A PATIENT at a psychiatric hospital who set fire to his room after downing a bottle of vodka has been jailed for two years.

Martin Ransom simply lay on his bed as 5ft flames surrounded him and choking smoke made it almost impossible for him to breathe.

Ransom's life was unravelling after splitting up with a girlfriend following a miscarriage and being snubbed by another ex.

His former partner stopped visiting him and cut off contact with their daughter, his lawyer told Teesside Crown Court yesterday.

Using an unsent letter he had written to his child, Ransom lit a fire in a waste paper bin some time after 2am on August 5.

An alarm alerted staff at Roseberry Park hospital in Middlesbrough, and they fought the blaze while Ransom just laid and watched.

Judge Deborah Sherwin told the 33-year-old, of Rosthwaite Avenue, Stockton: "What you did was dangerous in the extreme."

The court heard how Ransom admitted himself to the hospital as a volunteer in June following a series of relationship woes.

He was due to be released - and it would have been the birth-date of the miscarried child - on the day he started the blaze.

Prosecutor Paul Lee told the court that more than £1,200 damage was caused to the room, and other patients were safely evacuated.

Scott Taylor, mitigating, said Ransom lost his his relationship and supermarket job after having an affair with a colleague.

He described the fire as "a cry for help" and told Judge Sherwin: "He reached a clicking point when he was told he was to be discharged."

The judge told Ransom: "At the time of the offence, you were at a low ebb your life. You had a number of personal problems.

"You suffered a break-up of your relationship, you had list your job, you were depressed and you had admitted yourself to hospital.

"This was the night before you were due to be released from that hospital. Ukulele had drunk a lot of vodka, and it is the view of the psychiatrist that this offence would not have happened if you had not been drinking that day.

"What you went on to do was dangerous in the extreme. I accept at the time you probably only had thoughts of your own misery and what you were going to do to yourself, but the reality is anything that's lit has the potential to spread and a huge amount of damage to danger to other people."

Ransom admitted a charge of arson being reckless as to whether life was endangered at an earlier court hearing.