Greta Thunberg’s parents have described how she suffered from depression before finding her passion for fighting against climate change.

Malena Ernman said her daughter, now 17, had been ‘disappearing into some kind of darkness’ at the age of 11, which caused her to stop laughing, eating or talking.

The activist lost almost 1.5 stone in just two months and was on the verge of being admitted into hospital when she began striking for the environment.

Writing in a new book from the Thunberg family, Malena said: ‘Her body temperature is low and her pulse and blood pressure clearly indicate signs of starvation.

‘She no longer has the energy to take the stairs and her scores on the depression tests she takes are sky high.’

Psychiatrists diagnosed Greta with obsessive compulsive disorder and autism, which Malena describes as ‘high-functioning Asperger’s’.

The family fears grew as they watched her survive off ‘tiny’ portions of rice, avocado and gnocchi.

But things started to change after Greta became interested in climate change and was then shown a film about rubbish in the oceans at school.

Malena, an opera singer, described how after the lesson Greta was gripped with concern, while her classmates enthused about the teacher’s flights to New York, Thailand and Vietnam.

She wrote: ‘Greta can’t reconcile any of this with any of what she has just seen. She saw what the rest of us did not want to see.

‘It was as if she could see our CO2 emissions with her naked eye.’

Greta then began her first school strike during the summer of 2018, after her dad Svante Thunberg helped her to make a placard at home.

Malena wrote that the family could see she felt ‘good’ as she drew up her plans, adding that she appeared ‘better than ever before’.

But they could see the emotional toll it was taking on their daughter, and tried to convince her to go home – before other activists from Greenpeace started joining her.

On the third day her mother was amazed to watch her eat a ‘whole serving’ of vegan Thai noodles given to her by one of the demonstrators.

Greta became Time magazine’s youngest ever Person of the Year in 2019.

She is expected to come to the UK next week as part of a youth protest taking part in Bristol.

Our House Is On Fire: Scenes Of A Family And A Planet In Crisis is currently being serialised in The Observer.

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