Teenage girl who grew obsessed with achieving 'perfect' figure killed herself

Hannah Carpenter had taken thousands of pictures of herself and captioned them criticising the way she looked

Hannah Carpenter was found dead near her home in Redruth, Cornwall (Facebook/Hannah Carpenter)

A talented teenage girl killed herself after she grew obsessed with achieving the "perfect" body.

Hannah Carpenter, 18, was found dead in woods close to her home in Redruth, Cornwall, an inquest heard.

She suffered from eating disorders and had taken thousands of pictures of her own body, criticising her figure in captions to the images.

Police found the images on her phone.

Following the inquest in Truro, David Carpenter, her father, said he believed she had been trying to achieve the kind of celebrity figure featured in magazines and online.

"It is all about the body image now and striving for something that is not possible. The pressure of it all became too much for her," he said, according to a report from the Exeter Express and Echo.

Mr Carpenter told the inquest that his daughter "had a good job, a loving boyfriend and looked stunning, but she thought she was fat and talentless".

Luke Whitaker, Ms Carpenter's boyfriend, who worked with her at TK Maxx in Truro, said: "She was just naturally brilliant at everything she turned her hand to. But she couldn’t see it.

"She always used the past tense to me about her eating disorder. We had no idea it had got that bad again."

Coroner Barry Van den Berg ruled that Ms Carpenter had killed herself.

"Parents never expect to lose a child - it is just wrong," he said.

"Anybody who has heard your heartbreaking story about your beautiful daughter would wish the greatest sympathy to you all."