“I’ve been having suicidal thoughts - I need help.”
An email with these harrowing words was sent from Natasha Abrahart’s account to staff at the University of Bristol, two months before the 20-year-old took her own life on 30 April 2018.
Five years later, her parents Maggie and Bob Abrahart are still fighting for justice for their daughter, with the hope of saving other students from the same fate.
Alongside the families of other young people who have tragically died, the couple set up the campaign groups The Lived Experience for Action Right Now (LEARN) Network and #ForThe100 calling for change.
The groups’ petition calling for universities to be legally obliged to care about their students - giving them the same rights to protection from harm that workers have - closed in March with 128,292 signatures and last week it was debated in Parliament.
According to the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics, 319 university students died by suicide between the academic years of 2016/17 to 2019/20.
