‘It was implied that because he was going to Oxford he didn’t have any serious problems’
How could a brilliant young Oxford University student die of a heroin overdose? Laura Clements reports
ACHEMISTRY undergraduate at Oxford University died from a heroin overdose after struggling with his mental health for a decade.
Iwan Caudy was just 20 when he died in May last year and had been in and out of hospital in the past two years of his life, but help just didn’t come soon enough, his family say.
“He was struggling big-time for many years and we were trying to get him help,” his mum Tania Wear said.
She scrabbled money from her savings to pay for private treatment as a last resort after he was diagnosed with a dissociative personality disorder.
Only four weeks before he died, he’d jumped out of a window at the family home in Pen y Fai and was taken to the University of Wales Hospital in Cardiff but was discharged just hours later.
“It’s quite scary for me as a parent, not knowing what one of his personalities was talking at the time,” Tania said. “That’s when we started paying for a private psychiatrist. But you don’t know as a parent, you’ve got no idea if you’re doing the right thing.”
Iwan had a history of mental health struggles and had seen psychiatrists and counsellors since the age of 10. But things deteriorated after the straight-A* student went to Oxford to study chemistry.
“Gradually, his mental health got worse when he went off to university,” said his 25-year-old brother Iolo. “It was exacerbated because he wasn’t at home or in a comfortable environment. He was a stubborn type too and thought that if he ignored it, it would go away.”
But it didn’t go away and at the end of his second year in 2019, Iwan decided to take a gap year and take some time out of his studies.
He’d received private treatment while at university and was referred to hospital back in Bridgend while he was home. But after Christmas that year, Tania said she took Iwan to hospital three weeks in a row, desperate for someone to be able to help her son.
“The big problem was no-one had ever dealt with Iwan’s condition before,” Tania said. “How long he suffered with it, we don’t know. He wanted to be helped but nobody understood what was going on.”
Iolo said he and Iwan were “very, very close” growing up in Bridgend and did almost everything together. After their dad left when they were young, Iolo stepped up as the older brother and looked out for his mum and Iwan. Yet the two siblings both struggled with insomnia and their own internal struggles, despite outwardly appearing to have the world at their feet. The consensus was that Iwan couldn’t be depressed because he was so successful, Iolo claims.
Iolo, a university student who started out studying medicine before switching to mechanical engineering, has also been told the same thing after seeking help. He claimed: “I was told that I couldn’t be depressed because I wanted to be a doctor.”
Iolo said losing his brother was “the worst experience I can ever imagine” and the family were still reeling from the shock. Iwan was found unconscious at his grandparents’ house on May 17 last year having taken a fatal quantity of heroin, a coroner said. A Although both Tania and Iolo knew he’d turned to self-medicating, they didn’t know to what extent.
The Covid restrictions came in just as things seemed to be progressing w with his treatment and as a consequence he was stuck in the house unable to do anything.
Iolo added: “That forced restriction became a problem.” His family tried to support Iwan and he was eventually diagnosed with a multiple personality disorder but the right support w was slow to come, his brother said.
“For us in the family, every now and then, it wouldn’t be Iwan as the presenting personality,” said Iolo. “It would be another version of him. We never did find out what the trigger was, but it would mean that sometimes he wouldn’t be himself.”
He had always tried to help his younger sibling out as much as he could but Iolo himself was suffering. He had a “tough time” partway through his medicine degree after their father died and that prompted him to switch courses.
“I tried to help him as much as I could, but I couldn’t,” he said.
Growing up they did everything together: “We built computers, played games in the forest, made YouTube videos. He was the smarter one of the two of us and he was capable of working harder than I am.”
Speaking almost exactly a year after his death and just a week after the inquest, Iwan’s family want people to take mental health more seriously.
“It was implied that because he was going to Oxford University, because he was so clever, then he didn’t have any serious problems,” Tania said. “I would say that even I didn’t realise how serious the problem was. I feel so guilty now that I didn’t push harder. But I felt helpless and I was scrabbling money together to pay for private treatment. In hindsight, do I think was that the right thing to do? Did that tip him over the edge?”
Iolo remembers his brother as someone who would “always try to please everyone as much as possible”.
He said: “He would sacrifice his own mental health to help other people. It’s up to individuals to take care of themselves and for other people to acknowledge and understand mental health problems. And there needs to be more funding for services to be able to adequately help people and provide a quality of accessibility and advice.”
The coroner concluded that there was no evidence to suggest Iwan had intended to take his own life and Iolo believes his brother simply got the dosage wrong.
“I think he decided to take the drugs to help him get to sleep or relax and he calculated the dose wrong,” he said.
“My last memory of him is happy. He was one of the most wonderful and kindhearted people you could ever have met. He was struggling on the inside when nobody knew. It’s sad that people do that to themselves and help others and are kind to other people but are never kind to themselves.
“The self-criticism he directed at himself was hard. Nobody knew because he was so hardworking and he would do anything for anyone.”
Tania is torn. “Maybe one part of his personality wanted to die and another didn’t,” she said. “I really don’t know.
“Iwan was thinking about a PhD in chemistry but he wanted to be a teacher,” she said. “He’d done some tutoring and he was an excellent tutor. Everybody said how good he was and how clever he was. He was a really caring and clever person; I think he would’ve made a better teacher than me.”
Remarkably, she doesn’t blame anyone for her son’s death and says her only regret is he wasn’t seen sooner.
“I don’t blame any person and we don’t even blame the NHS,” she said.
“It’s not fair on them – they are underfunded and they don’t have enough staff. Waiting lists are long but mental health needs to be taken more seriously. What happened to Iwan is a tragedy.”
Iolo added: “People need to take care of themselves and give time to look after themselves because that’s what I would’ve wanted Iwan to do better. He was loved by everyone else but he couldn’t see his own worth.”