Content warning: Leo’s references suicide, self-harm, mental health medication and distressing experiences with mental health staff. Please read with care.

Chris: Leo loved his gaming and coding. When left to his own devices, he would always do that. One game he liked had Russian kids playing online, too. He wanted to find out what they were saying, so he ended up becoming basically fluent in Russian. If he was interested in something, he'd go hyper-focused and get really into it. He built a computer at the age of 10. My happiest memories of Leo are going for walks in nature together. He’d tell me what he’d been learning in school or online.

Jo: He was our little tech expert. He was extremely affectionate and a kind soul. He was very loyal to his friends, even though he didn't feel like he had many of them. He liked the simple things in life. For his birthdays, all he wanted was to order a pizza. He was quite happy with that. He didn't want any fuss. He was very tactile and loved hugs.

On the flip side, he could be quite rigid in his thinking. He sometimes reacted in the moment, and it took him longer to process things. Unfortunately, he didn't get an autism diagnosis until he was 14, despite concerns being raised about this since the age of four. Leo struggled through primary school and kept trying to find a way to fit in. He was supported by the school and the teachers, but he felt excluded by his peers. By the end of year six, he began talking about killing himself.

There's a lot of stigma in school attached to being autistic. Many students aren’t mature enough to understand yet.

Jo: We picked a senior school for him in South East London with a special education needs space. On his first day in year seven, he walked into the special education space, and there was a huge window. His peers could see him from the playground. He told us, 'I'm never stepping in there again.' It was a massive oversight that the school did not frost that window to give students privacy and respect. There's a lot of stigma in school attached to being autistic. Many students aren’t mature enough to understand yet.

For the first two years of senior school, he would come home depressed and would talk about ending his life. He was bullied for being autistic and struggled to make friends. The school dealt with the overt bullying and helped Leo establish a friendship group. However, they couldn’t help with the bullying and ostracisation that went under the radar. Meanwhile, Leo became aware of not wanting to be a ‘snitch’.

We didn’t get much assistance from CAMHS. Instead, we found this lovely psychotherapist. She was gentle and understood autism, which helped him.

By year nine, Leo had settled in and was thriving. He’d made some friends and just picked up, which was great. Then COVID hit, and he was home. He enjoyed it at first, but he felt overwhelmed with remote learning. I remember one occasion where he couldn't cope, so he hid in the wardrobe. Lockdowns set a new pattern for irregular school attendance.

Chris: With the GCSE pressure mounting in Year 11, the school refusal began. Jo lost her mum to cancer that autumn, and she had been staying in Eastbourne to help care for her in her final few weeks.

One morning, I got the kids up and went to work. Shortly after, Jo received a phone call from school asking, 'Where's Leo? He hasn't come in.'

Jo: From there, it escalated. On a Monday, he started to think, 'I can't do a whole week.' The school refusal snowballed. His mental health declined. The school were very rigid. I went in for a meeting and the head of year said, 'We'll let him do half days, but he has to get in full-time soon.' I know there is immense pressure on schools from the Government to get pupils refusing school back into education, but it’s crucial to get to the root of why they are refusing. I replied, 'I'll get Leo in when I can, but you must meet us in the middle. If it's too much for him, his mental health comes first.'

Chris: On the first day of term in January, he wouldn't get out of bed. I said, 'You can't do this! You said you were going to go in!”' Trying to force him to go in culminated in him smashing a glass on the floor and saying, 'If you make me go to school, I'm going to stand on that.' I wasn’t going to call his bluff on that. He went back to bed and that was it.

Jo: He started self-harming. We had months of trying to find a psychiatrist. CAMHS weren't interested at that point. There was no support from his school. They wouldn't send any GCSE work home, advising that they weren’t allowed to. Eventually, we took him back to the kind psychotherapist and paid for private tutoring. He dropped everything but his key GCSE subjects.

Between the psychiatrist, the psychotherapist, and the private tutoring, he managed to sit six of his GCSEs. He achieved good grades, despite missing an entire year of studies. But all that time, he had been self-harming. Around this time, we found out Leo was beginning to question his gender. Though a lack of professional support meant he was never quite able to fully explore this.

Over the summer of that year, we asked Leo if he’d consider going to a new college for a fresh start, but he was adamant that he wanted to return to the sixth form at his school. But on the first day, another student's flippant, cruel remark made him realise people weren’t as mature in college as he’d hoped. He came home devastated. He completed the first week, but never went back after
that.

Jo: One day, the psychotherapist sat me down and said, 'Leo tried to take his life last night. We can't help him anymore. He is such high-risk. He needs to be institutionalised. I will do an urgent referral to CAMHS.'

At CAMHS, they downplayed his risk from high to medium. They didn't take his attempt on his life seriously, which was alarming, as neurodivergent people are much higher risk of suicide than their neurotypical peers. We were sent in circles between the different agencies. At one point, I remember someone asking Leo in front of me if he was suicidal, to which he said 'No'. They took that as proof that he wasn’t. But Leo would have never said 'Yes' to a question like that while I was present.

After an excruciating experience of waiting in A&E for hours, only to be sent home, he self-harmed all weekend. He gave up any hope of help from the NHS.

Leo was assigned a nurse practitioner, who was inappropriately jolly. He took an instant dislike to her, and the approach felt completely wrong for someone who was depressed – he needed someone to be gentle and understanding.

He was on an antipsychotic drug to help him sleep and an antidepressant. Neither helped. Leo would often refuse to take his anti-psychotic drug. His sleep patterns were erratic, but the psychiatrist didn’t seem to think this was a problem. He didn’t seem to know what dose of antidepressant Leo was taking. Nobody was checking his medication, and he was seen only once in person by the psychiatrist, and he never received psychotherapy.

Eventually, the mental health team didn't know what to do. He wouldn’t engage. He wouldn’t get out of bed. Leo was seen every few days at home by the crisis team, but often these visits lasted only a few minutes.

Jo: The day he died, he sent a Whatsapp message to four friends saying goodbye and thank you. They were the four people he was certain he could call friends. Throughout his life, he couldn’t tell friend from foe and was convinced everyone hated him. But this wasn’t true.

Chris: On the anniversary of his death, nine kids from his friendship group came to his grave. We all stayed down there for about two hours, reminiscing. It was hard for us, but lovely at the same time. They were all sharing stories about Leo, about how kind and amazing he was, and the clever things he did or said. Leo went to his grave thinking no one cared about him, which breaks our hearts.

Jo: It is not impossible to think outside the box and provide better support for neurodivergent people. It's not necessarily all about money; it's about awareness, creating safe and quiet spaces and taking pressure off the kids. There's no real accommodation for neurodivergent people, besides getting an extra 20 minutes at the end of the exam. I have spoken to the headmistress and the head of the trust about my recommendations for the school, so something like this doesn’t happen again. I'm still waiting for an invite to the classroom that they said they would turn into a nice, relaxed chill room for neurodivergent students to access between lessons. However, the school have taken positive steps in improving mental health provision.

Chris: The exam system needs more flexibility; students should sit exams when they are ready and should be allowed to pursue subjects that interest them. The one-size-fits-all approach means too many kids are made to feel like failures.

Jo: Some teachers went above and beyond to help Leo. They did care, but they were limited by the system. The system needs to be unpicked. We need to reach the Government and say, 'There's a huge amount of neurodivergent people in school. What can we implement to support them?' Because, otherwise, things won’t change.

Thank you to Jo and Chris for sharing Leo’s story. At Autistica, we know preventing suicide in autistic people is an urgent priority. Find out more about some of the suicide prevention projects we're involved in below.