ALISON’S SECRET PAIN
Mental illness ‘needs to be talked about,’ dad says 5 years after tragedy
Bruck Easton saw the headline on the internet: ‘West end Ottawa tragedy.’
He saw his daughter’s name, Alison Easton. He saw his grandchildren’s names, six-year-old Katie Corchis and 10-year-old Alex Corchis. And he saw their house in Stittsville.
They had been found dead in the basement.
“That was how I found out,” the prominent lawyer and former federal candidate in WindsorTecumseh said quietly.
His son-in-law, Jon Corchis, said he had discovered their bodies when he came home from work. The police took him away. But Easton knew it wasn’t his son-in-law. He knew his family’s history of mental illness.
“As soon as I saw it, I knew what had happened,” he said.
Alison had killed the children. Then she killed herself.
“Dear Jon,” read the note she left. “I know you will never forgive me for what I have done. I will take the blame because I did it out of a genuine belief that I was protecting the children. They are safe forever now. No more harm can ever come to them.”
It was five years ago Jan. 14. The Easton and Corchis families, both from Windsor, published a memoriam: “Much loved, greatly missed, never forgotten.” Photos showed Alison and the kids, smiling.
Easton’s voice fell to a whisper at times. He paused. He discreetly took out a handkerchief. He’s a little better now, he says.
“You get to the acceptance part, at least.”
He’s more willing to talk about it now, he said, “because the issue needs to be talked about.”
Easton is actually Alison’s uncle. He became guardian of Alison and her brother when their parents killed themselves. Easton’s brother, Richard, had schizophrenia. Alison used to watch for symptoms in her son. He’d do something, and she’d ask Easton, “Was my dad like that?” But Alison seemed fine. “She was a beautiful girl, very bright. She had good friends,” he said.
The oldest of six children in Easton’s blended family, Alison was “the other mother.”
It can take your life, and I think a lot of us… even a lot of doctors, underestimate it.
DR. PAT SMITH ABOUT MENTAL ILLNESS
“She kind of kept the other kids in line,” he said, laughing at the memory.
She went on to earn three university degrees, in classics from McMaster University, English from the University of Ottawa and education from the University of Windsor.
She lived with her parents while studying at the University of Windsor.
“It was nice,” Easton remembered.
Alison was also a pastry chef and synchronized swimmer. She was working on ideas for a novel, too.
“She was very accomplished,” Easton said.
She was “a bit of a worrywart,” he thought. He used to tease her for being a helicopter parent.
He learned the whole story later.
It had begun six months before, when Alison worried that Katie had been touched inappropriately by her friend’s father. Alison and her husband reported their concern to the police and Children’s Aid Society and took Katie to a doctor. No one found anything.
But Alison couldn’t let it go. She thought Katie’s friend was being abused, too.
“She thought there was a predator,” Corchis said.
She became increasingly suspicious of everything. She was obsessed with safety. Finally, Corchis convinced her to go to their doctor.
She was diagnosed with dysthymia — chronic mild depression — and prescribed Cipralex, a common antidepressant. She was also referred to a psychiatrist.
That summer, the family came to Windsor to celebrate Easton’s 60th birthday. She and Corchis told him about the medication.
“Now I know what it feels like to be normal,” Alison declared.
“The consensus was initially she seemed a little less of a worrywart. She seemed a little more laid back,” Easton said. “I was a little worried about it, but it seemed to be OK.”
But in early fall, when Corchis had to go to North Bay for business, Alison insisted on taking the kids out of school and going with him.
“She didn’t feel safe alone,” he said.
About the same time, she signalled in her diary what she was going to do.
“Why should I leave my children at risk if I can make sure no one can hurt them again,” she wrote.
“I would be doing them harm to save them from a far worse fate. I’d do it swiftly and with love.”
Later that fall, her psychiatrist told her family doctor Alison didn’t need another appointment.
She hosted Katie’s birthday — a dress-up and tea party with dolls — that winter.
Days later, they were all dead. “What was it — a failure to diagnose or a failure to disclose?” a friend asked Easton.
“I guess it was both,” he replied.
It’s not clear what type of mental illness Alison suffered. It could have been late-onset paranoid schizophrenia, the coroner told Easton. The average age of onset is 18 to 25. Alison was 40.
It’s also not clear how long she had been ill.
“We will never find out,” said Easton.
“She was off in a strange place,” he said, “but she was doing everything she could to hide it from me, from Jon, from her psychiatrist.”
