A VET was found hanged on a building site four days after giving staff the slip at the Staffordshire detox centre treating him for depression and alcoholism.

Police launched a massive search for 43-year-old Steven Downes, combing the area with a helicopter equipped with thermal imaging cameras, sniffer dogs and scores of officers.

A passer-by found Mr Downes hanging from scaffolding at the former Queens Arms pub in Mayfield, near Ashbourne, on the Staffordshire-Derbyshire border, a few hundred yards from the centre where he was a patient.

Mr Downes was in Bursgrove House, run by the British Pharmaceutical Society for medical professionals such as doctors, dentists and vets who had addiction problems, an inquest in Cannock heard.

Andrew Haigh, coroner for Staffordshire South, said a post-mortem examination revealed that Mr Downes had died of hanging. Tests did not reveal any alcohol in his system and only therapeutic levels of a number of prescribed drugs.

Bursgrove House psychiatric nurse Mario Parlato looked after Mr Downes of Clifford Street, Appleby, after he checked in for a 35-day programme on April 22.

He was concerned to see on May 1 that Mr Downes's medication had been increased and that he was taking anti-depressants.

On May 5 he saw marks on Mr Downes's neck and the patient later told staff he had tried to hang himself from his bedroom window latch with a dressing gown cord.

Mr Downes had told him that his alcohol addiction began when he had lost his job.

"He told me that the alcohol was not a primary issue. He felt he was using it to quell the mental anguish that he had been suffering for the last 20 years," Mr Parlato said in a statement read at the hearing.

Mr Parlato checked on Mr Downes every 30 minutes after that, but at 5.15pm that day saw him in the hallway, when Mr Downes got into the lift, leaving Mr Parlato to negotiate 46 steps.

Mr Downes had disappeared by the time the nurse had run downstairs after him.

Det Sgt Darren Harding of Staffordshire police said a silent phone call was made to Mr Downes's wife from a telephone box in Mappleton at 11.25pm on May 6.

Mr Downes was found dead at the pub, which was being converted into flats, on May 9.

Mr Haigh said: "Clearly he was a troubled man." He recorded a verdict that Mr Downes killed himself.