A WOMAN who thought robots were telling her to commit suicide hanged herself a week before her 21st birthday, an inquest was told.

Jade Charmaine Gedling was found by police officers at her flat in Richmond Road, Accrington, on September 23.

The inquest heard how Jade had been troubled by mental illness from the age of 16.

Giving evidence at Hyndburn Magistrates Court her mother, Michelle Newman, said that Jade had a morbid fascination with death.

She kept a diary in which she wrote about robots telling her to kill herself and composed poetry which her mother found to be "quite disturbing".

"It was all about death", Mrs Newman, of Windsor Road, Great Harwood, said.

In 1997 Jade told her mother she was depressed and was prescribed the anti-depressant drug Prozac. In 1998 she tried unsuccessfully to commit suicide.

The inquest was told how doctors said she was extremely distressed and that she had been cutting herself from the wrists upwards.

Mrs Newman added: "I asked her why she was cutting herself and she said it helped her to release her bad thoughts."

Later that year Jade was seen by a specialist who diagnosed her as suffering from paranoid chronic schizophrenia.

After treatment and a spell at Queen's Park Hospital in Blackburn, Jade was able to visit her mother on regular occasions, eventually staying for a few weeks at a time.

However, Jade regressed again and some time at the beginning of 2000 she tried hanging herself from a tree.

Coroner Michael Singleton, said: "Having heard the evidence in this matter I am quite satisfied that the appropriate conclusion to record is that Jade killed herself while the balance of her mind was disturbed."