It began with a knock on the door. A police officer, sombre faced, saying she had tried earlier but the bell seemed to be out of order.
Natasha Abrahart, 20, daughter, sister, granddaughter, niece and friend, talented Bristol University second-year physics student, a keen musician who enjoyed indoor climbing and baking cakes, was dead. Worse – if it can be worse – she appeared to have taken her life, alone in her student room.
That was eight months ago. Since then her parents, Robert and Margaret Abrahart, who live in Nottingham, have been in limbo as they wait for the inquest in May, a full year after their daughter’s death.
“It was nine o’ clock in the morning on the 1st of May and Duncan, Natasha’s brother, and I were at home. My wife was in London looking after her mother. I had to call to tell her Natasha was dead,” says Robert. “The police officer gave me contact details for the policeman who had attended, and he in turn provided contact details for a coroner’s officer and the university. But you don’t know what you are doing or what you have to do; it’s your worst nightmare, and you have no direction,” he said.
“When you get the news of the death of a child you go blank, you don’t know what is going on, you don’t understand the system, you can’t cope and you get thrown into the coroner’s process. We were told we had to deliver a family statement and given a deadline. What is a family statement?”
The coroner will decide the cause of death and the couple have been advised to avoid making comments that might prejudge the outcome. But Natasha’s father wants to make two things clear: “First, Natasha was not a struggling student. She passed the first year with good marks and did not have a problem with the physics itself; and second, in our view, the university did not do everything it could to help her.”
Universities have been urged by the government to tighten up their support for student mental health. At least 95 UK university students took their lives in 2016-17, the latest figures show, and suicide is the leading cause of death in young people, according to the Office for National Statistics.
Bristol, a high-performing university, has had 12 confirmed or suspected suicides since October 2016, and Natasha’s was one of three over a two-week period last year. On 21 April a fourth-year engineering student, Alex Elsmore, 23, took his life after handing in his MA thesis. Natasha died on 30 April and then, on 5 May, a first-year English student, Ben Murray, 19, died.
Getting information about Natasha’s last months has been challenging for her parents, even though they are well placed to understand the systems involved. Robert is a retired associate professor in geospatial data analysis, from the University of Nottingham, and Margaret is a recently retired psychological wellbeing practitioner, and former occupational therapist, who has carried out clinical audits of mental health practice.
At first they struggled alone, while the other three parties at the inquest – two GPs who treated Natasha, the university and the Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS trust – engaged four sets of lawyers.
“We thought we were capable of asking relevant questions in court but we quickly discovered we were out of our depth,” says Robert. “A friend told us about the charity Inquest and they suggested we engage a solicitor.” Although the lawyers are working for reduced fees, with legal costs mounting they turned to crowdfunding through Crowdjustice.com. So far they have raised £13,460 towards the expected £50,000 bill.
“What we are going through, knowing so much and yet unable to tell it until the inquest, is an agonising process. We believe our daughter’s death was totally unnecessary and that what we have discovered could help save the lives of other students. We want the inquest to determine exactly what happened so lessons can be learned. We see it as our duty,” says Robert.
The breakthrough came when he found email correspondence between his daughter and the university, in which she disclosed suicidal thoughts. “Up until that point we had been thinking that this tragedy had come about because she had not confided in anyone. But she had tried to get help,” he says.
The couple hope the inquest will pay close attention to the effect of assessment methods on students with mental health conditions and look at the allowances a university should make. A pre-inquest review hearing at Avon coroner’s court last November was told Natasha died the day she was due to make an oral presentation for a physics assessment. The coroner heard the university knew she had struggled with similar, but less intimidating, assessments in the past.
The court also heard that Natasha had been diagnosed as suffering from chronic social anxiety. It emerged she had told a member of the university physics staff by email: “I wanted to tell you that the past few days have been really hard, I’ve been having suicidal thoughts and to a certain degree attempted it. I want help to go to the student health clinic or wherever you think is a good place to go to help me through this, and I would like someone to go with me as I will find it very hard to talk to people about these issues,” she wrote.
Despite that email, Natasha had “no direct contact” with the university’s student wellbeing service, the first pre-inquest hearing in August last year was told.
Since the death of Ben Murray his father, James, has been liaising with Bristol to improve its systems and contributed to a guide on how to make universities safer for students at risk of suicide that was written by Prof Hugh Brady, Bristol’s vice-chancellor.
James has constructed a prototype “student wellbeing assessment” early alert system of recording and sharing information between different parts of a university. Behaviour such as non-attendance at seminars, non-payment of fees and failure to engage in clubs and societies may look insignificant in themselves, but when taken together can build up a picture of a student at risk and trigger an alert. He has also been instrumental in the introduction last September of an “opt-in” clause that students can sign to circumvent data protection laws and enable a named family member or friend to be contacted if the university has significant concerns about their physical or mental health; 94% of students opted in.
A spokesman for the University of Bristol said it was fully committed to assisting the coroner’s investigation and ensuring that any lessons learned were built into its support.
“At the heart of this is a student who has tragically died, her family, and members of our community who continue to be deeply affected by this loss. Our thoughts remain with Natasha’s family and friends. The evidence submitted in advance of the pre-inquest review shows that every effort was made to assist and support Natasha, both from within her school of physics and by the university’s pastoral support services,” the spokesman said.
But Margaret and Robert say they were aware that their daughter had been experiencing anxiety and low mood but thought she was under the care of professionals. “We want a full investigation into what happened with the findings used to make it safer for students in future.”
Further information, including progress updates, can be found on the Abraharts’ fundraising page
In the UK, Samaritans can be contacted on 116123 or email jo@samaritans.org. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international suicide helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org.
