inquest has heard.

And yesterday Coroner Arthur Hodgson warned parents and friends to take time listen to teenagers' problems after hearing that 18-year-old Andreia Da Silva repeatedly said she wanted to kill herself.

The inquest heard how Ms Da Silva, of Granaway Drive, Southampton, ran away from home on the evening of December 17 after a row with her mother.

Her badly decomposed body was found just a few hundred yards from her house a week later on Christmas Eve. A brown rope was tied around her neck and a post mortem examination showed she had died from asphyxia due to suspension from a rope within a day or two of her disappearance.

Lifelong friend Tina Lima, of Wellington Street, St. George's, who broke down as she gave evidence, said: "We became friends as she was in my class in primary school.

"She seemed fine to me as a young person but she would say `I'm going to kill myself one day, just you wait'. Afterward she would tell me that if she ever was to kill herself she would take an overdose of pills.'' Family friend Tyrone Burchall, of Slippery Hill, St. George's, was one of the last people to see Ms Da Silva alive when he visited her at her home the night she disappeared. In a statement read out at the inquest Mr. Burchall explained how Ms Da Silva had been arguing with a cousin when her mother arrived.

"They were arguing and then their mothers came home and she got a good telling off from her mother,'' Mr. Burchall said.

"This made Andreia cry and then her mother left. Andreia was screaming hysterically.'' The dead girl's father, Mario Silva, also explained how his daughter had become more rebellious as she got older.

"She was a happy child when she came to Bermuda,'' he said.

"But when she turned 16 I saw a change in her. She used to lock herself in her room and not want to come out. This happened because her mother wanted her to do some chores and she didn't want to.

"She used to leave the house without telling us where she was going. She became very disobedient.

"There were times when she was very happy and times when she was very sad.

I've no explanation as to why she did this.

WPc Meredith Brady, who headed the investigation into Ms Da Silva's disappearance and death, told the inquest that the teenager had been taking a prescription for acne which had side effects including depressive moods.

She also said how Police had seized a number of poems written by Ms. Da Silva just before she died in which "she mentioned that she was now gone''.

Returning a verdict of suicide, Mr. Hodgson said: "She came by her death in a manner that's consistent with hanging.

"There being no external signs of harm to the body I have come to the conclusion that the deceased took her own life.

"I would only add that, given the circumstances of this death, parents and friends of young folk should always take seriously their threats to take their own lives and when they talk of death.''