I begged my daughter Katie Price to stop her dangerous plastic surgery… people don’t realise tragic reason she does it

WATCHING your daughter in pain is hard for any mother, and Amy Price is no different.

She has been by Katie Price’s side – who she calls Kate – as she has struggled with her mental health.

The model has faced criticism for her numerous boob jobs but Amy, 70, says it is a cry for help.

She reveals the truth about her daughter’s pain in her book The Last Word, serialised in The Sun.

In the final day of extracts, she tells of Kate’s addiction to going under the knife and the terrifying moments she tried to take her own life.

"WHEN most people have an off day or are feeling a bit down, they change the colour of their nails or dye their hair, but Kate changes the shape of her body.

It’s usually her boobs, although she has had liposuction, a mini facelift, a brow lift and a bum lift.

Attracting men is not her motivation. She does it because she thinks it makes her in control of her body.

Over the years, we have all come to accept it as part of Kate’s personality, but we have also seen a pattern emerging — relationship difficulties correlate with an urge to change things on the outside, even though it is her inner thoughts and feelings that need attention.

I’ve begun to warn her that if she’s not careful, she will end up looking like the Bride of Frankenstein, but she tells me not to waste my breath.

The natural 32B boobs my daughter had as a 17-year-old have got  bigger and bigger until I barely recognise the body in front of me.

Some of the things she has done to her body are not only ridiculous, but dangerous.

To me the worst was having surgery on her beautiful face.

She had always said she wouldn’t touch her face, but I think someone must have suggested she was looking older.

I think Kate is often misunderstood because of the continued per- secution she received after the failure of her marriage to Peter Andre.

Attempts to make her look evil in the eyes of the public have continued to this day.

Just like the rest of us, Kate has her faults and she is the first to admit that.

She is beautiful — much better without make-up — courageous, funny, impulsive, loving and bold.

She wants to make a living for herself and her family and she tries very hard to do this. No one could ever accuse Kate of being lazy.

She had always been vulnerable, and fame had only opened up the floodgates for any Tom, Dick or Harry who wanted a million Instagram followers  and his own fashion range to infiltrate our family.

On top of this, the mental health problems Kate has suffered have all taken a serious toll on her wellbeing.

Kate’s state of mind has not been helped by her attempts at self-medicating with drugs and alcohol.

There were times when things felt so hopeless I considered having Kate sectioned so she could finally get the robust mental health support she needed — although, as her mother, I just couldn’t bring myself to do that to my own child.

In March 2018 Kate and Junior and Princess were involved in a carjacking incident in South Africa while she was filming the reality show My Crazy Life.

Following a safari trip, which everyone had enjoyed, the production company decided to try to cross the border into Swaziland at a time of day that wasn’t safe, along a road that wasn’t safe.

They were attacked by four robbers. One of the men put his hands down

Kate’s trousers and sexually assaulted her before touching her all over and hitting her hard.

Junior, Princess and a crew member were being attacked in the back seat by another robber and everyone was screaming for help.

At the time, a spokesperson for the show’s maker, Multistory Media, said: “All security protocols were followed . . .  Extensive and long-term support was offered to Katie and her family following the robbery.”

It would be easy to pinpoint the beginning of Kate’s downward spiral to the carjacking fiasco.

A few months after the traumatic incident, one of Kate’s friends rang me to say they had found her trying to kill herself.

But in reality, I think my illness (terminal lung condition idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis) has also understandably triggered a lot of fear and anxiety.

For years, Kate has relied on me as her protector, confidante and first emergency service and there must have been times in the dead of night when she wondered if she would be able to manage without a mum.

After her return from South Africa Kate’s mental health deteriorated in parallel with her will to resist the chemical and alcohol highs which had become a major part of her lifestyle with (her third husband) Kieran Hayler.

In September 2018 Kate spent 28 days in The Priory hospital in London after her break-up with the fitness trainer Kris Boyson.

She was self-medicating and drinking heavily to the point of becoming suicidal.

I wish I could have spotted the patterns earlier in Kate’s life and helped her think about the way she has allowed herself to be controlled by husbands, boyfriends and manag- ers, always for their own benefit.

Of course, they would argue they were trying to get the best out of Kate, to make money for Kate, but in reality it also lined their pockets.

My mother, Esther Cohen, was a rebellious single mother who, during the war, would leave her family home in East London and head off for the financial district where she posed seductively in a human-sized goldfish bowl to create the illusion she was an exotic topless mermaid.

Onlookers would slot coins into a pair of binoculars to look at her and plunge themselves into a deep-sea fantasy.

Shell of a woman

Esther’s long, red, curly hair was part of the attraction and it tumbled down across her chest.

Presumably the attraction was the brainchild of a canny entrepreneur who recognised some men traumatised by war needed some soft porn escapism.

Who knew that she would lay down a blueprint in our family which would be repeated some years later by Kate when she came home and told me she was going to be topless on Page Three.

My mum was one of her biggest supporters.

Few elements of Kate’s private life had been kept away from media scrutiny but for some time we, her family, managed to keep boundaries around a series of deeply worrying suicide attempts.

One morning in September 2021, at 6.30am, I accepted a call and listened in horror as my daughter’s shaking voice crackled through the airwaves.

“I’m sorry, Mum,” is really all she could say.

“I’ve had an accident and I’m still alive, but I don’t want to be here. Why have I survived?”

How had it come to this? Who was this shell of a woman who had once had everything to live for?

Apparently, she had accidentally flipped her BMW X5 while under the influence of alcohol, but deep down I knew it was no accident.

This was proof that Kate’s inner world was now propelling her dangerously close to death.

She was taken to hospital and, after that, the police put her in a cell, where she stayed overnight before appearing in court.

She was let out on bail and went directly to The Priory.

I think I was at my lowest ebb that day. I cried a lot, yet I still felt numb.

We knew she had suffered from depression for a long time, but to reach this depth was so, so sad.

I cast my mind back to Kate as a little girl, the one that liked nature and simply wanted to be loved. Where had she gone?

We continued to offer her love while she was in The Priory for a month in September 2021.

She came out more relaxed and happier than we had seen her in a long time, even though she knew it would be a long road back to normality.

She was shown how to deal with things one at a time as part of a therapy called Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT).

Since then, she has seen a therapist regularly via Zoom and in person to help maintain her mental health.

She is also being assessed for ADHD.

I now believe there is a reason she has a different mind to others in our family.

It’s not a worse mind or a bad mind, just a different one.
It causes her pain and I want her to be able to understand why, so we are finally taking steps to seek out the right expert clinicians who can give her a full assessment.

Dying in the knowledge that my daughter is at peace with herself would be one of the greatest accomplishments of my life.

• Extracted by Grace Macaskill from The Last Word, By Amy Price (HQ, HarperCollins), published on July 6 in hardback, eBook and audiobook. Amy has donated all her proceeds from the book to The Royal Brompton and Harefield Hospitals, Action for Pulmonary Fibrosis and St Barnabas House, Worthing.