Freud on a silver platter
The rich and their shrinks
It’s a typical Chelsea pad. There’s a marble entrance hall, sweeping staircase and a chef smashing lobsters in the kitchen. Yet this £7m (about R125m) double-fronted townhouse is inhabited not by a picture-perfect London family but a suicidal viscount. Or an anorexic supermodel. Or a hedge-funder with a cocaine addiction.
In this house, and 11 others like it across London, billionaires and royalty receive 24/7 bespoke, utterly discreet therapy by Addcounsel, Britain’s first mental health service for the ultra wealthy, which opened in January 2016. Each day they will be visited by the world’s leading psychiatrists and therapists, mindfulness coaches and nutritionists, and a “recovery manager” will join them while they enjoy Michelin-standard meals.
The treatment plan can cost as much as £80,000 a week, but given the 90% success rate the mega rich may concede that it’s worth it. “Traditional treatment centres are like hotels in comparison; they focus on occupancy, not outcome,” explains Paul Flynn, Addcounsel’s CEO, who has personal experience of addiction. “Here, we’re all about outcome.”
Though it may be a struggle to feel sympathetic towards Britain’s richest depressives, the reality is that money can bring with it a realm of agonies. “Inheritance can lead to a high level of dysfunction,” warns William Cash, founder of Spear’s magazine and chair of Addcounsel’s advisory board. “And if you don’t have good role models you can find yourself with no sense of purpose.”
Cash was a friend of Matthew Mellon, the billionaire banking heir who died earlier this year after a long history of substance abuse. And he believes that Lady Beth Douglas, the 18-year-old daughter of David Douglas, the 12th Marquess of Queensberry, is a tragic example of how difficult it can be to be born with a silver spoon in your mouth. She was a talented violinist who died in March after a two-day cocaine and heroin binge. This month an inquest heard the desperate details of her last days, which included working as a prostitute. “Wealth and good mental health do not go together,” says Cash.
As well as being a crisis line, Addcounsel also offers high net worth families a service to help navigate the dangers that might lie ahead. “This way families can prepare for their inheritance,” Flynn says. “It’s lonely at the top and history tends to repeat itself through the generations — divorce, addictions and behavioural problems.”
History repeated itself for Peaches Geldof, the bright and popular daughter of Bob Geldof, who died of a heroin overdose in April 2014, less than two decades after her mother, Paula Yates, did the same thing. Lady Beth, who suffered anorexia and selfharmed in her early teens, came from a long line of suicides, brutal deaths and ill-advised marriages. Her brother Milo took his own life in 2004.
Science suggests that genetics is behind repeated suicides and mental health problems in families. Oscar Wilde deemed the Queensberry family a “mad, bad line” and there is a reason aristocrats have a reputation for being “highly strung”, according to drugs policy reformer Amanda Feilding, Countess of Wemyss and March. “These families are often highly intelligent, and this and psychosis are very closely linked,” she says.
Eva Rausing, the philanthropist wife of the Tetra Pak heir Hans Rausing, died from drug dependency in 2012 and is another example of a privileged woman succumbing to addiction. Hans Rausing also battled addictions, despite (or because of?) being born into immense privilege.
Poor parenting can be linked to the demise of the child who has everything but emotional connection. Flynn has met wealthy families who are unwilling to recognise their children’s mental health problems and, for some, boarding school can be at the root of abandonment issues. But he points out that these schools can also be the making of children struggling to find their place, instilling good values and a functioning community.
Yet, though all of this may contribute to addiction, it is the lack of purpose among this group that Flynn is really determined to tackle. Once a high net worth individual has lost direction they can easily become depressed or fall into bad company. This is what seemed to have happened to Lady Beth. She died at a house party in Notting Hill, London, having injected herself with heroin.
Such irresponsibility is not uncommon in elite circles, Flynn says. “Young socialites operate in a different league — ‘normal’ is going to Chiltern Firehouse every night, partying on each other’s yachts in Antibes or at their villas in Ibiza.”
It’s the absence of the “normal” that makes this group so difficult to treat — and why Flynn believes individual treatment in a private house, rather than group therapy, is the only way.
The first step of Addcounsel’s treatment is detoxing for a week under the supervision of mental health nurses, after which the patient begins treatment with psychotherapists — and a recovery manager who spends time with them when they’re not in treatment. A private chef, mindfulness coach, yoga guru and a holistic therapist are provided, too.
Each patient’s individualised care plan is designed specifically to meet their needs. On average, a residential programme lasts 6-12 weeks and is followed by a period of aftercare that lasts for as long as necessary for the patient to recover successfully. Typically, aftercare programmes run for three to six months, but some can be longer.
By the end of their treatment, Addcounsel patients can have clocked up more than £1m, but Flynn insists they are paying for clinical excellence rather than a super-luxury service. Their specialist treatment will have left them with clear goals and objectives and they will be leading a more fulfilling life.
Flynn says he has learnt to be open-minded about what his patients understand by the words “fulfilment” and “independence”. “I’ve seen people coming from near death to training to be a mindfulness practitioner or going to study law, but some are happy doing nothing and taking a hundred grand each year from the trust fund,” he says. “In which case, we get them to that stage.”
As they say in the US, depression can get you, whether you’re in Yale or in jail. When it comes to getting treated in London, however, it makes all the difference if you’re minted. —