Gordon Adam was the “legend” of his Army regiment: A sergeant, champion boxer, dad-of-four and the “life and soul” of the party.
When people needed help, Gordon was the man to whom they’d turn - he would do anything for anybody.
But while his Army brothers and sisters saw Gordon as the regiment’s rock, he was actually fighting his own secret battle - against his clinical depression. It was a battle he lost.
For on July 22, 2019 - 30 years after his father died by suicide - Gordon took his own life, aged just 35.
Mum Sarah Frame, 60, was overcome with “absolute disbelief, horror and pain.”
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“I remember saying, ‘Please don’t let this have happened, please don’t’,” says Sarah, “I can’t even articulate the depths of the pain and agony I felt that day, as well as the horror of having to try and accept it.
“There was such a devastating impact on all of us as a family.”
Sarah believes Gordon delayed getting treatment because he feared “the stigma” of his mental illness would affect his career. By the time she convinced him to see his Army doctors, and he was put on medication, his illness was severe.
“Although he had very close friends in the Army who were like brothers to him,” Says Sarah, from Stewarton, East Ayrshire, “he didn’t confide in them about how he was.”
Since the tragedy, bookshop owner Sarah has been channeling her grief into working with Samaritans on their new veterans app, which provides UK Military Service Leavers and Veterans with emotional health and wellbeing information, guidance, videos and resources - making it easy to get help early.
A survey of vets by Samaritans found that veterans are twice as likely to report having suicidal ideation than the general population. Samaritans had 1,026 contacts from military in the first month of the pandemic, 76% were veterans.
The free Samaritans Veterans app, which officially launches today, has been developed with help from the Ministry of Defence, other charities, experts and, vitally, veterans with firsthand experience.
It’s predominantly for those who have left the forces, but will also show others, like Gordon, that they are not alone in their suffering.
Sarah believes it could have helped.
“You can never say for sure, but I think there would have been a chance that he wouldn’t have taken his own life,” she says.
Gordon had joined the Army in 2006, where he thrived in his career getting regular promotions and was often posted abroad.
“He had a really good career that he loved and really found his calling in the Army,” says Sarah. “Gordon also liked to have a joke and a banter, and as is often the case with people who took their own lives, he was known as being the life and soul of the party.
‘He would do anything for anybody. I loved him so much.”
But in the year before he died Gordon suffered from a couple of bouts of pneumonia which had left him struggling physically, something Sarah says massively affected him.
“He felt like he was failing because he wasn’t the person he had previously been, and then he began to struggle with his mental health which made him feel like a failure,” says Sarah.
“Gordon kept this hidden for a while, but then opened up to me. I was aware for about a year before he died that he was struggling and we spoke or messaged every day.
“I frequently look back on the messages and there’s such a pattern of good days and bad days. When he had a good day, he thought he was over it and that everything was fine.
“But when he had a bad day he was down in the depths of despair and he would say that couldn’t control his thoughts or feelings and could see no way out of it.”
Sarah and Gordon’s wife Helen, who lived with him near the regiment in Leuchars, near Fife, both repeatedly encouraged him to get help, but Sarah says her son was convinced there would be a “stigma” of being diagnosed with a mental health condition while serving.
“The problem was that he really felt the stigma of having depression himself,” Sarah explains. “Eventually, he did go and see the Army doctor, who diagnosed him with severe clinical depression and put him on medication.”
While Gordon felt personally unable to open up to his friends and Army colleagues about his mental health, he was always there for others.
After his death, a mourner came up to Sarah at Gordon’s funeral. He told her Gordon had talked him out of taking his own life.
“The man told me he had been at the point of ending it all, and Gordon had found him and sat down with him and talked him out of it,” she says.
Gordon had also signed up to a marathon challenge for Samaritans after another close friend had died by suicide just a month before he did. Sarah and his loved ones completed it in Gordon’s name.
Heartbreakingly, Sarah’s husband - Gordon’s dad - also took his own life, when her son was just five. A study from Johns Hopkins University in the US found that losing a parent to suicide can make children more likely to die this way themselves.
Sarah says: “He had quite troubled teenage years. He also had a mental health episode around 10 years before he died soon after being out in Iraq, but he got some counselling,” she explains.
“He went on to be promoted in his Army career so it seemed as if he’d got through that period.”
Tragically that wasn’t the case. Sarah adds: “Reaching out at an early stage is vital for people to get the right treatment for their condition because otherwise it can be too late.
"That app will be very helpful in having a private, confidential way for people in the military to find help and learn that they aren’t alone in their mental health problems.”
Veteran Army Officer Joseph Walcott, 32, is project manager of the Samaritans' Military Programme. He also believes the app is vitally important, after his own 18-month "steep learning curve" returning to civilian life in 2017 after seven years the Royal Artillery and tours including Afghanistan and Israel.
He says: "The app’s primary function being to ‘promote’ and to ‘prevent’. It will help users from the military community recognise signs of emotional ill health so that they may better support themselves and others."
Sarah says: “Helping others in my son’s memory has been a huge help in keeping me going after his death. He has been a huge loss to so many, but if I can stop another mum from living with this pain I feel I will have done something positive.”
'It really hit me as I started to realise what I had lost'
Michelle Partington served in the Royal Air Force for 23 years until she was discharged on medical grounds in 2015 with post-traumatic stress disorder.
But the loss she felt when returning to civilian life, also left her with suicidal thoughts.
