Four hours after I’d found my wonderful boy, Simon, hanging from the noose he’d made in the loft, the police and ambulance people quietly laid his body on the lounge floor, zipped up in a black bag. I needed to see him. I needed to hug him again before they took him away from me.

It’s only now, days later, that I’ve been able to think about why he would kill himself and I get more and more angry about the work colleagues who bullied him into depression and the health professionals who let him down when he most needed help.

Simon was a loving, bright and handsome 27-year-old. A Law graduate with a mother who adored him, a sister, Katie, who worshipped him, and an army of good friends.

But he’d hung himself, on Friday, July 13, 2007, because – he told us – he’d never recovered from the job from hell at a merchant bank’s London HQ.

Simon Ozols started working for them in February 2006. It was his third job after graduating from Exeter University. He was looking forward to it – working as a Risk Analyst in a big, global company. But within months he’d walked out of the job, a shattered wreck.

Before moving to the bank, he’d worked for almost three years at another big London firm and loved it. He had done well there and made good friends, one of which, Richard, was among those begging him to walk out of his job at the bank.

But Simon was ambitious and he was terrified that walking out would hamper his future career prospects. He was on a six-month probationary period and convinced they would axe him.

At first, working under his boss Hayley, he was okay if unhappy with the culture of criticism at the bank. He told me one of his predecessors had had a breakdown and left. But things escalated when he was given a new boss and found himself in a classic workplace bullying situation of being piled up with work and then having projects suddenly taken off him.

Another manager described his work in an email as “fucking shit” and once his new boss suggested Simon fancied someone at the office. Simon was gay.

Simon was hard-working and bright, he wanted to do well but he didn’t know how to deal with the doubts, the snide comments and the workload.

He became wrapped up in what was said and what he thought was implied. No one incident might have seemed a big deal but added together, over months of bullying and harassment, they made him ill. Simon believed some of the sniping was aimed at his sexuality.

He tried talking to managers he trusted about his problems with his boss, but nothing was done. No one took him seriously and that added to his self-doubt.

Simon wasn’t some over-sensitive wimp. He was a confident, intelligent young man who enjoyed a laugh and wanted to get on in life. He was the best son a mother could have – thoughtful and loving. He once came to visit for my birthday and pretended he had to leave, only to knock on the door minutes later and take me to a surprise dinner.

But Simon couldn’t cope with the workplace bullying and the bank did nothing to help. They had a duty of care towards Simon and, as he became increasingly depressed and ill, they should have acted on that.

In July 2006, Simon went on holiday to Brazil with a friend. But he was depressed about the idea of returning to the bank. From then on, things got progressively worse for him and, by the autumn, he was ringing me several times a night to talk about what was happening. The bank consumed his thinking.

At the end of November 2006, Simon finally took the advice of his friends and family and walked out of the job at the bank. He had asked me to come and see him at his London flat and, when I got there, I was so shocked by the change in him that I made him pack his bags and come home with me back to Tutbury.

I gave up my own job to look after him and, in the eight months of heartache that followed, he tried to kill himself four times.

In a suicide note he wrote in April 2007, he said: “I feel low and I feel worthless. I have never recovered from working at the Bank with all the pressures and hassle. The worst mistake I ever made was working there.”

We paid for private psychiatric help for him because he couldn’t get the support he needed from the NHS in Burton-on-Trent, but the counselling seemed to make him worse. And when his private counsellor went on holiday, Simon’s family doctor refused to see him, even though I’d asked her for help.

We hid anything that we thought he might use to harm himself. I would get up with him in the middle of the night because he couldn’t sleep and sit with him until dawn as he replayed conversations at the Bank.

In February this year, his friends made him a beautiful book of messages and photographs to remind him of the great times they’d had together. They wrote begging him to accept hospital treatment for his depression. But Simon always refused to go into hospital, he was terrified of the idea.

Gradually though, he seemed to get better. He started a new job in May at a local company and had been working voluntarily at a local farm – enjoying cycling through the countryside. I felt relaxed enough to go back to work myself.

On Thursday, July 12, I came home from work as usual and he greeted me with a bouncy “Hello you!”. We went for a walk around the village and sat on a bench, eating chipshop chips out of newspaper and chatting. We had a glass of rioja at the Dog and Partridge and went home. Everything seemed fine – until I noticed rope marks on his neck.

At that point I knew I had to get him help straightaway. I called the emergency doctor who called a paramedic, Dave, who assessed Simon as Grade 6 – at serious risk – and persuaded him to go with him to Burton hospital.

At A&E, Simon fell asleep, my arm around him, while we waited to be seen. I told the nurse about Simon’s history and his suicide attempts, and how worried I was. I said I couldn’t cope any longer. She told me Simon couldn’t be sectioned because he was coherent and told me I should just tell him move out and “go get a place of his own.” I was shocked at how uncaring she was.

We saw a doctor then, who spoke with Simon and also told me they couldn’t Section him. I asked if he’d seen the rope marks on Simon’s neck and he said he had but said Simon still had to go home, take his meds and turn up for a pre-arranged counselling session the next week. The doctor, like the nurse, just seemed to have no idea how to deal with Simon.

The next morning, I took Simon his tablets and a drink as usual and left for work. I spoke to him on the phone after I got to work and my mum tried calling him later, but there was no reply. I left work early, and got home just before 3pm.

The house was silent. Simon’s boots were still near the door so I knew he hadn’t been out. There was no answer when I called to him. I opened the door to the staircase and looked up. Simon’s body was silhouetted against the light, hanging from rope he’d bought himself secretly. I thought: “This isn’t happening, this is a nightmare” and called the police.

They asked me to try and cut Simon down but he was too heavy. I clung to him, trying to lift him so the rope wouldn’t cut into his neck. But I knew he was dead and had been for hours. He was cold, still dressed in his sleeping clothes.

It was 7pm before the police and paramedics finally left, taking Simon with them in the body bag. I can’t thank them enough for their support in those nightmare hours. The only positive thing that’s come out of Simon’s death is the wonderful people I’ve met since.

But I’ve lost my son and my best friend. I’ve lost the boy I adored because people at the firm he worked for made his life a misery and the company did nothing to stop it. I’ve lost my lovely son because a nurse and doctor sent him home when they should have kept him in hospital.

And those are the battles I’ve promised to fight for him now.