A TROUBLED young woman who depicted her death in a series of depressing drawings committed suicide while she was on holiday with her boyfriend in Lithuania.

Rachel Perkins of Druce Way, Thatcham, told her mother of her dark thoughts a few weeks before she was found hanging from a tree in a playground in July.

The 21-year-old said her mood had been improving before heading to Vilnius for a post-exam break with her boyfriend, Edvin Jarosevic.

However, a statement from Edvin's mother Svetlana described how Rachel showed other members of the family drawings of 'a boy standing over a grave looking sad'.

Sharon Perkins explained: "She said to me five weeks before she died she was having really dark thoughts. I didn't ask her what they were, I just told her there are lots of positive ways of replacing them with nice thoughts.

"As far as I was concerned suicide was a long way off. I wish I had spoken to her about the dark thoughts.

The former Reading College student was found with cannabis in her system after she was discovered by Lithuanian police at around 6am on July 11.

Her boyfriend and his family spent hours searching for her after she vanished.

"The girlfriend of our other son stopped talking to her because she showed her a picture of a girl in a coffin and a boy standing over a grave looking sad she had drawn herself," Edvin's mother explained.

Rachel suffered from psychotic episodes in 2012 due to substance abuse and she was admitted to Prospect Park Hospital for two days.

Emma Jones, assistant coroner for Berkshire, added: "It could have been a cry for help, but it is clear she had planned to end her own life.

"It would have been a very quick death and the fact that she has gone to such trouble to do it concerns me. She had clearly given it a lot of thought.

"She had been offered help and refused. When someone makes a decision to do something like this there is nothing you could have done as a family."