Mental health: From commoner to Royal

By Sunil Dharmabandhu

I read with keen interest the most illuminating article by Randima Attygalle citing profusely Dr. Neil Fernando on his major contributions in the development and improvement of psychiatric services in Sri Lanka. I wish to share with The Island’s international readership a perspective from personal experiences, as an adolescent, when tragedy struck our family with the sudden news that my brother, eldest in the family, Nimal, was found dead in his bedsitter in North London in July 1963. He was only 22. It was in the form of a telegram delivered by an officer from the Department of Immigration and Emigration. Fortunately, my mother had gone to meet my father at the Colombo Municipal Council to keep an appointment with a consultant for her. The officer kindly drove me to the CMC where I handed the telegram to my father. His face just dropped with complete shock. In the meantime, my mother was walking back home from the Moratuwa Railway Station when she heard some people already talking aloud about the sudden death of my brother, who went abroad for further education. It was not until she was near home that the penny dropped that something was drastically wrong somewhere, still refusing to believe it had anything to do with her family. But, as she entered through the gate, she realised, to her utter shock, that she was entering a funeral house! She just collapsed on the cement floor. The doctor was called in, who gave Diazepam intramuscularly.It was almost a month before my brother’s ashes were received, making it the longest funeral, to my knowledge! Well, my father never went back to work since he suffered a serious nervous breakdown! He was only 54 at the time. My mother recovered, gaining strength to pull herself through, to look after the family somehow. Unable to cope, my father ended up in Angoda, as it was known then. A colleague and a close friend provided yeoman’s service to us, else the outcome would have been entirely different, with losing my beloved father too in the aftermath!He had found out that there was precious little time left before my father was to come under a compulsory detention order, of the then very primitive mental health legislation, which would deny my mother the right to have him discharged or even transferred to Mulleriyawa Sanatorium! As luck would have it, he was transferred in the nick of time, to our great relief, enabling us to make daily visits, during his recovery process.It was indeed a watershed in our family’s destiny! My ambition to study medicine, despite gaining admission to Royal College, was the next casualty. There was an urgent need for me to seek employment, to keep the home fires burning. I joined the Bank of Ceylon, my two sisters too boosted the family finances through their respective employment.However, after my father made a complete recovery, fed up with an office job, I left for the UK to train as a psychiatric nurse in Wales, where I met my Welsh wife-to-be. We got my parents over twice and again, my mother after the demise of my father at the age of 82. I continued with my career ending up as a visiting Mental Health Act Commissioner appointed by the then Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith which required me to visit patients detained in hospitals, under the provisions of the Mental Health Act of 1983, and scrutinise their documentation. It was a rewarding and satisfying job, I recall.

Britain’s Royal Family was thrust into a national debate about mental illness today after it was revealed that not just two but five of Queen Elizabeth’s cousins were hidden away in a mental hospital on the same day 46 years ago. Newspapers delved at length into previous cases of royal mental illness and one mental-care expert urged the queen to visit her relatives, four are alive, to bring the issue of mental health into the open.

Britain’s latest royal ‘scandal’ began with the banner headline ‘Queen’s Cousin Locked in Madhouse’ in the tabloid Sun. An accompanying photograph showed a wrinkled and bedraggled old woman staring out blankly. Other tabloids were quick to follow up, revealing that two of Queen Elizabeth’s first cousins and three second cousins were all brought to a Victorian-era mental hospital in the heart of the Surrey countryside, south of London, on the same day in 1941.

All five belonged to the Bowes-Lyon family of Queen Mother Elizabeth, who at 87 is frequently referred to as the “nation’s favourite grandmother.” The two first cousins were listed as dead in the 1963 edition of ‘Burke’s Peerage’, a guide to the British aristocracy, even though one is alive and the second died only last year. The three second cousins are also still alive. Genealogists said all five may have shared a genetic flaw passed by the 21st Baron Clinton, and not the Royal Family. Leading genealogist Hugh Peskett said: “If five female cousins all have one mental problem, it’s pretty obvious the cause is genetic…The great relief is that the genes are obviously in the Clinton family and not in the Royal Family. It is clearly a Clinton family gene which is wrong, rather than that of the Bowes-Lyon family.”

The Queen Mother has been a patron of Mencap, a charity dealing with the mentally handicapped, for the last 25 years, and newspapers were quick to absolve her of any personal responsibility. When she discovered her nieces were alive five years ago, she sent them money and presents, they reported. Newspapers also examined previous cases of royal mental illness, from George III at the end of the 18th Century to two cases of mental illness and handicaps among royal children in the early years of the 20th Century.

One was Prince John, the youngest of George V’s six children. He was mentally impaired and epileptic and died at 14. The other was Prince Albert, son of Edward VII, who died at 28 and was described in one newspaper today as “an oddball and a dunce.”

“Madness, illegitimacy and divorce are the three skeletons that rattle loudest in the royal cupboard,” Alan Hamilton wrote in the Times under the headline “Royalty’s Unspoken Fear.” Despite vast improvements, psychiatric services remain under funded in UK to keep up with increasing demands and inevitable lengthy queues. Sadly, it is too late for some. Heads Together is a mental health initiative, spearheaded by The Royal Foundation of The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, which combines a campaign to tackle stigma and change the conversation on mental health with fundraising for a series of innovative new mental health services.

Led by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry, Heads Together unites eight mental health charities, including Mind. Since May 2016, Heads Together has encouraged millions of people to have important conversations about mental health. Money raised by Heads Together is now supporting innovative projects to tackle mental health challenges.

This includes a £2 million fund to create digital tools for young people seeking help online, regarding their mental health, and new programmes to support mental health in schools, workplaces and the defence community.

(The writer is a retired MHC Visiting Commissioner, UK)