More than 170,000 people go missing in Britain every year. What drives them to leave their friends and families – and what awaits them if they do come back?
itting at her dining room table in Hampshire, 60-year-old Karen Bone tells the story of her son’s disappearance. It was early March 2018 when Matt Bone, 26, left the family home after telling his parents he was going for a walk. “He came downstairs, took his front door key and walked out. We thought he’d gone to clear his head. Later that day we were due at my mum’s for her birthday celebration. He never came back.
Then came the disappearance in March 2018. Panic had ratcheted up when Matt hadn’t returned by the evening. After a local search, his parents formally reported him missing to the police. There were a few tenuous sightings from members of the public, then the trail went cold. For two years, the Bone family lived in limbo, waiting for any word of Matt’s whereabouts. It wasn’t until June 2020 that his remains were discovered by a farmer in a Worcestershire field, more than 100 miles away.
The charity found that 94% of those interviewed cited poor mental health as a cause, while two thirds said that the experience of being missing had led to a further decline whether through difficulties readapting to “regular” life or because of the impact of what they had experienced while away. Karen Bone says they’ll never know exactly what happened to Matt during his absence, or the precise nature of his mental distress in the years preceding it.
In 2016, her mother died after a decade of living with dementia. The two were exceptionally close. Caring for her mother, while juggling a demanding career and her own mental health, proved chaotic. “I was teaching subjects relating to dementia and mental capacity, so it all sort of morphed into one. I was living the theory and it was too much.” Blencowe lost her job in the same week her mother died; it felt like everything had been stripped away.
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