Family of suicide victim successfully sues health board for negligence
A clinical negligence case involving tragic circumstances was recently heard by Lord Arthurson at The Court of Session in Edinburgh.
The case concerned the suicide of a Ms. Lynette Giblen, aged 35, on 10 October 2016. She was a beautiful singer, a gifted photographer, a loving mother and a most affectionate and dutiful daughter to her beloved mother. An action for damages against Lanarkshire Health Board in respect of her death was brought by her mother, two of her siblings and her two children.
The background to the case is that Ms. Giblen had a long history of suicide attempts. She had taken eight overdoses by the age of 14 and a further ten in the next seven years. At the age of 16, she was diagnosed as suffering from an Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder (EUPD).
Between June and September 2016, she had periods of psychiatric treatment in hospital and was then discharged. Her case was allocated to a Community Psychiatric Nurse, and she had various interactions in person and by phone with a variety of professionals, including GPs and the police. On 9 October 2016, she attempted to take her own life by hanging. She was admitted to Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Glasgow on that date and died the following day in the Intensive Care Unit there.
The crux of the case advanced by her family was that she had not received an adequately planned discharge from hospital and the follow-up in the community was not in keeping with the care that she required. It was alleged on behalf of the family that the knowledge of her medical condition along with her history suggested a foreseeable risk of the occurrence of a devastating episode of self-harm, an attempted suicide or suicide itself. The family relied upon the fact that she had had an unusually severe episode of illness while in hospital. The family’s case, put short, was that it was negligent to have discharged her without a care plan which provided her with support, supervision, monitoring and intervention for the period prior to a joint appointment with psychiatric care which had been arranged for 11 October 2016.
Having considered the evidence (including independent opinions of Dr Charles Musters, and Dr Nabila Muzaffar, Consultant Psychiatrists), Lord Arthurson was of the opinion that the family had established negligence on the part of the Health Board. The judge considered that the approach adopted of leaving her to fend for herself with phone numbers could not in any view be said to take into account a significant risk of deterioration applicable in her particular case. He found that had she received appropriate post-discharge follow-up and care, the suicide would, on balance, have been avoided.
He turned to consider the appropriate damages to be awarded to each of the family members. He considered that the first claimant (Ms. Giblen’s mother) experienced considerable distress and anxiety just prior to the death, during the period of discharge and as she encountered her hanging behind the bathroom door in her home. She had administered mouth to mouth resuscitation and had herself collapsed when her daughter was taken to hospital by ambulance. He stated that her grief, distress and sorrow manifested in an extremely physical way and he observed in passing that during her evidence the distress exhibited by her, even from a remote location in giving the evidence by video link, was quite tangible. In these circumstances, he made an award of £100,000 inclusive of interest.
The second and third claimants were two of her siblings. He noted that they had had a very distant relationship with Ms. Giblen and that one of the siblings had only in fact lived for a very short period of time with her and there was a 16 year age gap between them. In respect of each of these individuals, he awarded the sum of £5,000 inclusive of interest.
The fourth and fifth claimants were her children, now aged 20 and 22 but who were aged 13 and 15 at the time of her death. The children were each awarded £70,000 inclusive of interest.
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