THE mum of a vulnerable young woman who died in a hospital emergency department has said her daughter did not want to kill herself, despite it being her fifteenth overdose.

Beth Shipsey, 21, of Warndon Villages, Worcester, overdosed on diet drug DNP (2,4 Dintrophernol) on February 15 last year, and was taken by an ambulance to Worcestershire Royal Hospital.

Geraint Williams, senior coroner at Worcestershire Coroner’s Court, having listened to all the evidence, has adjourned the inquest into Beth’s death until February 14, when he will give his verdict.

Carole Shipsey, 58, told the inquest on Monday (January 15) how her daughter, the youngest of four children, was “full of life” and that her overdoses were a “cry for help”.

At the time of her admission at WRH, Beth was on home leave from a psychiatric ward at Worcester’s Elgar Unit, having been diagnosed with an emotionally unstable personality disorder in January 2016.

She also had an eating disorder and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, having been raped on numerous occasions by her ex-boyfriend, Barry Finch.

Finch, 23, also of Worcester, was convicted of six rapes between August 2014 and January 2016, and jailed for six years in August 2016.

Fighting back tears, Carole told the court, regarding Beth’s 14 previous overdoses in the months leading up to her death, “I think it’s about understanding emotionally unstable personality disorder.

“Obviously, to take an overdose is a very serious thing but because it developed due to abuse over time, the overdoses were quite calculated and she always let people know what she had done.”

She said her previous overdoses had involved drugs like paracetamol or medication she had been prescribed regarding her mental health – which Carole said she then locked away.

She told the court of “one occasion which did involve the railways, but that we later discovered was part of a [suicide] pact with the boyfriend.”

“She wanted to die from the thoughts in her mind, not die from the world,” continued Carole.

“She wanted to end the flashbacks and trauma rather than permanently end her life. Definitely not her life.

“I know that’s maybe hard to understand.

“Like a computer, you want to shut it down. A cry for help. ‘Okay, I’m not dealing with this’.”

Carole said Beth did not receive any counselling for the trauma she had suffered but that “she often reassured me, she did not want to die, she made plans for the future”.

She told Mr Williams they were a very close family, with Beth’s older brother Tom, 25, also living at the family home in Wardon Villages.

Beth’s “love of animals extended far and beyond simply interest,” explained her mum.

“It became her mission to try and rescue whenever she could. One time we had 40 rabbits, of course, we had to neuter them all and then find them homes.”

Beth would also give animal welfare advice to people over Facebook groups, and had several pets of her own, including two dogs and a tarantula, said Carole.

“She was like a little girl in the sense she wasn’t interested in make up or boys, just animals and nature. Until she met her first boyfriend. The mental health problems started at that stage.”

Carole, who has two other children from a previous marriage, said from a young age Beth “did dance and like a lot of young girls became very self-conscious of her body”.

“She gave up dance because, the reason even at that stage, even with her being a petite girl, she thought she looked fat then [while in high school].

“Whenever you give up something like that, you lose contact with those friends.”

She said a new girl at her school “caused concern” for Beth and “bullying went on over social media”.

“She wasn’t into boys and make-up and some of her friends started to have that.

“She felt lonely, but she focused on animals. That’s how she met her boyfriend, who was lonely too, and they were entwined in being isolated, I suppose.”

Carole went on to explain that she had gone into Beth’s room to feed her pets towards the end of January last year, when she noticed a CD case with foreign writing on it.

“I opened up the package and saw some pills. They looked like antibiotic-type red and yellow pills.”

Carole said she messaged Beth, who was staying at the Elgar Unit at the time, asking her: “What are you doing with these pills?”

She had told her she had taken what she described as “herbal” pills “for a week or two but they made her feel ill, so she would not take them again and would get rid of them”.

“I was naïve,” admitted Carole. “I didn’t know what they were.”

The day before Beth overdosed, staff at the Elgar Unit told Carole and her husband Doug that they had confiscated red and yellow pills from Beth, which turned out to be DNP.

On the day of her death, Beth was on a half a day home leave from the unit.

Carole said Beth would usually spend her home leave with her dad, away from the family home because it was “quite triggering” being there because her “ex had spent time there”.

Instead she would be picked up by her dad and they would take her two dogs “for a long walk” – often in Kidderminster – before she was taken back to the ward.

Carole said the preceding week had been “very difficult”.

The previous Sunday, the family had had to make a statement to the police about a “stalking incident” and it was the “first Valentine’s Day without her ex-boyfriend”.

“She felt very stressed about that”.

On the day of the overdose, Carole, a qualified nurse and midwife, was teaching a resuscitation session at a community venue when, on her way home, Doug had told her over the phone to meet her at the hospital.

“Your heart sinks, because you think another overdose” but I didn’t think it would be different to any other occasion, that she would die that day,” she said.

Carole has accused emergency staff of complacency in not reading up on DNP and therefore failing to properly treat her daughter.