All they know, he said, is “this is something she planned.”
Easton and Corchis asked for an inquest.
“We wanted to find out what the hell happened, as best we could,” said Easton.
The coroner said no. This was a “crime of love” caused by mental illness. There is nothing the public could learn from it.
But Easton and Corchis question the role of Cipralex, one of a group of antidepressants called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs. The drugs increase the level of serotonin in the brain, a chemical believed to help regulate mood.
One-quarter of people put on antidepressants can become more anxious, says British psychiatrist Dr. David Healy, a leading scholar on the drugs. Five per cent of people taking them in clinical trials became so anxious that they dropped out of the trials. Of those, a proportion became suicidal or homicidal.
“So it’s not an insignificant problem,” Healy said in an interview from Wales.
People taking the drugs can also become “disinhibited,” Healy said. They might appear more relaxed, but what has actually happened is that the brake that controls their behaviour has disappeared.
Everyone thinks sometimes about doing things they shouldn’t, he said, but most don’t act because there’s a “brake” that stops them.
“But if you go on the drug and the brake is released, then there’s quite a chance that you might.”
In clinical trials, more people receiving the drugs committed suicidal acts after beginning treatment than those receiving the placebo, Healy said.
“More people die in these trials on active treatment than on placebo. It turns out the inactive treatment is safer.”
Healthy volunteers put on these drugs have also committed suicide.
Yet Healy prescribes antidepressants to his patients.
“The pills can be helpful,” he said. “It’s a case of me warning you there could be risks and what the risks are.”
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration orders all antidepressants to carry a “black box” warning, the strictest, on the increased risk of suicide in patients up to age 24. The active ingredient in Cipralex is marketed as Lexapro in the U.S., and the warning states there is an increased risk of suicide in children, adolescents and young adults.
Health Canada asks drug companies to include warnings recommending patients under 18 be carefully monitored for suicidal thoughts. Cipralex’s warning states that trials “suggest” that the use of the drug in patients under 18 “may be associated with” an increased risk of suicide.
Both countries also advise that all patients be monitored for suicidal thoughts.
But no country includes older adults in specific warnings, said Healy, who campaigned for the warnings for young people. They should, he said.
The drugs benefit mostly adults, so drug companies have argued that they don’t want to discourage people from seeking treatment, Healy said. Companies can also argue that the person’s behaviour results from the illness — not the drug, he said.
Lundbeck Canada, which makes Cipralex, noted in a statement that the drug ’s monograph includes warnings and precautions in bold print about “severe agitation-type adverse events coupled with self-harm and harm to others” in children and adults.
But the warning for Lexapro states that there is no increased risk of suicide in adults over age 24 and the risk decreases in patients age 65 and older. It also states that some psychiatric disorders carry an increased risk of suicide.
Another problem is that drug companies don’t release the results of all their trials, said Healy, who has seen more of the actual data than other doctors or regulators. His interpretation of the data he’s seen is that the increased risk of suicide applies to those over 24 the same as it does to younger adults.
A jury in Chicago last year ordered GlaxoSmithKline to pay $3 million to the widow of a man who killed himself after starting paroxetine, another SSRI. Healy testified as an expert witness for widow Wendy Dolin, whose husband Stewart jumped in front of a train.
“None of us here are anti-drug,” Dolin told the Chicago Tribune. “We are patient advocates and we hope that people will start asking better questions.”
Corchis would also like simpler, clearer labels on the drugs. Alison’s vial came with 10 pages of small print.
Alison was a loving mother. She was involved with the kids, she was involved in society. It wasn’t like she was a recluse. Jon Corchis
“It’s very difficult for someone outside pharmacology and doctors to understand,” he said. “Even on something as simple as a cereal box, you’ve really got information. Why not have a label as simple as that, that shows the percentage of side effects?”
Easton and Corchis also want doctors to be able to share information with at least one family member “so somebody’s aware of what’s going on and what to look out for,” said Corchis.
A patient’s family might observe unusual behaviour, but they don’t recognize the illness or how severe it might be, he said. Some patients don’t think, or don’t want to admit, there’s something wrong and even mask their symptoms. Alison helped with reading at her children’s school and was co-ordinator of Neighbourhood Watch.
“Alison was a loving mother. She was involved with the kids, she was involved in society,” he said. “It wasn’t like she was a recluse.”
He was concerned about her behaviour, but “who thinks that?” he asked of how it ended. “Nobody’s wildest dreams.”
