A DESPERATE mother has handcuffed herself to a chair at an NHS mental health unit - in a bid to get her suicidal teenage daughter SECTIONED.

The distraught parent, who has asked to remain anonymous to protect her 19-year-old daughter, cuffed herself to the hospital furniture on Thursday (August 22).

The drastic measure came after her daughter was recently deemed safe and moved from the mental health ward to a hotel, and then a local hostel - where her mental health has deteriorated.

The teen has reportedly taken five drug overdoses in four days, according to her worried mother, who worries her daughter will die if she is not sectioned.

The parent, from Yeovil, Somerset, said: "I'm going to handcuff myself to a chair here [at the NHS ward] until she gets sectioned.

"If I don't do anything I think she will die. She has overdosed five times this week.

"The hospital has been treating her, but the last I heard is that she was refusing treatment at the hospital.

"She needs sectioning - I don't think this ward is safe enough for her, and she is certainly not safe at a hotel or a hostel. She will be much safer if she is sectioned."

The mum says her daughter was placed at children's institutions across the UK, including as far away as the Midlands, before she was moved back to Yeovil when she turned 18.

It all started when she was 13 and attempted to take her own life in Yeovil town centre, she says.

She added: "Between 13 and 18, she was in and out of institutions all over the country.

"It was when she was 18 and she was brought back to the mental health ward in Yeovil that she started overdosing regularly.

"In July, at the age of 19, a mental health assessment team deemed her safe and she was moved to a hotel in Yeovil.

"Since then it has got a lot worse."

The worried parent claims her daughter has overdosed on a regular basis since she was moved back to Yeovil.

She claims the teenager has overdosed five times in four days this week, after social services staff took her to Boots to retrieve her medicine.

The mother added: "When she was at the ward, she could just go out and do whatever she wanted.

"On one occasion she had overdosed at 10pm, and the staff didn't notice until 5pm the next afternoon when she hadn't woken up.

"Now she has been moved out to a hostel on her own - I don't call that a place of safety at all."

A spokesman for Somerset Partnership NHS Foundation Trust said the organisation "sympathises deeply" with the mother, but is unable to discuss her daughter's care in public.

In a statement, the Trust said: "We sympathise deeply with the mother's concern for her daughter but we are not able to discuss her daughter's care with her in this public way.

"We always do our best to involve and listen to families where we can.

"But the daughter is an adult with capacity and therefore we work with her and talk to her about her treatment and how it is progressing.

"Respecting her daughter's wish for confidentiality, we invite the mother to meet with us privately to talk through her concerns."