THE missing Llangynidr woman Alice Vulliamy will be 25 on March 31 and her family is hoping she will be home in time to celebrate.

Alice has not been seen by her parents since Saturday, February 5, but they only realised she was missing the following day when she was due to return to Bronllys Hospital as an in-patient to continue her psychiatric treatment for an eating disorder.

Her car was found locked outside Christ College, Brecon and apart from a couple of sightings in Llangynidr on the Sunday morning, nothing has been seen or heard of her since.

Her brother Andrew, 26, is a medical student at Cardiff University. He said: "As time goes on it's difficult to stay positive but we would have thought if she's succumbed to some terrible outcome something would have turned up, but nothing has come to light and that gives us some hope and positivity that she is out there with someone she knows."

Mr Vulliamy said Alice, who was living at home with their parents, had made a lot of friends through the eating disorder circle. She has suffered from the disorder for the past 10 years and has received treatment at a specialist unit in Maidenhead. He added: "Most of them my mother knows and we have been able to contact them. But we cannot rule out those people she may have met more recently that she's taken a liking to."

He said the family has found her Facebook page very useful in checking Alice's correspondence with friends, and noted that she had stated she wanted to be left alone to do what she wanted.

He explained: "She was currently receiving treatment in a general psychiatric unit at Bronllys Hospital. She felt uncomfortable there and as far as we know she didn't associate very much with other patients, but she did play Scrabble and other board games with them.

"She was not happy there because they aimed to increase her BMI with a slightly higher target than in recent years and Alice was finding it hard to get her head around this and how to cope with it. I think her motivation for disappearing was to do with this because she did not want to go back to Bronllys."

Alice was educated at Haberdashers' School for Girls in Monmouth. Her family want anyone who has seen or heard from Alice to contact Dyfed Powys Police on 101 as soon as possible. Until then their lives are on hold as they wait to hear about their beautiful daughter and sister.