little control over your life or your care it can feel so isolating. I want to be that person who advocates for them.
“I can sit there and have those honest conversations with people and say it’s not sunshine and rainbows all the time. But I can reassure them that if they put the hard work in, there’s definitely hope and light too.”
Although Molly admits she still has her struggles and attends therapy regularly, she said the EbyE role has enabled her to keep on track with her own recovery.
“I’m accepting that slip ups and relapses happen, but that doesn’t make me a failure. My mental health and Anorexia recovery is still an ongoing battle, but I believe that one day that won’t be the case.
“It will never be perfect but knowing I’m making someone else’s journey just slightly easier feels like a huge privilege. I am more resilient, have gained confidence and have a purpose in life again. As much as my job is about helping others, it has helped me in my own recovery massively.
“I feel like the job that I have supports me almost as much as I’m able to support other people because it gives me motivation.”
Molly is now a big advocate for ensuring every school allows children access to mental health support should they need it, and earlier recognition of autism in children.
“There were so many signs that just were missed and could have been picked up on for me, that would have prevented a lot of the negative experiences I faced.”
As part of Children’s Mental Health Awareness week, she has also shared her advice to other young people who may be struggling.
She said: “There’s a lot of pressure on young people for their teenage years to be the best years of their life and for them to have everything figured out. The academic pressure on top of everything else can often be too much. Being a teenager is really hard and really stressful, but please remember that this period of your life won’t last forever. Your mental health is so much more important than your exam results or the number of friends you have, so take some of that pressure off and be kind to yourself.
“Even though it might not feel like it, you will find your people and your path. Whilst it can be hard not to compare yourself to those around you, everyone’s journey is different and that’s okay. Sometimes I feel like a failure for not even starting another degree whilst my peers have all finished their Masters and have graduate jobs, when in reality if I hadn’t left medicine then I would never have found the job I have fallen in love with.
“There’s a life beyond mental illness. It’s so hard to see it when you’re in the depths of it, you can’t imagine that things could ever change, or you’ll ever have a life outside of it.
“With hard work and dedication, recovery is possible. My life is so much more than the teenage Molly who was isolated and hopeless could ever have imagined.”