Shocking before and after photos show impact of drugs on woman before she died | The Sun
SHOCKING pictures show the devastating impact drugs had on a woman before she tragically died.
Helen Stobbart, 51, battled for years with substance abuse and mental health issues before her death last May.
Mum Sue Charlesworth has described her shock after seeing her daughter rapidly deteriorate in a matter of months.
She even tried to get her daughter sectioned under the Mental Health Act, in a desperate attempt to save her life.
However, Helen failed to meet the criteria after having an assessment and died a month later.
Helen was brought up in Rawmarsh, South Yorkshire.
Read More on Drugs
4 kids hurt after driver ‘high on drugs’ smashed into cop car in wild chase
I don’t regret the drugs, I don’t regret the bankruptcies, says Kerry Katona
Her parents split when she was just five.
Sue recollected Helen telling her she had been given whisky at her dad’s house when she was just nine.
She later found out that Helen had been using her lunch money to buy lager while she attended secondary school.
Helen later worked as a shop assistant in Rotherham before moving abroad to work in Zante and Crete.
Most read in The Sun
Energy firm flies reps to Maldives resort as Brits struggle to afford heating
Rugby ace's alley sex act was with pal's MISSUS – as wife dumps him over clip
Stacey Solomon reveals baby daughter’s name after birth of fifth child
Nicola cops search caravan site yards from where mum's phone was found
Sue said her daughter had a “lovely personality” and someone who “would do anything for anyone” but added “that was part of what made her so vulnerable”
Because she was so trusting, people would take advantage.
She told YorkshireLive: "Throughout her life, she ended up in a lot of abusive relationships with men but was stuck with them.
"She'd be beaten up badly but would never say anything, it was always 'oh I fell' or something like that."
As her life started to unravel she became known to various services around Rotherham which were responsible for mental health and addiction.
Sue said she believed Helen had first started using cannabis when she was a teenager and moved onto taking harder drugs in her 20s.
At the end she was taking a lethal mix of heroin, crack cocaine and methadone.
Helen was admitted to Rotherham General Hospital with a suspected overdose on May 21 and died three days later.
The medical cause of death was given as asphyxiation due to a cocktail of drugs in her system.
Sue said she’d had a rocky relationship with her daughter over the years but she’d become increasingly concerned about Helen’s appearance in the months before she died.
Helen had a BMI of just 17.6 and a number of serious injuries when she was admitted to hospital.
An inquest held at Doncaster Coroners Court on Thursday heard from representatives from charity Care Grow Live, the NHS Rotherham Doncaster and South Humber crisis team and South Yorkshire Housing Association who had all been in contact with Helen during her final months.
DRUGS BATTLE
Helen had been living in a flat littered with uncapped needles, in a situation that had seen her cuckooed in the past.
She had requested the authorities move her out of the community.
Over the years she had been given a number of diagnoses regarding her mental health from borderline personality disorder to bipolar disorder.
Due to her mental health problems and her battle with drug addiction meant her cooperation with the services trying to give her support was patchy.
Sue believes that if her addiction and mental health issues had been treated as one – under what is known as “dual diagnosis” – she may have met the criteria to be taken into medical detention in April.
However, as things stood, she didn’t meet the threshold on her mental health alone and expressed no desire to be admitted herself.
Louise Slater, the area coroner, was satisfied the assessment from the multi-agency team did all it could within the scope of the criteria it had to work with.
She said agencies had gone “above and beyond” to try and engage Helen on several occasions.
Mrs Slater said: "I accept it must be incredibly difficult to see someone who you love so dearly deteriorate so much and Helen's mum did everything right to try and help her."
Helen’s death was ruled a drug-related death.
The medical cause of death was asphyxiation due to use of heroin, crack cocaine and methadone.
Despite that, though, Sue believes her death was preventable and detaining her would have saved her life.
Read More on The Sun
Job with £460k salary & FREE 4-bed house & no one wants to do it
I moved into a SKIP to save money on rent – it costs just £50 a month
She said it was “traumatic” for her to see the way Helen had become in her final days and it was clear to her that something needed to be done immediately.
Sue said: "I had the feeling straight away, you just knew looking at her that she was going to die. And she did."
Source: Read Full Article