A Tolworth woman with a debilitating multi-personality disorder is planning legal action against a local NHS trust, after it refused to pay for her specialist treatment.

Jane Cockerton, 38, has barely left her home in Chaffinch Close for four years and has daily seizures which often leave her unconscious for hours at a time.

An eating disorder has left her with painful red sores all over her body.

She suffers from dissociative identity disorder (DID), and has four personalities. Jane, 38, Tabi, 26, Ickle, who never gets any older than nine, and Mute, who only surfaces when she is extremely distressed.

Tabi has a fixation with fairies and has painted them all over the windows of her flat, one for every day she has gone without treatment.

“They have no idea how it has affected us,” she said. “We stopped living. We stopped talking to people on the phone and we stopped going out. They want us to stay here until we die, which will be sooner rather than later.”

She has been in battle with South West London and St George’s Mental Health NHS Trust (SWLSTG), asking for several years to be sent back to the Retreat mental health hospital in York, where she spent 18 months until 2004.

She was later sent to the Lilacs ward in Tolworth Hospital, where, she claimed, incidents happened that were so traumatic she vowed never to go back.

Despite begging to go back to the Retreat - the one place she feels safe - she has so far been refused.

At her most recent meeting with SWLSTG in May, she was told by doctors that she was suffering from a borderline personality disorder, something which contradicts previous diagnoses and requires less treatment than DID.

Miss Cockerton is due to hire a solicitor in the next few weeks to argue that the trust has been negligent in its care. She has the backing of MP Edward Davey, who has been writing letters to the trust on her behalf.

He said: “If the only way forward is to take a legal case that is what we’ll have to do.

“I’m extremely concerned that having paid for her treatment at the Retreat four years ago, the treatment since her discharge has had a major deterioration.”

Friend Phil Lockwood, who is acting as Miss Cockerton’s advocate in her battle for treatment, said: “There’s a few of us that are worried that if something’s not done in the next few months, Jane will be dead.

“We’re trying to get legal representation but it’s down to money. We need an assessment by a specialist solicitor to argue if we have a case to force treatment.

“If the barrister says we have at least a 50 per cent chance of winning, the insurance is likely to cover the costs.”

A trust spokesman could not justify why treatment was not being paid for because he could not comment on individual cases.