The former forces paramedic, from Abergele, Wales, did tours in the Falklands and Bahrain and loved her job. But, following two tours of Afghanistan, where she was treating soldiers, civilians, and insurgents, she developed mental health difficulties.
“All the training in the world won’t prepare you for the sights, smells and sounds of conflict,” says Michelle, 49. “Once I had to start looking after children who were affected, that’s when I really started to struggle.”
She’s now been instrumental in helping design a new free Samaritans Veterans app to help those leaving the Armed Forces with their emotional health and wellbeing. The app, which launches today [WED] will hopefully help others like her.
It’s certainly been a long road for Michelle.
The former forces paramedic toured the Falklands and Bahrain and says this really improved her confidence and helped her “find herself” after having a difficult upbringing.
“I found out who the real Michelle was after joining the RAF,” she says. “I grew in confidence and I was doing a job I loved.”
However, things changed when Michelle started developing mental health difficulties following two tours of Afghanistan.
During this time she helped save the lives of her colleagues, as well as civilians and insurgents, from the military helicopter and treated people with serious injuries including those who’d had limbs blown off.
“When I came back from that tour, I noticed that I was less outgoing and was leaving the house less often,” she says. “Then I started having nightmares and had bad panic attacks.
“But before I could sort out what that was, I was sent out again to Afghanistan eight months later. I remember thinking halfway through that tour that I had stopped being so fearful and I just didn’t care if I got shot or blown up.
“There were so many psychological battles that we had to deal with as well as the physical battles of being in war. It was day after day of seeing people losing their lives or surviving horrific injuries.
“I have no idea how I got through the rest of that tour, but I did.”
When she returned to the UK, Michelle was struggling with her mental health to the point where she was unable to pick up a weapon.
In 2012, a RAF doctor initially signed her off for two weeks with ‘adjustment disorder’ - an emotional or behavioural reaction to a stressful event in a person’s life, but during this time Michelle says her problems worsened and she stopped leaving the house.
Michelle adds: “Eventually, the military linked me up with their psychological teams, who diagnosed me with PTSD and started giving me treatment to help.
“However, because I’d been unwell for so long, it then came to the point where I had to be medically discharged and that suddenly stopped.”
A 2018 research study by King’s College London, published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, found that incidences of PTSD had increased among serving Army personnel and veterans had increased in the last 10 years.
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Most people with the condition who took part in the probe were those who saw active combat like Michelle.
But as she recovered, she felt another “loss” - that of no longing being in the RAF. She was in a really bad place for two years and began to have suicidal thoughts.
Michelle says: “I don’t remember the majority of those two years. It was all a massive blur. It felt like I was having a bad dream and screaming but nobody was hearing me. It was like being stuck in a nightmare.
“As I started to get better after starting therapy myself, being medically discharged really hit me as I started to realise what I had lost.”
With Afghanistan recently hitting headlines due to the Taliban taking over the country earlier this year, Michelle says this has brought back upsetting memories.
“Although the feelings have never left me, it has brought back difficult memories,” says Michelle.
“We had interpreters with us when we were going out on the ground in Afghanistan and they helped us so much, so feeling as if they were stuck there and unable to get over here was upsetting.”
Michelle says it took her a long time to seek help for her PTSD symptoms because she didn’t want to appear weak.
“I thought I had to be this strong person,” says Michelle, who has since gone on to found her own mental health service called Mentis, where she delivers coaching to people and companies on mental wellbeing.
“I’ve since learned that it takes a lot more strength to come forward and say you’re struggling and need help.”
Michelle has been working with Samaritans on the new free app, which features videos, exercises, and advice and was created with the help of Ministry of Defence, several charities and vitally veterans themselves.
'I had no desire to wake up in the morning'
Two years into his career with the Royal Navy, Liam Doughty felt he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. “I was experiencing a lot of change including the break-up of a long term relationship,” said the aircraft engineer. “I had absolutely no desire to wake up in the morning and live another day.”
Liam, 27, found the courage to visit the Samaritans branch close to his military base in Yeovil, Somerset.
“I remember walking down a short driveway to a very welcoming looking big house,” he says. “It felt like a friend’s house.
“I distinctly remember as soon as the Samaritans volunteer opened the door, I must have been a wreck at the time, all the weight I was carrying fell away. There was a huge release of emotion over the next hour as I spoke about everything I’d been refusing to acknowledge.”
Liam went on to complete his training and spent nine months in active service in the Caribbean with 815 Naval Air Squadron.
He left the Navy in June and moved to Manchester, where he works as an events exec for race organisers RunThrough. The keen athlete, who competed in cross country, 1500m and half marathon distances for the Royal Navy, ran his first 10km for the Samaritans in 2018 after using the service.
But like Michelle, adjusting to life outside the military was also difficult - and he’s a big supporter of the new Samaritans Veterans app.
“It provides all these resources that are hugely beneficial for people at a huge transition point in their lives,” he says. “When I was with the Royal Navy I had such a good support network around me all the time and when you leave it can quickly become overwhelming.”
You can download the free Samaritans Veterans app for mobile and tablet from the App Store or Google Play.
If you need help, contact Samaritans on 116 123 or visit jo@samaritans.org.
You can see all articles in the The Mirror’s HeadStrong: Better Mental Health for all series at mirror.co.uk, as well as finding help through our HeadStrong Help Hub.
