Bereavement due to suicide

I stayed at home for the first few days. And when I could see obviously she wasn’t going to be found soon and they were … they were stepping up a lot of the media, the police officer dealing with my case advised me, you know, that if I could move away for a short while and they would keep in touch. And so that was what I did. I did find that difficult because I actually wanted to be at home.

But as I say I went to my brother’s for a week. And just sort of ... you know, you’re just in a complete and utter daze, you just get through each day really.

Can you say a little bit about the involvement of the media.

Yes. On the whole I was fortunate that the police officer that dealt with it was very  protective of me. And so he would keep the media at bay as much as he could and such like. The only negative experience I had was at the coroner’s court and I hadn’t really anticipated how intrusive that might be. And the particular person who was you know covering that day in the coroner’s court just wouldn’t leave me alone and I just said, you know, I just didn’t want … I didn’t want to talk about it to the media. And actually I think in retrospect it would’ve been better just to say something, because they did an inside page and made a great big issue of it with … you know with massive letters, you know big lettering that you’d normally put on the front page. And in fact one or two of my friends wrote to the paper and complained that it had been sensationalised. But I do think in part it was you know it was … it had … if I had been more cooperative … but I actually felt like that it wasn’t that I didn’t want to … it was that I couldn’t cope with it.

And that’s.

Very intrusive.

Yes very … in that case.

You said the policeman tried to shield you, I mean did you have people from the media come into the house trying to talk to you?

Yes. There was, you know, television crews came up and fortunately on the day the police rang me … I say the police office dealing with me and he said, “Look the media have got hold of this and they’re going to make a big issue of it “,because it was obvious this person wasn’t going to be found.  And a friend of mine came to pick me up.. … well she was actually here when the policeman rang and I said I think we’d better leave now … before they come. And actually we were very fortunate, they were at the end of the our road and they were stopping people as they turned into the road asking them what they knew. And as we came out there happened to be a queue and they just let us by. So the very person they wanted to see; I was fortunate that I was able to leave my home and the, the area … and was, you know, was not troubled.

It was awful to feel you were hounded out of your home though.

[Laughs] Yes. At the time it is, you know, now it seems like four years since it seems less intrusive. I think if I’d had to really go back and think about it closely yes it would come back. But I don’t do that, you know you have to move on. 

Did the media get hold of it because the police were asking for help to find your friend?

Yes of course. And you know you have to balance that.

You know that aspect of it and they were very supportive in that. The other thing that I recall is there was; they put pictures up everywhere. Look, you know

One of the newspapers wrote this article after Anna died about the suicide gene, that because their father had committed suicide. It was a tabloid, and wrote about it as if it … it was being said, did my girls have the suicide gene? And I never ever have said that. And I don’t believe in a suicide gene, totally. And it actually led to two mothers writing to me. They actually named my hospital where I worked and the department where I worked. And when I went to work … returned to work just a couple of months ago there were two letters from two different mums, really concerned about the newspaper report because their husbands had committed suicide years ago. And they were so worried about their child now and they were asking me, do you think my son will commit suicide?

We were hounded by one freelance journalist, hounded by him. And he, he played on my vulnerability, he played on my inability to make a decision and he actually got me to sign a contract. I was under the influence of sedatives at the time and he played on that. And it was for him to make money out of an article …. which fortunately another magazine came in and they didn’t ask me. They took it from one of the newspapers. I formed a very close relationship with one of the reporters and she was sympathetic, understanding. And I knew that the papers were going to write about them. So I invited this young reporter in and she was lovely. She was really lovely. And she’s phoned me and said, “Look, I’m going to send you the draft.” And it was in one of the national newspapers.

And she wrote a very lovely article about them. And then she said that a magazine was interested and would I agree? And I said okay. And she said that you know … and so a magazine wrote about the girls. I think the speculation of another newspaper who wrote about the suicide gene, I think that was so wrong. So wrong for them to alarm people.

I was thinking perhaps I’ll write a little piece for the local paper so her friends know. Alex was away at the time and I was feeling quite low, and I began to write, and once I’d started I couldn’t stop, and I thought this is my opportunity to write my tribute to her, and also to explain about manic depression. Because so few people know. What I didn’t mention was that at her funeral my sister, who’s a doctor, my older sister had said before the funeral, she said, “I would like to speak about Alice and manic depression, at the funeral, and about our mother.” And I said, “I think that’s a wonderful idea,” and [my elder boy] said, “I think that’s a fantastic idea because a lot of my friends they talk about people feeling manically depressed and they haven’t a clue what they’re talking about, whereas if somebody explained”, and so my sister got up and she talked about our mother, and what form her manic depression took, and how she had several times tried to take her life. And then she said, tragically Alice had inherited this genetic illness. It had been very helpful to a lot of people in the congregation, to help them to understand what had been wrong with Alice. And I felt I wanted to put this on paper too, so I wrote this long piece for the Guardian magazine.

It came out at the time of the book, and so there was Alice on the front of the Guardian. And they did it beautifully. I was so grateful to them. It was very important to me. I felt now I would never have to explain again. If people ask me about Alice, I could refer them to the piece.

[holds up pictures]

This is a sweet picture of Alice with me when she was little.

Ah, that’s lovely.

They carried the one beautifully, the one of the leaf. And then there’s pictures of me with my mother, and that one of the leaf you see they used. And people, several people have said that they’ve got it on their wall. And I was showered with letters. It was very gratifying because a lot of them were from people who suffered from manic depression themselves, and what was interesting to me was what a secret illness it is. Because if you have got it and you are coping, you are in work, then you don’t tell people you’ve got it because you don’t want to lose your job. You don’t want to in any way risk things not going right for you. And I had a lot of letters from, and e-mail correspondence with quite a number of people. I got a letter from a professor of psychiatry who said it should be obliged reading to all students of psychiatry because it explained the effect of manic depression on a family. I also got a letter, which was the most important one of all, from a man called Alan Ogilvie who’s a psychiatrist specialising in bipolar disorder. He said he felt that my article was the best thing he’d ever read about the effect of bipolar on a family, and he was just starting up this NGO charity to do research into bipolar disorder and to de-stigmatise it, and he wondered if I’d like to be involved. And so I’ve become very heavily involved with that and I’ve become a trustee and I have raised some money for them. He’s become a very good friend, and it’s been very important to me to feel that I can use my experience in this way, and I think he finds it a help.