Leo’s story

At the end of November 2023, our beautiful son Leo, took his life. He was 16 years old. He had autism and struggled all his life. He attended mainstream schools but never felt like he fitted in. He was beautiful inside and out and highly intelligent, teaching himself fluent Russian and building his own computer at the age of 10. He also knew more than the computer science teacher and had a strong interest in politics. He had his whole life ahead of him.

The decline of his mental health began in primary school, and he was talking about ending his life by Year 6 in primary school. By the end of year 10 as GCSE’s approached the impact of school and previous lockdowns really became evident. Year 11 he stopped going to school altogether and did not leave his bedroom. He was under private practitioners for several months and was diagnosed with depression, body dysmorphia and gender dysphoria. He was also self-harming. Crisis point was reached by the end of September after Leo had attempted to return to sixth form and only lasted a week. Leo made an attempt to take his life by hanging.

At this point the private practitioners felt Leo was too high risk to remain at home under out-patient care leading them to refer Leo to CAMHS. A catalogue of failures began under CAMHS, followed by the crisis team. Not once did they give him the option to be sectioned, continually saying ‘autistic children do not do well in psychiatric units’. This resulted in us locking him in the house for his own safety.

Throughout his care under CAMHS and the crisis team there was lack of psychiatric and psychology input. He received no meaningful counselling in this period, and he was seen only once in person by the NHS psychiatrist. Numerous concerns were raised about Leo taking anti-psychotic medication irregularly and him not sleeping or eating but these were repeatedly dismissed. Leo did not even get good basic medical care. In short Leo’s ‘care’ under the NHS involved being seen in person at CAMHS or at home every few days with most of the visits lasting only a few minutes. We were pretty much abandoned, and Leo was left to get better on his own as he had completely withdrawn from family life and wouldn’t engage with us or his siblings.

Despite many obvious red flags including Leo escaping from home in the early hours of the morning a few days before his eventual death and him admitting to visiting suicide websites and forums, Leo’s risk of suicide was not taken seriously and was not properly assessed.

Despite our best efforts, Leo managed to get out in the early hours of 28th November by climbing out of his bedroom window. He walked to nearby train tracks and threw himself in front of a train. After two years of waiting for the inquest, the coroner concluded suicide, but also that there was a missed opportunity by CAMHS/SouthMaudsley to section him after he got out of the house 5 days previously which if they had taken action and conducted a risk assessment it probably would have prevented him from taking his life. The coroner also concluded that the influence of the suicide website ‘Sanction Suicide’ he was visiting contributed to his decision to take his own life.

We are left utterly devastated and heartbroken losing our amazing boy. Leo went to his death thinking everyone hated him and this just wasn’t true he was loved beyond words.