A YOUNG woman who plunged to her death from a Southampton tower block took her own life when the balance of her mind was disturbed, a coroner ruled today.

Victoria Nye, 22, died last year after falling more than 100ft from the balcony of her 13th floor flat in Dumbleton Towers, Thornhill, just hours after she was discharged from a mental health unit.

This morning Southampton coroner Keith Wiseman said the inquest into her death had been "as troubling and concerning as any I have had the responsibility for dealing with over the best part of 20 years".

He added: "The image of her father Graham Nye frantically trying to tell whoever would listen over a period of some 24 hours that his daughter would take her own life if released from hospital at that stage, and even accurately forecasting the method that she would do so, is a graphic and distressing one.

"He was of course reassured on several occasions that there was no likelihood of her discharge, so when he found out that discharge had taken place and in the middle of the following night what he feared had actually happened, one can understand how difficult that must be to live with."

Mr Nye had told Southampton Coroners' Court how he feared for his daughter's life when she was discharged from the Department of Psychiatry at the Royal South Hants Hospital in Southampton on March 3, 2010.

He said she was upset when she called him to tell him the consultant had instructed she should be discharged.

But the hospital consultant, psychiatrist Dr Anders Ekelund, told the inquest he had not wanted to discharge her but he had no grounds to detain her because she was there voluntarily. He said Miss Nye did not want to stay on the ward telling him she felt "claustrophobic".

Miss Nye, who had a history of mental illness and alcohol and substance abuse, was found dead the next morning.