Tragic student was ‘warm and caring’
A‘WARM and caring’ student killed herself after taking poison she bought online.
Natasha Kasanda, 19, from Poynton, was an ‘extremely intelligent’ young woman, but was plagued by the ‘demons’ of mental health problems.
But at an inquest at Hull Coroner’s Court, coroner Professor Paul Marks said he was not satisfied with mental health services’ efforts to prevent Ms Kasanda from harming herself.
She was found dead in her University of Hull dorm room in Taylor Court weeks after starting her mechanical engineering degree in 2014.
After the hearing, her mum Tasheni MakumbiMonk, who lives in Poynton, paid tribute to her daughter.
She said: “Natie still makes me smile because she was one of the most kind and warm people you could have asked to meet. As a young girl, she used to get £15 a week for pocket money but she was so caring that she would donate most of that to Oxfam for children in Malawi.”
The inquest heard Ms Kasanda, of Park Lane, grew up a “happy child”, but began to suffer from depression and anxiety as a teenager after being bullied.
The Poynton High student was often withdrawn and would go on to express suicidal thoughts, resulting in two previous suicide attempts before she was found on the morning of November 7, 2014.
Mrs Makumbi-Monk said: “One time, I remember so well, she was so upset because she watched a video of innocent children dying and it really haunted her.
“She said to me, ‘ The world is full of bad things. Why is it the people that don’t want to die, get killed, and those that want to die, can’t?’ She was talking about herself, of course.”
Her mother and stepfather last saw her during a visit to an aquarium in Hull, when Ms Kasanda told her parents of how the actions of socalled Islamic State had deeply upset her.
Ms Kasanda had been seeing mental health psychiatrists and counsellors, but those sessions stopped when a counsellor thought she was not responding to treatment.
Professor Marks said he was not satisfied with mental health services’ procedures, and questioned Ms Kasanda’s release from treatment so soon after a suicide attempt. In a narrative conclusion he said Ms Kasanda’s cause of death was unexplained, but he was convinced she intended to take her own life.