The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Learning to talk about death can help to give life meaning
There’s a thing we reporters do called a death knock. In fact, I don’t think you can really call yourself a reporter until you’ve sat trembling in a pool car outside the home of a stranger who has been recently bereaved, plucking up the nerve to ring their bell and ask if they’d like to talk to you about it.
It’s a job few of us relish, although it helps to look on it as the last opportunity this family might get to have their loved one’s time on this Earth recognised by the wider public, whether it was a long life rich in achievement or a young one lost before all that potential could be realised.
And while I’ve had the odd door shut in my face, more often than not I’ve been welcomed in and I’ve sat and cried at kitchen tables with grieving mothers and sons and sisters as they gathered up their photographs and memories. And I’ve probably put more effort into those stories than anything else I’ve written, because what a thing for a family to entrust you with.
We do it with people who are well known, after accidents and crimes and when people have died tragically young. There’s something quite sobering about reaching the age at which a night news editor might skip across your funeral arrangements on the next day’s family notices page, not considering you tender enough in years to merit a follow-up.
But we don’t tend to do it with suicides. There are guidelines around reporting on these incidents – although you might not have thought so from some of the recent coverage of the death of television presenter Caroline Flack. There’s also the taboo. A sense that families won’t want to talk about it anyway. Poor things. What a shame. Best leave them to mourn in private.
I probably thought that myself until it happened closer to home. To the last person in the world you’d have expected it of. The life and soul still missed at every wedding, New Year and anniversary party. And strangely, I have never wanted to talk about a death more. Because maybe if I spoke to enough people one of them might be able to make sense of it.
And maybe that’s why, in a week dominated by coronavirus, there was another story in The Courier that stood out.
The one about the three families who were not prepared to have their loved ones’ suicides swept under the carpet; who spoke up and told the world their lives had mattered a great deal, even if they themselves had not appreciated just how much.
Jodie McNab, Rebecca Sangster and Jacqueline Proctor took their own lives while they were patients at the Moredun ward at Murray Royal Hospital in Perth, between 2012 and 2015.
Following a longrunning court case, NHS Tayside admitted criminal responsibility for their deaths and on Monday the health authority was fined £120,000. Perth Sheriff Court heard the ward was understaffed and ill designed and that previous warnings about the dangers the furniture and fittings might pose to women who were at risk of self-harm were not heeded.
It was further evidence of grave failings in the region’s mental health services in the wake of the publication of Dr David Strang’s highly critical report last month.
That document, containing 51 recommendations for change, followed a 16-month inquiry sparked by another series of suicides and courageous campaigning by families, and was another reminder of the harms we do, however unwittingly, when we don’t talk about mental illness.
Health chiefs have apologised to the families of Jodie McNab, Rebecca
Sangster and Jacqueline Proctor and say “robust and radical” improvements have been implemented at Murray Royal to prevent such tragedies recurring.
And while the relatives have understandable reservations, it is thanks to their bravery and tenacity in drawing attention to failings in the past that the board can expect to be held to account if it falls short in the future.
In a week when many of us are looking forward to the next time we can hold loved ones a little closer, spare a thought for these three families who will always have a missing place at the table.
In speaking out about these women’s deaths, they have paid them a tremendous tribute and proved their time on this Earth did stand for something.
While scrutiny of NHS processes is proper, pride in the institution itself and the esteem in which those who work for it is held is not in doubt.
Thursday’s uplifting UK-wide round of applause for the people on the front line of the Covid-19 crisis showed how unified we are on this point, even when we have never felt more isolated, and when this is over we must all turn our hands towards ensuring it is given the resources and support it needs to thrive.
● The Samaritans can be contacted on 116123, or at jo@samaritans.org