THE death of Paul Gascoigne’s nephew from a drugs overdose was an accident, a coroner ruled.

Jay Lennon Gascoigne, previously known as Kerrigan, was found dead in his girlfriend’s Gateshead flat in April 2016, having suffered mental health issues from the age of 13.

Gateshead and South Tyneside Coroner Terence Carney, on the third day of the inquest in Hebburn, ruled that the 22-year-old took a cocktail of drugs despite repeated warnings from health professionals in his last months, but that his death was accidental.

The hearing was told how Mr Gascoigne suffered from obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) from childhood, with intrusive thoughts. He used drugs and alcohol and became dependent, sometimes buying off the internet. His mother Anna Kerrigan said in a statement to the hearing that he was self-medicating his mental health problems. Her evidence was that her son “seemed to fall between the crack of mental health and drug services”.

The coroner was told that mental health services needed him to be free from drugs to be able to diagnose his condition as an adult. But drug services required his ongoing mental health issues to be addressed in order to help him, the inquest was told. The coroner rejected that there were systemic failures which contributed to his death. He said Mr Gascoigne “presented with a complex medical profile”. He said: “I am not satisfied he deliberately intended to self-harm, I question whether he fully understood or appreciated, despite the number of times he was told, the real dangers that he faced.”

Mr Carney expressed his condolences, saying: “To lose a child at such a tender age, against a background of such intensive management care by the family, and particularly mum, must be heart-rending in the extreme.”