Moving on from the grief of suicide
9 September 2019
In 2015, Georgina Titley’s father, Paul, took his own life.
Years afterwards, Georgina noticed somebody else on the verge of suicide and intervened to stop them. This is her powerful story of grief, and hope.
“I had a brilliant childhood. Very, very close-knit family. I was such a daddy’s girl,” she said.
“I thought I knew him well. Obviously, he was able to mask his depression very well and I didn’t see through that. On the 20th of July 2015, I found out that my dad had taken his own life.
“The first week was quite a blur for me. I sort of turned to drinking a lot. I began to have nightmares of what I thought my dad would have looked like.
“I didn’t communicate with friends, I just didn’t want to know, I wanted to be left alone.
“Before I lost my dad I was always quite ambitious, very driven. I wasn’t interested in succeeding anymore. It seemed like nothing else really mattered. And when it came round to going back to work I was terrified.”
Last year, on hearing that a person in distress was contemplating taking their own life, Georgina felt compelled to reach out and help.
“I was at work and overheard that there was a distressed gentleman making his way onto the Prince of Wales bridge. My initial reaction was panic; it could be somebody’s dad, it’s definitely somebody’s son, possibly brother,” she said.
“I grabbed my coat and went to where the gentleman was located and he told me that he wanted to be left alone so that he could jump off the bridge.
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“And in my head all I was thinking was ‘I need to distract this man long enough for the police to get here and take over.’
Campaigning for mental health has given me a purpose again
“So I offered him a cigarette because I could see his packet was strewn all over the floor. I managed to get him talking about his job. Luckily that’s when the police arrived and they took him to hospital.”
After her experience, Georgina was driven to volunteer with a charity to help support others, and to get people talking about suicide.
“As the days went on, the more I thought about it the more I realised that that was a really important thing: that individual had managed to get some help and support and that was one less suicide that week,” she said.
“That was the moment when I realised that I wanted to be somebody who could help make a difference to other people, and stop other families from having to go through the same thing that we did.
“I knew of the charity CALM, Campaign Against Living Miserably. I got in touch with them to do some volunteer work to get people talking about suicide and about the severity of the issue now.
“After losing dad I felt like I had no purpose anymore. Over the last year or so working with CALM, campaigning for mental health has really given me a purpose again and helped me come to an understanding that there are questions I won’t ever know the answers to, but you just have to find that acceptance.
“I know that my dad is proud of me. He used to tell me that all the time. And I would like to think that he would be incredibly proud of what I’m doing going forward to help possibly prevent people from getting to the place that he ended up.
Speak to somebody. That is the first step
“The most important bit of advice that I could give to anybody struggling would be speak to somebody. That is the first step, it’s the most important step because that will then put you on the path to recovery.”
