My name is Ann.
After a GP prescribed citalopram to my son over the phone, I campaigned to change the guidelines and stop more lives being lost to suicide
My son, Oliver – or Olly to all his friends – lived life to the full. He brought me joy and happiness from the moment he was born. He was incredibly loving and kind as well as being enormous fun and very intelligent. An ‘all rounder’, as everyone said. People were drawn to him. He had so much charisma he would light up a room and his talents were plenty, being a great jazz singer, speaking French, German, Spanish and some Chinese as well as playing tennis to a high level. His passion was travelling and he had friends all over the world.

Oliver gained four As at A-level and a First-class honours degree in History at UCL. He took an amazing gap year in Thailand, Australia, New Zealand and South America. His journals have been turned into a book – ‘Oliver’s Travels’.

My son had no history of depression, but started to feel low and increasingly anxious around Christmas time 2016. A GP at a practice in our home town of Worthing prescribed the antidepressant Citalopram over the phone without seeing him. It was the first time he had been prescribed a SSRI. Oliver was told to pick up the medication from the in-house pharmacy by a GP he never met or spoke to in person.

On February 14, 2017 – after four days of taking the medication - he took his own life, leaving our family and all his friends absolutely bereft. It was just two days before his 23rd birthday.

As a mother, I now know there are questions I should have asked, signs I could have seen and a conversation I could have had. I also have no doubt that my son had an adverse reaction to citalopram. He had had no previous mental health issues.

There is more and more evidence about the adverse risks of taking antidepressants, including suicide. I was very sad to hear that Thomas Kingston, the son-in-law of Prince and Princess Michael of Kent, had taken his own life, and I can see so many parallels with his death and my beloved son.

Backgound.


In September 2016, after his degree and just six months before he died, Oliver got a place with the British Council teaching English for a year at a school in Shanghai. He had been to Shanghai twice before, once for a month with a UCL educational programme, and knew the place well, but when he arrived he was placed in a school on the outskirts on his own, where he felt very isolated.

When he came home at Christmas 2016 for the Chinese New Year, he seemed very low and lost. He made an appointment with a first doctor on January 6th, who booked Oliver in for a subsequent blood test with a nurse a few weeks later to check his thyroid as he thought this might be affecting his mood, but this came back negative. However, when he became increasingly anxious about going back to China on his birthday on February 16, he rang up the practice and spoke to yet another clinician who prescribed the Citalopram. We trusted it would make him better.

Losing Oliver

Oliver died at our home and life has never been the same since.

When Oliver died, his friends in China had to pack up his belongings and close his bank account. There was no support from the British Council, which I find shocking. In the end, I asked my local MP to arrange a meeting. I said, “You should have taken better care of my son. Where was the support?” Nothing came from it. I think they wanted to brush it under the carpet.

I turned my focus to suicide prevention instead and set up the charity ‘Olly’s Future’ in memory of my beloved son. I gave up teaching and started to campaign, leading to a change in the NICE medical guidelines, so doctors should now see patients who are 25 and under, face to face when they prescribe antidepressants for the first time.

I believe doctors should warn people, young people in particular, about side effects such as akathisia, which can lead to suicidal thoughts.

As a mother, I also felt I needed to have understood how to have spoken to my son and the signs to have looked out for. Oliver said to me, “I feel like I’m a burden”. I didn’t realise the significance of that. I now know that was a key thing to follow up on. I should have said, “Are you thinking about suicide?” But it never crossed my mind. Like any other young person, I thought he was just going through a really difficult time.

I co-created ‘Talking About Suicide: 10 Tools’ a 90- minute programme that people can access all over the world to stop more lives being lost. Nearly 6,000 people have had the training already. I’ve also been to Downing Street and developed a suicide awareness programme for medical students called Dr SAMS (Suicide Awareness in Medical Students) which is at nine medical schools across the UK. I believe it should be part of the core curriculum in all 46 medical school.

The charity trustees are all people who knew and loved Oliver – his family and friends. Our motto is “love and light” which he brought to this world in abundance. I’ve won a Points of Light award for my work from the PM Office and had a lovely letter from King Charles.

What I would say to other parents is be open, be direct and ask clearly. You have got to have an honest conversation and hear the truth, as painful as it might be, to get the right help.

What now?

Oliver left his travel journals close to where he died. There was so much detail, it was wonderful to hear his voice. I felt it was his gift to me, to all of us. With the help of friends, I created a book and a documentary for what would have been his 30th birthday this year. Seven years on, I am still processing the grief and trying to make sense of it. I’ve learnt love is greater than anything, it is stronger than death, it endures, grows, it is what makes us human.