NHS investigation criticised over case of 27-year-old who died after having an eating disorder for half her life

A woman who had dreams of being an Olympic runner died after battling anorexia from her teenage years onwards, in what her father described as a “descent into hell”, an inquest has heard.

Emma Brown, 27, was found dead in her flat in Cambourne, near Cambridge, in the UK, by her mother on 22 August 2018.

An inquest into her death heard that police who attended her flat saw that her cupboards were full of confectionery, sugary and processed foods, and tomato ketchup.

Her father, Simon Brown, told a hearing in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, that she had been diagnosed with the eating disorder at 13. He described her “descent into hell” afterwards and said she developed the illness after being bullied at school.

A post-mortem examination recorded her medical cause of death as lung and heart disease, with anorexia and bulimia nervosa as contributory factors. The case was among five anorexia deaths of patients treated by NHS services in the east of England region between 2012 and 2018, within the Cambridge and Peterborough Foundation Trust.

Sean Horstead, the assistant coroner for Cambridgeshire, who is overseeing each of those five inquests, has said he had “made no finding or determination as to whether there is a definitive link”.

The inquest heard how Brown would run 15 miles a day to maintain her low weight. Her mother, Jay Edmunds-Grezio, said they tried to turn this “into a positive” but said she relapsed after she got a stress fracture from running too much.

Brown trained with Bedford Harriers running club under the guidance of Paula Radcliffe’s former coach Alex Stanton, and won an under-18 British cross-country championships title, her mother added. “In her mind she was heading for the Olympics, but she couldn’t control the amount she was running.”

Her father described multiple hospital admissions, saying his daughter would steal money, running into tens of thousands, to spend at restaurants in Cambridge and then make herself sick. She spent a period of time homeless, he said.

“This is an illness where the patient feared weight gain, she feared recovery, so fought against the help that was being offered,” he said. “Her intellect meant any form of capacity test put her way she passed with flying colours. She was able to voluntarily discharge.”

Brown was said to have been an A* student before her anorexia diagnosis. Her father said she turned her “tenacity and ferocity” against those trying to treat her. “It was almost a masterpiece in manipulating the system to avoid doing the thing it was trying to get her to do,” he said.

Her mother said: “She really didn’t want to die. She became accepting that that was what was going to happen.”

Horstead expressed his concern at the “paucity of the investigation” conducted by Cambridgeshire and Peterborough clinical commissioning group instead of a serious incident report.

He noted that there were no interviews with Brown’s parents or “key clinical figures”. The inquest heard this had been due to time constraints in compiling the report. The hearing is listed for eight days.

A separate inquest into the death of 24-year-old Maria Jakes, who died of multiple organ failure in September 2018, concluded last month that insufficient monitoring of her condition might have played a part in her death.

Separate inquests are due to be held for Amanda Bowles, 45, who died in September 2017, 18-year-old Madeline Wallace, who died in March 2018, and Averil Hart, 19, who died in December 2012.