‘Depression put Susan Rohde at risk of suicide’

A FORENSIC psychiatrist hired by murder-accused Jason Rohde’s defence team has told the court that Rohde’s deceased wife, Susan Rohde, had experienced major depression that significantly increased her risk of suicide.

Forensic psychiatrist, Dr Larissa Panieri-Peter, testified in the Western Cape High Court, where Jason Rohde is standing trial after his wife was found dead at the Spier Wine Estate in 2016.

Rohde is accused of strangling his wife and staging her suicide. She was found hanged with an electrical cord from a hook behind the bathroom door of the hotel room they shared during a work function.

Panieri-Peter testified she had spoken to many people involved in Jason and Susan’s life, family and friends, including the family psychologist and marriage counsellor who had been seeing the family before Susan’s death.

Asked by defence advocate Graham van der Spuy to share her conclusions, she said that with all the information that she had, and her interpretation of it given her understanding of psychiatry, she would say Susan Rohde had major depression, specifically anxious distress and mixed moods.

“That alone increased her risk of suicide very significantly. What she really wanted to achieve that weekend was that everyone could see that she and her husband were happy and that she would prove to herself that she beat the mistress,” she said.

Jason Rohde and his wife had a fight about his extramarital affair with a colleague, who was also at the hotel in the hours leading up to Susan Rohde’s death at a company function.

“My conclusion is that, prior to this crisis, she had a number of vulnerabilities – a personality that was high energy, busy. She naturally didn’t sleep for very long and she had insecurities,” Panieri-Peter said. Susan may have had some genetic risk factors with the development of mood disorder, she said.

“When she found out her husband was having an affair, she had, by many different accounts, a dramatic change in her demeanour and emotions.”

What happened that night was for the court to decide “because I wasn’t there”, but in psychiatric terms, she said, there was “plenty” of risk of suicide.