I lost my son

Corinda Taylor
I woke up this morning and reality hit me like a cold hard slap in the face.
I lost my son to suicide.

Not only did we lose our beautiful boy to suicide but we have kept relatively silent about it for four years. This is my first blog about the terrifying experience that no parent wants to have. I have kept silent because of the ongoing investigation into the care that my son, Ross Taylor, received at the hands of his psychiatrist and nurses.


This week the Mental Health Commissioner released his report after more than four long excruciating years after my son's suicide. The Southern District Health Board and the consultant psychiatrist Dr C failed to provide services to Ross Taylor with reasonable care and skill and breached Right 4(1) of the Health and Disability Code. The independent psychiatrist who did the investigation for the commissioner stated that in her opinion the quality of clinical care that Ross received during the last three months of his life is a significant deviation from expected clinical standards. They have validated our complaint that the individuals concerned and the services failed our son.

This week our story also went public in New Zealand. We are extremely private people but felt compelled to speak up for the sake of current and future users of the mental health system.

I will be blogging regularly about our experience and how we were stonewalled repeatedly by the Southern District Health Board and clinicians before and after Ross died and how we battled to get positive changes to happen to ensure that nobody suffers a similar fate.

This week showed us who were prepared to support us to bring about positive changes. People from agencies have shown support for what they described and I quote "unethical conduct", "neglect" and many more harder words that cannot be mentioned here. It has brought disgrace to the medical profession and tarred many good professionals with the same brush unfortunately. That was not our intention.

Some have said that they admired how I have channeled my energy into holding people accountable. I do not want admiration and I do not want sympathy. I want to see change.

I have been inundated with stories by many parents who have experienced similar tragedies and shared with me their pain and the battles to navigate a complicated mental health system. They also shared how families have been treated with such disdain and contempt with sometrespassed or banned from services after trying to get the best care possible for their loved ones. I now realize that what happened to us is a common theme and only the tip of the iceberg. Let's lance this sore and expose it for what it is.

Many have been unable to get fair investigations happen. They expressed support for our cause but stated that they did not have the strength to do what we did.

We would like to see more support for people and their families when in distress and we would also like to see good postvention support put in place. We have had no support offered to us by the Southern District Health Board during the four year investigation that would have paralyzed most people. This needs to change.

My hope is that our case has paved the way for many others to bring about change and hope. Nobody should have to beg services to help our loved ones in distress. Nobody should have to go to the lengths like we did to get a fair hearing to expose the truth.

Better systems, healthy communities and workplaces with committed health care professionals will result in safer and more effective outcomes with less people in crisis.

Corinda Taylor, mother of Ross Taylor