Brighton: Mother of Alice Litman says healthcare system failed her

Alice Litman, of Albion Hill in Brighton, was found dead by a cyclist at the bottom of cliffs in Roedean on May 26, 2022.

An inquest into the 20-year-old's death today at Sussex County Cricket Ground in Hove heard how she had been waiting for just under three years to be seen for gender affirming care at the Tavistock Gender Identity Clinic (GIC) at the time of her death.

In a written statement Alice’s mum Dr Caroline Litman, who worked as an NHS psychiatrist for 12 years, said she believed Alice “could have lived a happy healthy life had she not been failed by the healthcare system that should have supported her".

Dr Litman said she felt her daughter had not been understood or taken seriously by medical professionals.

She said during one GP appointment in 2018, which was made due to Alice’s increasing low mood, her doctor suggested she “go for a walk” or “play football”.

It was later that year that Alice told her sister Kate that she felt like a woman.

Read more: Young trans woman died after waiting 1,000 days for gender affirming care

After a suicide attempt in 2019 Alice was referred back to CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services), who had first seen Alice in 2017 for anxiety.

Alice started her journey to transition in August 2019, which gave her a “marked boost”.

But the long waits for puberty blockers and hormone treatment caused Alice’s mood to dip again and Dr Litman said the experience with CAMHS was “distressing”.

Alice Litman (Image: The Litman family)

“Alice felt strongly that she would feel better if she was progressing with her care,” Dr Litman said.

“She had moments of hope which were dashed by delays.”

She told the inquest that CAMHS failed to give Alice “adequate support” and “downplayed” her daughter’s level of risk despite another suicide attempt in December 2019.

In March 2020, a month after her 18th birthday, Alice was discharged from mental health services.

Dr Litman told the court the long delays in care from both private and NHS services made her feel like there was “no end in sight” and “helpless”.

She believed Alice’s death was “preventable had she had the proper support”.

In a pen portrait, written as if speaking to Alice on her 21st birthday, Dr Litman said Alice’s friends had described her as “bold and brave, yet soft, warm and kind, someone full of beauty and grace”.

She said Alice was “so loved” and “delighted in the world” but that she changed in her teens.

“I remember the despair as you began slipping away from me as you entered your teens,” she said.

“I couldn’t connect with you the way I had been able to do so easily in your early years.

“You became so withdrawn and inaccessible to me, and it was so difficult to see you in so much pain.

Alice's friends said she was full of beauty and grace (Image: The Litman family)

“And it was equally difficult to have my friends and professionals, minimise your experience, when I knew your experience was not a ‘normal’ teenage withdrawal, but something far more nuanced and other, even before we knew you were Alice.

“It was all so impossibly difficult, battling the system and it is only really since your death that I have truly come to understand how intolerable it was for you, to have your right to live freely in your gender so utterly denied to you.

“We long to hold you close. We should be making new memories, but instead, we do this; recounting old ones, from when you were still here. These little moments of your life buoy us up when we are sinking.

“I am no longer afraid of dying, as I can imagine it bringing me back to you again, which is all I really want. I love you so. We all do.”