A POPULAR singer and beloved daughter committed suicide because of mental health problems which started after her brother died when she was a teenager, an inquest has heard.

Emma Barker died after falling from a barrier outside The Oracle car park in Reading.

Reading Coroner's Court heard how the 27-year-old was diagnosed with bipolar disorder as a teenager, which was triggered after the death of her half-brother, who hanged himself when she was 13.

Father Ken Barker said that after she lost her brother to suicide and then her mother suddenly died in 2009, Miss Barker went on a “downward spiral.”

Mr Barker, who travelled from his home in France for the inquest, added that his daughter barely ever took her prescribed medicine because she felt it “robbed her of all the creativity she had, which was why she was reluctant to take it.”

The inquest heard how on June 6 at around 11pm a group of friends were walking into the town centre and saw Miss Barker standing on the outside of the barriers for The Oracle car park.

A statement from John Williams said they called up to her saying “Don't jump, we are coming up,” but Miss Barker didn't respond.

When they got to the right floor they couldn't find her and looked over the edge, where Miss Barker was lying on the ground.

Paramedics tried to revive her but pronounced her dead at the scene and a post-mortem examination revealed she suffered multiple injuries and the cause of death was a fracture to the skull and brain haemorrhage.

The inquest also heard how shortly before her death, Miss Barker had been to see police on June 4 to report harassment by a man she had been texting and said she was concerned he was going to come and live near her.

When police investigated the texts they said they were harmless and when they interviewed the man, he agreed to stop contacting her and said he “just thought they were friends.”

The inquest also heard how Miss Barker was a long-term drug user, admitting to her support workers that she took cannabis, cocaine, ketamine and legal highs in a medical report.

Her medical history revealed that she was a regular in-patient at psychiatric hospitals after suffering “manic episodes” and her last admission was to Prospect Park Hospital in Tilehurst between October 2012 and April 2013.

Miss Barker then moved to Focus House in Reading, a residential care home for people with mental illness, where she had support for eight hours a week.

A serious incident review after her death revealed she had once before tried to hang herself in 2013, but didn't speak of it to mental health workers for a year.

Miss Barker was known as a singer and guitarist who performed in venues like Welwyn Garden City and Cafe Iguana, and she also had a degree in English from the University of Reading.

Her father said she was “very talented” but agreed that the family had feared something like this may happen.

Tony Barker, her uncle, told the coroner that a few weeks before her death she had called everyone in the family to talk about how well she was doing and said she seemed “very positive.”

But her dad believed this could have been her way of stopping everyone worrying about her and said: “she might have been cleverer than we thought.”

Coroner Mr Bedford concluded that Miss Barker took her own life while suffering from complex mental health problems.