A former PhD student with severe mental health problems died after turning herself into a human fireball, an inquest heard yesterday.

Deborah Burbridge, 29, poured a bottle of white spirit over her clothes and ignited herself in front of her shocked flatmate.

Paramedics raced to the scene in Stoneham Road, Hove, and she was rushed to hospital but died five days later.

Miss Burbridge, who studied at Sussex University, had been forced to abandon her studies in 1997 after her mental health deteriorated.

In May last year she split from her boyfriend and began harming herself. She was admitted to hospital 18 times in the six months before her death last December.

In a statement read to a hearing in Brighton, flatmate Johnathan Acott said the day before the fatal suicide he had stopped Miss Burbridge pouring white spirit on her clothes twice.

He said: "She came into the living room of the flat. She had a lighter in one hand and she started to flick the lighter against her clothing and set fire to herself.

"I filled a bottle with water and poured it over her, phoned 999. I then went downstairs with her into the garden."

She was rushed to hospital and later transferred to a burns unit in Haywards Heath where she died from cardio-respiratory failure.

Coroner Veronica Hamilton-Deeley recorded a verdict of suicide.