Cygnet Hospital Maidstone: Patient death was 'cry for help'

Emma Pring completed a degree course through her mental health struggles, the inquest heard

The mother of a woman who died while detained in a private mental health hospital said her death was "avoidable" and a "cry for help".

Emma Pring, 29, died in April 2021, eight months after being admitted to the Cygnet Hospital Maidstone.

An inquest jury heard she had mental health issues for many years and had been admitted to hospital repeatedly.

Her mother Caroline Sharp said she was "a ray of light through her own darkness to her family and friends".

Ms Sharp said her daughter, from Uckfield, East Sussex, was the survivor of two sexual assaults, once when she was 18 and again at 19.

Ms Pring had been asking for a Tier 4 Trauma Therapy placement "for a long time", as she felt it was "the only way she would come to terms with traumatic events of past".

'Turning point'

Ms Sharp described difficulties acquiring such a placement before the NHS Kent & Medway Clinical Commissioning Group agreed to fund her stay at Cygnet.

"I thought it would be a turning point in her life," Ms Sharp told the inquest.

However, shortly afterwards Ms Pring told her she "hated it - nobody liked her, she was in her room all the time alone".

In March 2021 Ms Pring began exposure therapy to address her previous trauma, but later phoned her mother saying she "couldn't cope".

Ms Pring began to self-harm and on one occasion was taken to A&E, but Ms Sharp was not informed, the inquest heard.

Ms Sharp said she wanted the inquest to answer if the risk assessment was correct, and whether keeping Ms Pring on 15 minute observations was appropriate when she was self-harming.

'Making plans'

She also questioned if exposure therapy should have been stopped when the self-harming began.

"Emma was making plans for the future - she asked me to do her shopping for her, she was looking forward to coming home and seeing her friends and family.

"I'm deeply concerned this was a cry for help, and her death was avoidable," Ms Sharp added.

The inquest continues.

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