Collection Tragedies Manic-Depressive Suicide

 

 

 

 

We found them! We found them! There was great excitement in the police car as the news broke through the radio.

“Are they all right?” Mr. Tanner shouted from the back of the police car.

“Just checking. They are not moving….. Yes there is a pulse. Yes, older girl too. … mmmm mother. Yes! They are all alive. We are getting them on the helicopter.”

The high drama occurred on a Sussex beauty spot that is riddled with legend and stories of ghosts and the devil.

Chanctonbury Ring  was a truly man-made landmark.  In 1760, a crown of beech trees were planted on top by a young man named Charles Goring, who lived to eighty five and saw his trees grow to maturity.

Unfortunately it is also a spot where legend has it that you can trade your soul with the devil.  Mr Tanner was a very successful businessman who ran a number of very successful stores in the south of England. I was called to see his eldest daughter Tara following a massive overdose of painkillers. She survived because she took Aspirin instead of Paracetamol. There was perhaps some advantage in not being streetwise, namely not knowing which drug to take.   Or perhaps she did not really want to die.  It was not easy to tell after the event, as there is always an emotional rebound after an act like that.  The lack of a suicide note was a positive indication and in truth, young people often want to draw attention to something going terribly wrong by attempting suicide.

I realised straight away that this was different to the kind of overdoses that we saw two or three times a week on the wards. She had not been involved in drugs, alcohol or boyfriends. She was not really worried about her exams. She was not at the top but within the top few percentages. No. She said it was not her exams that worried her.

But she would not tell me what her fears were.

The meeting with both parents did not throw any light on the situation.

It was one of those meetings where you found yourself not being able to get anywhere inside the family.  Everybody was well spoken, courteous and indeed unemotional.  Mother was extremely pleasant and told her daughter that she would take her and the rest of the family on a Caribbean cruise after the exams.  Tara was quite happy to stay on at the hospital despite mother’s request for her to be discharged.

After the meeting, one of the nurses whispered to me that she knew the mother as she had seen her before on the adult ward when she worked nights there.  Our nurses often worked nights or weekends in order to earn extra money.  She went on to tell me that she in fact tried to jump onto the rail track a little while back but was somehow stopped.  She also told me that the father was a very successful and wealthy man.  She wondered why Tara was not in a private hospital.

I arranged to see father.  In a one-to-one situation, he was a good deal more lucid and forthcoming.

Tara’s mother came from a wealthy family and her own father was extremely successful.  She was very pretty when he married her, although recently she had put on quite a bit of weight. She had a rather tragic family history.  Her grandmother was in and out of a private psychiatric hospital where she eventually hanged herself.  Her mother was diagnosed with manic-depressive disorder and killed herself by jumping onto a railway track.  He felt that neither had the best treatment from the private hospitals.

His wife’s first breakdown was shortly after the second daughter’s birth.  There was only a year’s difference between the girls.  She did get into a short funny phase after Tara’s birth but she became pregnant again and the pregnancy seemed to settle her.  He said it was not the blues but that she was more manic.  She spent a lot of money on redecorating the whole house, decided she did not like the results and started all over again.  Then she stopped sleeping at night. He realised that something was wrong and went to the doctor.  She was admitted but was well after she was put on Lithium.  She did well for quite a while and he thought his nightmares were at last over.  She decided she was well enough and decided to try for boys.  Unfortunately the next baby was still a girl, followed by another baby girl a year later.  She was very upset and stopped her medication.  Not long after that she vanished from home and was seen to be behaving strangely at the local railway station.  She had seldom used the trains and when questioned by the railway police could not give a good answer.  She was brought home and he took her to the hospital where she confessed that she was going to kill herself.  She was put on some new medication that had just come onto the market and that seemed to have worked well, except that made her put on a lot of weight.

They always had a nanny since the eldest was born and with the arrival of the younger girls they increased the staff to two nannies and a house-keeper.  He admitted he was wealthy but he did not want to use private healthcare because he felt his in-laws were badly treated.  He thought his wife had been well cared for in the last ten years or so.

I am a traditionalist who believes that Lithium is still the drug of choice for Manic-Depressive Disorder.  Tara’s mother was well for ten years.  She was taking only Lithium and no other medication.

Father was now extremely worried that Tara either had the same condition or was heading that way.  He said he would have no problem with any treatment that I cared to recommend. He also told me that both his older daughters had phenomenal mood swings at the best of times and if they wanted something done it had to be done “now”.  He always thought that they were perhaps a bit spoiled and did not think much of it.  They were both like their mother.  He said he only mentioned to his wife that perhaps they could take the family on a Caribbean cruise and the next day she booked the cruise.  Now he was wondering whether he might have to cancel it.

In the last three to four years it seemed to have become fashionable and even desirable for somebody to have Bipolar Disorder (Manic-Depressive Disorder).

There was a touch of glamour to Bipolar Disorder too, as so many historical figures and modern day celebrities had been diagnosed either contemporaneously or posthumously with Bipolar Disorder.  A “coming out” of sorts. Many parents now are no longer satisfied with ADHD. They want Bipolar. It is helpful to de-stigmatise mental illness, but not so helpful that so many want to “catch” it.          

These parents seem not to be aware that there is a serious downside to Bipolar Disorder: a very high mortality rate mainly from suicide.

Father however was right.  Based on family history and current presentation, there was little doubt in my mind that Tara also suffered from Bipolar Disorder.  Convincing the nursing staff was perhaps more difficult. Luckily the nurse that knew mother helped.  Otherwise Tara would just have been branded a very spoiled child – spoiled seventeen year old and why, with such privilege, should she want to take her own life?

I started her on Lithium and within four weeks she was quite a different person.  She had another four weeks before her first examination and we started trying her for some week-ends at home.

It was during one of these week-ends when mother asked Tara if she would go shopping with her.  Tara declined as she was busy with her studies.  Mother decided to take the younger two. For a long time father had not allowed mother to go out without one of the nannies.  Somehow they were busy with other things and Tara was not really aware of the rule.  Mother put the little ones in her new SUV.

When father came home, he threw a fit.  Mother had been gone for three hours and was not answering her mobile.  Tara told me that she realised later when mother said goodbye to her it was like a final farewell.  She felt a bit strange but because of her exams she did not think twice about it.

They called the police and the Helicopter was summoned. Thanks to modern technology they were able to narrow the car down through the mobile phone signal transmission.

Mother had strapped the girls up, driven them up Chanctonbury Ring, attached a hose from the exhaust and put it through a narrow opening of one of the windows and left the car running.  She left a suicide note saying she was a burden and caused Tara to be ill with her own Bipolar. Worst, she could not give her husband his heir.  She took some gin and fell asleep at the back with the girls, who had probably been given drinks that were laced with gin as well.

Thank goodness for catalytic converters and mobile phones – they did not come to much harm.

Unfortunately, mother had to be admitted compulsorily to a secure mental hospital and it was likely she would be there for a long time. The cruise had to be cancelled.

Tara’s younger sister then took an overdose and she too was treated as a Bipolar Disorder patient. Tara managed to get the grades to get to the university she want.

I saw mother once walking in the garden of the secure wing of the hospital.  She thanked me for all that I had done for her family.

What a tragedy.  What a family tragedy!