Dr. Pat Smith, a Windsor-area family doctor who spearheaded the group Stigma Enigma to raise awareness of mental illness and money for mental health care, “absolutely” agrees, saying patients often don’t disclose what’s going on.
What Easton and Corchis really want to address is why no one talks about mental illness.
Heart disease and mental illness both run in Easton’s family. People talk about heart disease. That’s why he quit smoking at age 43. They don’t talk about mental illness. He wishes he had got his late brother’s medical records “and found out exactly what he had.”
He thinks about relatives he never heard much about, who died young.
“Looking back at my family history, maybe there was more going on but no one told us,” he said.
A relative was diagnosed with schizophrenia.
“Congratulations. You’ve got the family disease,” Easton told him.
“We actually had a nice chat,” he said. “He was glad to be able to talk to someone and not feel rejected because he has a mental illness.”
Another relative diagnosed with a schizoid disorder and hospitalized at times has been able to deal with his illness, have a life and contribute to the community.
“If we had talked about it in the family,” Easton said, “it would have been helpful for Alison.”
He doesn’t hide it now. He can’t. “It’s kind of dominated my life,” he said.
But he called the name Stigma Enigma a “brilliant” description of how mental illness is seen by many.
“We couldn’t understand why there was so much shame ... why people don’t want to talk about it when it’s an illness like any other illness,” said Smith, who has lost a niece, nephew, longtime friend and patients to suicide.
You read about people who battled cancer courageously. People with mental illness who kill themselves — “they battled courageously with it, too, but you’ll never read that in the paper,” he said.
One in five people are believed to suffer a mental illness, but the number is probably much higher because many people don’t report it, he said.
As a family doctor, he sees few illnesses that can kill. But mental illness, untreated, “it can take your life, and I think a lot of us ... even a lot of doctors, underestimate it.”
Suicide is like Stage 4 mental illness, he said, and “the problem with mental illness is most people are not seen until they’re in the later stages.”
The stigma has also affected funding for mental health, Smith said. It hasn’t been seen as a major need.
Mental health care is “grossly underfunded,” said Easton. Only six per cent of Ontario’s $54-billion health-care budget is spent on mental health.
The base budget for children’s and youth mental health care has not increased in more than a decade, said Janice Kaffer, chief executive of Hotel-Dieu Grace Healthcare, which oversees care in Windsor and Essex County. Ten years ago, there were 18 clinical psychologists associated with the hospital’s Regional Children’s Centre. Now, there are two. Almost 530 kids are waiting for help. They’ll wait more than three months if they’re not considered urgent. It will take $3 million to eliminate the waiting list.
Kaffer is also calling for an assessment centre for mental health and addictions that would immediately refer people for care.
We’re telling people to talk about mental illness, she said. “Then, when they ask for help, we say ‘you have to wait.’”
Many children and youth can be helped, she said, but “if they’re told they have to wait, maybe they don’t come back, maybe something happens in the meantime.”
Kaffer is calling for an allcandidates meeting on mental health before the provincial election in June.
“We really want mental health and addictions to be a significant discussion point in Windsor and Essex County,” she said.
Easton applauded the Ontario Progressive Conservatives’
promise to spend an extra $1.9 billion over 10 years on mental health. That followed the federal government’s commitment last year to spend another $1.9 billion over 10 years for mental health in Ontario.
Easton compares the care his father received for heart disease 40 years ago and the care he received almost 10 years ago. It has advanced astoundingly.
“Mental health needs that kind of focus, too, so generations to come will benefit,” he said. Because he’s certain mental illness will return to his family.
Hundreds of people packed All Saints’ Anglican Church in Windsor for the funeral of Alison Easton and her two children. They were buried together there. Katie and Alex are also remembered on a plaque on a bench in the foyer of Stittsville Public School, where they were students. Easton and Corchis would like to establish a scholarship in Alison’s memory.
Their deaths blew Easton “to smithereens.” He couldn’t sleep after this interview.
If they had died in a car accident it would have been awful. But at least he would have known what happened. Suicide is different, he said.
“Work was probably all that kept me standing. I got the hell out of politics. I had no taste for bullshit anymore.”
His whole family got counselling.
Corchis returned to Windsor to be closer to his family. He read a lot about mental illness. He spent six months in counselling and later remarried.
“It took me a while,” he said, “but I accepted that something happened in her brain that led her to do what she did.”
Then, when they ask for help, we say ‘you have to wait.’”
JANICE KAFFER