Our son had sent text messages to friends that he was going to kill himself.ĭad had to climb 30 feet up a toilet block wall to bring our son down. One day, after our son had been drinking and fighting with his girlfriend, Dad found him at work where he had tried to hang himself. Dad would go with him to pick up his prescription to make sure he had enough medication. I would cook his meals and make sure he was eating well leaving a small amount of cash for cigarettes, otherwise he would buy alcohol. We managed his wage as he was not good at budgeting his spending and we had to pick up the shortfall. We would pick him up from where he was living take him to work with us. We decided he would come to work with us. Our local general practitioner prescribed him anti-depressant medication and he seemed much happier. We had seen him when he had problems with drug and alcohol use, but this was different.

We could see he was going through mood swings and was not himself any more. In 2011, one doctor diagnosed him as bipolar and gave him medication, which made him feel sick. Numerous doctors prescribed him anti-depressants. After being assessed through the mental health system, they said there was nothing wrong with him mentally and that he needed to sober up and sent him home. Our son was admitted to hospital where he was kept overnight. He stopped taking drugs when he was 27, but started to go into depression and was drinking heavily. He hit rock bottom so many times, but we knew we had to help him. We lost a lot of friends and family, as they could not understand why we kept helping him. We were always there to bail him out and help him financially. We helped him with his own accommodation as he wanted to be independent, but he was always getting into financial difficulty or trouble with the police. He became an alcoholic and could not hold down a job, so we took him under our care and he lived with us for 12 years. He turned to drug use, got in trouble with the law, and disappeared for two years until we found him. His problems occurred from when he was 18-30 years of age, due to broken relationships, and termination of pregnancies with his partner.

Names and any other connectable material have been removed or changed in order to protect the families and relatives of the deceased. The following stories are real and have been reproduced here by permission of the Authors.

Finding The Link Between Spiritual Experience And Mental Illness.

Health Rights Commission – Suicide Related Complaints.

Mother’s Story – I Lost an Identical Twin.

Cry of fear suicide