Vegan diet may have driven UK student to kill herself, inquest finds

Owen had followed a vegan diet from 2016 ‘stemming from her environmental concerns’.

Trigger warning: this article refers to suicide and self-harm.

Georgina Owen, aged 21, had followed a vegan diet since 2016, “stemming from her environmental concerns”, an inquest found.

In August 2019, the family of the “very bright and able” geography student at Swansea University in Wales noted she had not been taking her vitamin B12 supplements for at least six months, a coroner heard.

Owen said she had “forgotten” to take them, but mentioned she bought an “organic” B12 supplement from Canada, which she would take at a dosage of 1mg once per day.

Elizabeth Gray, a coroner, said: “Miss Owen’s family report that Miss Owen had demonstrated unusual erratic behaviour in the period leading up to her death, and they provided diaries written by Miss Owen which they suggest demonstrates her erratic behaviour and a deterioration in her mental health in the immediate period before her death.

“Miss Owen’s family reported that in the recent period before her death she had been dwelling on the state of the world and her place in it; Miss Owen was meditating frequently, and that she had reported to her family a recent meditation event where she had experienced an out-of-body experience which she had found to be very distressing.”

The family arranged for her to seek psychological support for what they and Miss Owen, of Saffron Walden, Essex, recognised at the time as anxiety, the coroner added.

‘Vibrant and well-liked’

Described by Swansea University as a “vibrant” student who was “well-liked by her peers and lecturers”, Miss Owen was expected to return to the university on September 19, 2019, with plans to go surfing over the weekend.

But later that same day, Miss Owen was taken to Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge after being found at her home with severe injuries after attempting to kill herself. She died two days later.

“Miss Owen had followed a vegan diet from 2016 stemming from her environmental concerns,” Gray said. “Investigations were carried out to determine whether Miss Owen may have had a vitamin B12 deficiency as a result of her vegan diet and whether, if that was the case, a vitamin B12 deficiency could have caused her to have psychiatric manifestations in the period before her death.”

Her blood tests, analysed by three experts, were found to be “consistent with vitamin B12 deficiency” and that “this likely resulted from Miss Owen’s vegan diet”, the coroner added.

Miss Owen had left a final note providing evidence of a possible mental illness, the coroner said.

An expert report “concludes that Miss Owen’s vague signs of cognitive impairment, anxiety, difficulty with simple decision-making and fatigue as described by her family in the period before her death suggest a gradually developing psychiatric disorder culminating in the delusional beliefs expressed in Miss Owen’s final letter”, the coroner said.

Recording a narrative verdict, Gray concluded that Miss Owen died “whilst on the balance of probabilities suffering delusional beliefs brought about by a vitamin B12 deficiency developed as a direct result of her vegan diet”.

Suicide and depression

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