Fashion designer found dead at Hayling Island after long battle with mental health

Anna Wright, 37, was found hanged at her father’s holiday home in Sea Front on Hayling Island on August 15.

Her mother Rita said she had looked ‘really well’ the week before when they were celebrating Anna’s birthday.

Ms Wright, who had produced collections with Topshop India and worked for BBC World Service, had battled with several mental health issues, including anorexia, bulimia, anxiety, PTSD and depression, since the age of 12.

Father Martin Wright told Portsmouth Coroner’s Court: ‘Anna had been living in France with her boyfriend and she had slight issues. She decided to come back and I had accommodation she could stay in.

‘She told me a couple of days before she died she felt worthless. It didn’t flag up [in my head].

Martin said that when he had not heard from his daughter in three days, he ‘started to think the worst’.

The court was told by Rita that her daughter, who had worked in India, had to come home because she ‘stopped eating’ and couldn’t cope with ‘seeing the kids in sweatshops’.

After her last job in fashion, Anna did not work again but concentrated on her drawings that her mother hopes to exhibit at a museum in London.

Throughout her life, Anna had attended rehab for her known alcohol dependency, used mental health services and had a close relationship with her GP, who described her as ‘calm and stable’ when they spoke a couple of weeks before her death.

Anna’s mother Rita said when she saw her daughter on August 6 she seemed ‘relaxed’.

She said: ‘Anna looked really well. We had such a relaxed lunch time. I had no reason to think she was in a suicidal place.’

‘It was such a shock.’

The exact time of her death is unknown but she was last seen and heard from on August 12.

Coroner Jason Pegg said: ‘I do find that Anna took her own life and intended to do so.

‘She was a very talented and capable young lady who had her demons from complex mental health issues.’