A health chief has apologised to the family of a young mental health patient who killed herself after being discharged from a psychiatric unit.

Holly Elizabeth Greenway from Cwmfelinboeth, near Whitland, was 21 when she died on April 23 last year. She was found dead in a barn at the family home.

An inquest in Milford Haven on Thursday heard that the former pupil of Whitland’s Ysgol Dyffryn Taf had been suffering mental health issues since leaving school and had been a patient at Prince Philip Hospital’s psychiatric unit in Llanelli on a number of occasions.

Holly’s latest discharge was despite her mother raising her worries about her daughter’s mental state and amid concerns that she had said she wanted to die.

Mrs Greenway told the inquest: “We thought that Holly was possibly schizophrenic, but she never had a diagnosis. She kept being sent back to me.

“I had no diagnosis and no expertise. I was just her mum trying to care for her the best I could.

“I would dearly have loved more information about how I could have helped her or what we could have done. I feel an accurate diagnosis would have very much been part of that.”

Janet Griffiths from the Hywel Dda University Health Board said there had been “communications issues” identified since Holly’s death.

Coroner Mark Layton said: “It is clear that Holly had long-standing acute mental illness and I believe she has taken deliberate steps to end her life with the intention of so doing.

“A thorough root causes analysis investigation concluded by the health board said lessons will be learned from this very sad and tragic death.”

Speaking after Thursday’s inquest, Dr Warren Lloyd, Associate Medical Director for Mental Health & Learning Disabilities Services at Hywel Dda University Health Board, said: “We would like to offer our sincere condolences to Holly’s family at this difficult time.

“Our internal investigation found that there were important lessons to be learned in respect of some of the aspects of Holly’s care and treatment for her mental illness, and we apologise to her family for this.

“We have made a number of changes to improve communication between service areas and we hope that these changes will avoid any similar circumstance in the future.”