03 March 2023 , 11:35
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A 'kind and 'gentle' trans woman took a fatal overdose after waiting nearly five years for an appointment at a gender identity clinic, an inquest heard.
The "renaissance woman" artist and activist - Sophie Williams', 28, co-founded hardship fund WeExist - died after an overdose in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
She died only two days after she was told that the years she had spent waiting would not be accounted for by the Gender Identity Clinic (GIC) in London.
Sophie was "devastated" and "raging" by the news that the GIC in Tavistock would not account for the time.
She was previously diagnosed with psychosis and an emotionally unstable personality disorder, MyLondon reports.
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Sophie moved to Belfast and couldn't get access to the care she needed (Getty Images)Assistant Coroner John Taylor concluded that Sophie was not capable of forming the intention to take her own life when she took the overdose.
As she moved from Tottenham to Belfast in July 2020, Sophie was experiencing dissociative episodes in which she had taken overdoses and resorted to self-harm.
Mr Taylor said that Sophie was anxious about the Barnet, Enfield and Haringey Mental Health Trust (BEH) and its failure to provide her with care. Dissociative states like the ones Sophie was experiencing could be caused by stress.
One BEH therapist is reported to have misgendered her and asked her "when she decided to be trans".
Mr Taylor called on the BEH, NHS England, and GICs to improve their care of trans people.
Friend Toby Attrill said he hopes for change so other trans people aren't stuck on "seemingly endless waiting lists to access life-saving care".
Toby said of his friend: "She was kind, gentle and generous and had a deep will to survive. She wanted desperately to engage with any treatment offered to her. Sophie was failed by the institutions which were meant to provide care for her and which were meant to keep her alive."
Sophie Naftalin, a solicitor representing Rupi Bond, said: "Sophie was failed by a mental health system that attributed her very real symptoms of psychosis and dissociation – and risk of self-harm in that context - to personality disorder therefore never meaningfully addressing the ever-present risk to her life.
"The clinical care that Sophie received was also hampered by a lack of understanding by clinicians of the specific challenges that she faced as a trans woman waiting for a first appointment. The Coroner has identified that without change, other lives are at risk."
The Samaritans is available 24/7 if you need to talk. You can contact them for free by calling 116 123, email [email protected] or head to the website to find your nearest branch. You matter.
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