THE daughter of missing Tiina Proffitt “started to lose hope” until being told her mother was found alive yesterday.

Tiina, 50, from the Fiveways area of Brighton, had not been seen since Friday and a huge search party was launched.

The police helicopter and drones were used and detectives scoured the city over the weekend.

The last sighting of her was on CCTV at a shop in Woodbourne Avenue, Hollingbury, on Friday afternoon.

Tiina was found by a park ranger at the Waterhall playing fields in Patcham yesterday morning.

Now her family – daughter Nina, 18, son Nic, 24, and her 51-year-old husband Jon are “absolutely over the moon” after a traumatic five days.

Nina said the last thing Tiina said to her was “well done” for her A-level results, which she picked up on Thursday.

The next day, a note was found from Tiina saying she was “upset” and “struggling to cope”.

Her daughter has been posting pleas on social media regularly since her disappearance, with the posts being shared thousands of times.

Nina, who studied at Bhasvic, said: “I knew straight away something was wrong. We could tell she hadn’t been in a good way recently.

“We can’t thank everyone who helped us enough.

“It has been the worst weekend of my life. As the days go on, you start to think worse and worse thoughts.

“The fact there were no sightings of her and no body was holding us together. I just felt for my dad – I wanted to keep him going.

“I thought I had to do something. Social media is all we could really do.

“We started losing hope, but then police phoned and said they had some good news. It will be a hard process, but hopefully it will bring our family closer together.”

Tiina was taken to hospital to be assessed by medics yesterday and the family said they were going to see her last night.

Nina said her friends have “not left me alone” over the past few days, and had helped her through what was a living nightmare.

She also thanked the thousands of people who helped raise awareness of Tiina’s case, from social media users to police and the press.

Her father Jon, who has been married to Tiina for 26 years, described the past five days as the “most traumatic” of his life.

He said: “It will take a while for her to recover but we’re absolutely over the moon.

“We’re all relieved, and want to thank everyone for their support and effort. It’s been a rallying call.”