Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
PARENTS REVEAL AGONY TO KICK
EXCLUSIVE DEVASTATED Tim Owen will never get over the loss of his beloved daughter Emily... but every day, her last words spur him on.
As the 19-year-old lay in intensive care, Tim found a letter which begged the family “not to be ashamed” of her actions.
Emily wrote: “I don’t mind people knowing about what happened to me if it will help them before it’s too late.”
The teenager took her own life. But her message has given Tim, 51, purpose.
Today, as he tells his daughter’s story on World Mental Health Day, Tim says he believes Emily – “the life and soul” of the family – would be alive but for the pressures brought by lockdown.
He tells us: “Lockdown was the straw that broke the camel’s back for Emily.
“I’m convinced if it hadn’t been for the pandemic, she would still be with us.
“She had been looking forward to her future and had made plans for it.”
Tim and other grieving parents are speaking out in support of the Mirror’s week-long HeadStrong campaign.
We want the Government to ensure better mental health support after a poll found one in four people have suffered during the pandemic.
Had my son been helped earlier, I have no doubt that he would still be here today... MUM WANTS TO HELP CHILDREN OPEN UP ABOUT ISSUES
DIAGNOSIS
It comes as one in 20 teens admitted having suicidal thoughts during the pandemic. And the National Child Mortality Database reveals 193 likely childhood deaths by suicide in the last 20 months.
In the 82 days leading up to the nationwide shutdown, 26 children are believed to have taken their own lives.
In the first 56 days of lockdown, the figure was 25, according to the NCMD.
An inquest heard Emily was happily working in her local pub in Shouldham, Norfolk – then her mood changed as coronavirus took its grip in March 2020.
Tim says: “She became full of worry at news of the pandemic. We had family members in Italy, where it was initially really bad. We were talking at home about what could be coming round the corner, and this concerned her. She began to feel as if her world was closing in and found it overwhelming.”
Emily had suffered from mental health issues, including anxiety, for several years. A late diagnosis of high-functioning autism at the age of 16 had proved a “relief ” and she began to make plans for the future.
She wanted to become a healthcare assistant or go into nursing.
Tim goes on: “Emily lived life at a million miles an hour and thrived on being social. With her autism, it had to be on her own terms and she liked her quiet time too, but she liked her freedom. She was working and went to the gym, which helped her mental health.”
A few days before a partial lockdown on March 16, Tim’s household went into their own quarantine as some family members had developed coughs, a Covid symptom.
Emily became “very, very agitated”. She died on March 22. Tim adds: “She’d started worrying about her job. The freedom of being able to do things she loved seemed to be being taken away. It seemed to her like the pandemic was going to ruin her life and she was completely
unable to cope. If she’d talked to somebody such as a professional, I’m sure she’d have been able to pull herself back from the brink. For a lot of teenagers, it was frightening. Catching Covid wasn’t her biggest risk – mental health repercussions were.”
That was also true of Sam Tyler, just 14 when he took his own life at home in Nuneaton, Warks. It was May 2020.
Mum Tracey says: “We were struggling as adults to cope when we went into lockdown and I think it’s hard for kids being out of routine. I think schools being closed had a major part of what happened with Sam – he felt so isolated. I believe if he’d been at school, in a routine, it wouldn’t have