A doctor’s wife has shared the story of her husband’s suicide to raise awareness about mental health.
The Brisbane gastroenterologist and father-of-four, Dr Andrew Bryant, took his own life last week.
His wife, Susan Bryant, wrote an email to his colleagues because she didn’t want the circumstances of her husband’s death to be a “secret”.
The pair's son, John Bryant, shared his mother's email on Facebook as a "warning to others about the dangers of depression and suicide".
"It cannot be taboo," he said.
Susan explained in the email: "Some of you may not yet know that Andrew took his own life, in his office, on Thursday morning."
"Andrew had never before suffered from depression. He hadn't been sleeping well since late February; but he was never a great sleeper. He was very busy with work; but had always been busy," she added.
But just before Easter her husband became anxious - "about his private practice, about being behind in his office administration, about his practice finances, about some of his patients, about his competence".
"He seemed very dispirited and non-communicative. I did what I could to help where I could, but I was confused - he'd always been busy and the practice, as far as I could tell, was running just as it had for the last 20 years," she said.
The father-of-four had been "flat" all Easter and, the week after that, he was on call for the private hospitals.
"It was on the worst on call week he had ever had - he was called every night and some nights more than 3 or 4 times and during the day he had to see his own patients and do his endoscopy lists. He missed our son Nick's birthday dinner and every other dinner at home that week."
Top Comments
I can't imagine the stress of dealing with being a consultant. So much pressure and responsibility and relentlessness. I feel so bad for all his family and friends.
Then their is a constant blame game in the media. People love to blame the doctor. It's the human side of a life of giving and saving and helping.
How tragic this is. He sounded like a wonderfully compassionate man and such a loss to both his family and his community. I hope they can take some comfort in knowing that he obviously helped many people in his life.
I also do think they have a point about the word suicide, often it is not reported because it may trigger others, but I think if people are so fragile that the mere mention of someone's suicide triggers them into committing the act they obviously must be quite depressed anyway so that's what we need to do something about. Also sometimes when someone dies in mysterious circumstances and it is not announced as suicide it can lead others in the community to worry if there is a murderer loose. For instance a young Indian woman was murdered in my area then around that time another Indian womàn was found dead. Police asked for any witnesses to contact them then it was never mentioned again. I wondered if there was a serial killer loose but someone said to me that probably the second woman had suicided. The issue is that it is tragic but community should be informed if it is not murder otherwise we all worry for our safety.
Just back to this story it sounds as if so many doctors are over worked I think there needs to be something done about that.