The 59-year-old news veteran has written of his family's struggle with their beloved Maddy's anorexia nervosa in a new book out next week.
Mark was in the US covering the 2012 presidential election when he first received a call from his wife, Catherine, an A&E doctor, about their daughter's health.
An extract of his book published on MailOnline shows how his wife told him Maddy was "skipping meals, counting calories and becoming obsessive about the food she would eat".
But at first, Mark confessed he "wasn't remotely concerned" as he busied himself with the coverage of the Obama election campaign.
His daughter had been a "healthy" athlete and 800m runner who was taking part in Olympic trials while studying for her A Levels, and he saw no immediate cause to worry.
He first broached the subject of her weight a week after her 18th birthday, but admitted the conversation "didn't go well".
"It was her life and her body, she said, and pointed out that, since she was 18 now, I couldn’t do anything about it. I reacted badly and it ended in a shouting match."
Mark admitted that he did not deal with it well, wanting to "shake her out of it" when her weight plummeted in months from from 9½ to 5½ stone.
"It was the beginning of the most traumatic time in our family life — a descent into hell," he wrote.
Treatment made very little difference, and her traumatised dad said their relationship became "toxic".
"Very quickly she became horribly thin, uncommunicative and intransigent.
"I didn’t understand it at first — I thought it was crass, insensitive, selfish and pathetic of Maddy."
On one occasion, he lashed out, saying: "And if you really want to starve yourself to death, just get on with it."
He writes in the book: "And here’s the worst thing: for one ghastly split second, I think I actually meant it. I was at my wits’ end. I wanted the whole dreadful situation just to go away."
At their wits' end with her lack of improvement, the parents eventually enrolled her in a private in-patient unit, where they enforced an expensive regime of forced feeding, no exercise and accompanied lavatory visits.
But Maddy responded badly, threatening to kill herself, and so her parents brought her home.
They credit an NHS service in Farnham, Surrey, with saving her life.
The day patient unit that picked her up by ambulance before breakfast, fed and treated her during the day over a year until she very gradually got better.
He concludes the extract, writing: "Today she is healthy, leading a normal life and is at university. I know we were very fortunate. We have our daughter back, where other parents do not.
And Thank You For Watching by Mark Austin will be published by Atlantic Books next Thursday, October 4 at £20. © Mark Austin 2018.
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