‘It is the people left behind who suffer’

THE LEAD story in this week’s Sunday Star-Times hits a raw nerve. I lost my eldest brother to suicide nearly eight years ago (August, 22, 2006). He was not a young man – Lance was due to have a birthday on September 3 that year – he would have been 68. His mental illness though started when he was in his early 20s, with numerous unsuccessful suicide attempts. His last few weeks were a time in our family’s life we would all love to forget. Again, like last week’s story, because he was an adult, he was deemed able to make his own decisions.

The privacy law in these situations is an ass. The family support he could have had from siblings may well have saved him. To be told by health authorities that, because he had tried to commit suicide in his youth, he was inevitably going to succeed somewhere along the line, was a shocking thing to have to take in.

As a family we found this attitude from mental health professionals callous. To learn some months later at the inquest exactly what had gone on over the years would shock most of today’s mental health professionals. We were given a medical report by the police attached to the Coroner’s Court. All four of us went into shock. You might think I am exaggerating, but I still have the report and look at it every now and then to remind myself my brother Lance was a person and did actually exist.

You can imagine what it was like for us, his family, with absolutely no qualifications in this field – it was horrific!

To this day his extended family still bears the mental cost of those decisions. The Keen family need every bit of help in dealing with their treasured son’s death, even after three years. It is the people who are left behind who suffer. I hope to God that even if one young life was saved through watching Broken Hallelujah, the movie will have done its job.