The mother of a former Blaenau Ffestiniog woman who tragically took her own life has spoken about the heartbreak of losing a child to suicide and the need to improve the support available to the families left behind.

Alice Minnigin would have turned 33 on 26 May. Instead of celebrating in the company of friends and family, her mum, Nina Roberts, and brother Luke scattered her ashes and held a fireworks display above the Moelwyn mountains of her home community of Blaenau Ffestiniog.

It was the first birthday that Nina celebrated without Alice, a former Ysgol Moelwyn pupil, who tragically took her own life on 7 August last year, on a day that changed her family forever.

While Nina says the signs were always there because of Alice’s difficult childhood, the news of her daughter’s death still hit her “like a car crash”.

“Alice had a difficult childhood and experienced a huge amount of sexual abuse from her father, who took his own life after he was charged,” she explained.

“She found it really difficult over the years but she was a survivor and she always seemed to come through.

“The signs were always there because of her history, but I genuinely thought she had got past it. She had got a place to study nursing, she’d been working full time in Bristol and she had a house and a mortgage.”

Nine months on, Nina, a mental health manager with Bangor-based charity Anheddau, says the raw pain of losing her daughter still hits her “like a sledgehammer” some days, and her life will never be the same again.

Nina is now working with Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board and other organisations to introduce a postvention pathway to support families bereaved by suicide.

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