I was just like I can't do this any more I needed to get Church out... so I left - JADE KNIGHT ON TEEN TRAUMA

JADE Knight was 15 years old when she first became a runaway, walking out of the secure children's hospital ward where she was being treated after failing to take her medication for Type 1 diabetes.

- CECILIA ADAMOU

Her family went through six hours of hell before Jade was found and taken home, shocked to discover she had been reported as a missing person.

Now 22, Jade says: "At the time, I didn't even know what 'missing' was.

She had walked off the hospital ward after becoming overwhelmed with the pressure of managing her diabetes, Jade says: "When you're 15 you think you're invincible and so the next time I felt like that again, I just wanted to go again. That was the start of something."

From the age of 15 until she was 18 Jade went missing more than 50 times.

She finally got help from the charity Missing People, which the Mirror is supporting as our Christmas campaign.

The charity says someone is reported missing in the UK every 90 seconds.

Recalling the first time she became part of that statistic, Jade says: "I don't know what I was even thinking. I was just like, 'I can't do this any more.

"I needed to get out, so I left. I don't know why I did, but when I left, there was this release. No one knew where I was and I just felt like it was the first time I could breathe in a year."

OVERWHELMED