I want to tell you about Val. I am introduced to her through the words of her daughter, Sofia, who is addressing a commemorative hearing at the Lampard Inquiry at Chelmsford Civic Centre.
The inquiry is examining the deaths of 2,000 children and adults who were inpatients at mental health units in Essex between 2000 and 2023. It is the first public inquiry ever to focus on mental health deaths specifically.
I am sitting as far back as I can in the airy chamber; I do not how to be in this space. I do not know how to bear witness to the participants’ enormous pain.
As Sofia talks, a photo of Val shines out from a screen. She looks happy, sitting on a blanket on a beach. She is tanned and her blonde hair is pinned up. The sea and sky are bright blue, and she is wearing a striped red and white top. She looks vibrant and full of energy, which is exactly how Sofia describes her.
Val was born on 15th August 1939 and took her own life on 9th October 2015 after she was allowed out of an inpatient mental health clinic alone for a day. In the coming months the inquiry will investigate the failings that led to Val’s death. But today, the commemorative hearing is a space to hear about her life.
Val grew up in a poor but proud Yorkshire family. She was bright, and won a place at grammar school but was unable to go because her family couldn’t afford the uniform. As a young woman Val was adventurous with a brilliant sense of humour. And she was beautiful—Sofia’s father, a Greek merchant seaman who was docked in Falmouth, fell in love with her instantly when he saw her dancing to rock and roll.
They had four children. The family lived in Hull in dire poverty, but Sofia says Val gave them a wonderful childhood, often working multiple jobs. She was determined and resilient. “Resilient” is a word I hear over and over during the morning of hearings I attend, in the accounts of former patients.
Later, the family moved to Colchester, where Val became isolated. Her struggles became more apparent to her children—she suffered with depression and terrible PMS, neither of which were recognised properly back then, Sofia says. She had mood swings. But she was still Val.
She still worked relentlessly, and used what little money she had spare to take them around the country, to places like Cornwall and the Lake District.
Val did not receive proper treatment for her mental health, and it deteriorated. In December 2013 Val deliberately crashed her car on the A140. She survived but was severely injured. Her beloved dog died.
After Sofia fought to get her mother treatment, Val was voluntarily admitted to an inpatient unit. Her mental health did not improve and Sofia was constantly afraid that if Val was released alone, she would try to end her life. Sofia’s fears proved to be justified.
On 9th October 2015, Val died after being allowed out of the unit without her family being notified. Sofia felt her mother had never been offered the sanctuary she needed.
“We have the best memories of Val,” Sofia says, “and this statutory inquiry is something she would have believed in.”
For me, it feels genuinely revelatory to have the chance to learn about Val’s life, as well as those of the other former patients being commemorated this morning: Bethany Lilley, Dot, TJ, Clive (Skip). But I am also struck by the fact that we often only hear about the triumphs and struggles of people with serious mental illness after they have killed themselves.
On the train home, a snippet of a song loops round and round in my head. It’s from “It’s Quiet Uptown” from the musical Hamilton. It is sung after the eponymous character loses his only son.
"There are moments that the words don’t reach. There is suffering too terrible to name… We push away what we can never understand. We push away the unimaginable."
I worry that one reason we so badly fail people with serious mental illness—and those who are bereaved by suicide—is because we are unable to face the horror that they experience. This avoidance has very real consequences: if we cope with our discomfort by “othering” suicidal patients, we flatten their lives, and ignore the richness and vibrancy within them. And if we look away, the woeful lack of support—and at times active mistreatment—they face goes unscrutinised.
We may never find the right words to talk about suicide. I have never found it so hard to find the words for a column. But for Val, for Bethany Lilley, for Dot, for TJ, for Skip, we have to try.
