A psychiatric patient who threw herself beneath a train travelling at 80mph may have been desperately trying to contact her children.

Nicola Page, 39, failed to return after an outing agreed by doctors at the hospital where she was staying voluntarily, an inquest heard yesterday.

Instead she caught a train to Balcombe where she knew her sister Belinda Gibson was caring for her six-year-old son and five-year-old daughter.

But Mrs Page never made it to Mrs Gibson's home in Bramble Mead and mystery still surrounds the three hours between her leaving Edgeware General Hospital on July 27 and falling beneath the 15.47 Haywards Heath to Bedford train.

It was possible she had decided to travel to Sussex because she knew the children would be with her sister while her husband Mark was at work, said Mid Sussex coroner's officer Barry Markham.

Mrs Gibson said her sister suffered from depression and symptoms of psychosis.

She told the inquest: "She thought Mark was not going to visit her again. She thought the children weren't going to see her again.

"She thought that she was going to be put out with the rubbish. She was just extremely agitated and anxious."

The jury returned a verdict that Mrs Page took her life while the balance of her mind was disturbed.