My husband’s death plunged me into terrifying psychosis. Then the cocktail of drugs doctors gave me almost cost me my sons

My husband’s death plunged me into terrifying psychosis. But it was the cocktail of drugs doctors dosed me with that almost cost me my sons.

The first indication that something was wrong came when I turned on my phone at lunchtime, after a three-hour work meeting, to find six missed calls from numbers I didn’t recognise.

A small sense of alarm stirred inside as I rang one of the numbers back. The secretary from my younger son’s school answered and said that he hadn’t been collected at pick-up.

I called the home phone, which rang out. Then I called my husband John’s mobile. A man answered, introducing himself as a policeman.

‘Something has happened to John,’ he said. He told me to come to the hospital.

‘What’s happened to John?’ I whispered.

He simply repeated his instructions.

I turned to a colleague and gasped: ‘Something’s happened to John. I think he’s dead.’

My worst fear was confirmed at the hospital when I was told my husband had collapsed and died of a heart attack during his morning run.

I thought of his father, who’d dropped dead at the age of 55. And now he had met the very same fate, aged 60.

At the hospital, I was taken to identify the body and remember staring at John’s bloodless face, unable to connect it with the happy smile beaming back at me at my 50th birthday party just three days previously. 

The first time I cried, though, was just before I left the hospital when asking staff how to break the news to our sons, then aged eight and six. I don’t recall their advice, but telling the boys was by far the most terrible moment of that terrible day.

I’d intended to get them home first but as we made our way back, my older son kept interrogating me.

‘Is he dead?’ he asked me finally.

When I told him he was, the three of us stood there immobilised in the middle of the road, the children wailing. And all I could do was repeat: ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry’.

Both boys were devastated but it hit my eldest the hardest and he howled for the first ten nights. Lying beside him, witnessing his pain but unable to soothe him, was the nearest thing to torture I thought I was ever likely to experience.

If I had been told then that a far worse trauma was to come, I wouldn’t have believed it. And yet within four months, I was locked in a psychiatric unit for eight long weeks, initially prevented from seeing my fatherless sons, and unsure whether I would I ever have unsupervised access to them again.

I had no history of mental health problems. So there’s no doubt the roots of my breakdown go back to the terrible loss of my husband. Yet throughout all my time receiving psychiatric care, nobody ever asked me about the day John died.

What I needed was someone to put their arms around me and my children (metaphorically, and physically); to give me time to heal.

What I got instead was a health system that medicalised my distress – separating me from everyone I loved, not least my grieving sons, with little apparent thought to how this might affect them.

I was given medication after medication and subjected to a range of assessments when I was broken, vulnerable and alone.

Now, looking back, I view my experiences as three separate traumas. John’s sudden death; losing my mind; but worst of all was the trauma of my psychiatric treatment.

The thought that this could happen to anyone was what spurred me to write my new book, in the hope that others might be treated with more empathy.

For me, grief was like being knocked down by a speeding bus. It came out of nowhere, completely flooring me. I was gripped by an excruciating pain that permeated my whole existence. I lost my appetite, had difficulty sleeping and my menstrual cycle, normally regular, went haywire.

John’s funeral was a celebration of his life. Since our sons were born, he’d been a stay-at-home dad and before that he’d spent twenty years working as a French teacher in the UK. We had met at a lecture in Dundee in 2000. John was everything I had always wanted in a husband – handsome, intelligent, funny, rebellious – and he was a fantastic father. I wanted the ceremony to be positive, a message of hope for the children.

But afterwards, everything stopped. The children returned to school and I languished at home, sitting in an armchair overlooking the back garden, reflecting on the devastation of our lives.

How could I go on without my soulmate and husband of 15 years? How could the boys grow up without him?

Thankfully, there was no immediate need to go back to work – I’m a university lecturer and the academic year was over. I took to retracing John’s final running route; in a secret, pain-filled ritual, I would place sprigs of white, pink and red valerian picked nearby at the spot where he died.

Family and friends began to ask if I might be depressed and whether medication might help. First I told them that I didn’t think so, that I was just grieving.

The question of whether I was clinically depressed and needed medication, or whether I was experiencing was ‘normal’ grief, goes to the heart of the debate about the overuse of drugs in psychiatry.

My therapist at the time didn’t believe I needed drugs. Nor did my GP, advising that psychiatric medication could interfere with the grieving process by dulling the intensity of emotions that are important for the processing of loss. But gradually I became open to the idea of trying medication in the hope that it would help.

I was given a prescription for zopiclone, a sedative used for short-term treatment of insomnia. But I was so worried about not waking in the night if the children needed me, there was only a marginal improvement in my sleep.

When my mood didn’t improve, the GP prescribed the anxiety drug Xanax, which did help. But the doctor’s warning that it was highly addictive and only to be used sparingly made me worry more.

The next time I went to the clinic, a locum suggested sertraline, an anti-depressant. I agonised over whether to take this too, only to wake that first night I tried it drenched in sweat, my legs and arms prickling all over.

When these distressing side effects didn’t ease, I was switched to another anti-depressant, which was no better.

Thankfully, even while grieving, my children were able to distract themselves with play and the company of other children. Meanwhile I struggled to achieve anything beyond feeding them and ensuring they had clean clothes.

When I told the GP the anti-depressants weren’t helping and that the burning in my body made it hard for me to see a future for myself, she referred me to the adult mental health service.

Ironically, though, this was to be the start of my real nightmare. From this point my mental state really began to deteriorate.

Groggy and forgetful, I became terrified of dropping a pill and would visualise my sons finding it and swallowing it. This culminated in an obsession that they’d actually taken one, convinced they were behaving differently.

When I admitted to the mental health team what I believed, I was prescribed an antipsychotic drug. But the obsessive worrying continued. I was still not sleeping or looking after myself and I was advised I needed hospital treatment.

I agreed to leave the boys with two very close friends. I felt extreme guilt but thought it would help to surrender myself to the care of other people.

Instead, my treatment consisted almost entirely of medication. My days were spent torturing myself about the damage I believed I had caused to my sons.

After two weeks in hospital, I was so anxious to get home, I reported improvements in my mood, even though I was still gravely out of touch with reality.

My boys were delighted to have me home and I put on a brighter front for them – and at the mental health centre I attended daily. Secretly, though, I hated myself for not being able to cope and was still convinced my sons had taken some of my medication.

After failing to turn up at the day centre one morning, I was re-admitted to hospital less than a month later. By now, social services were involved.

The boys were at home with my 90-year-old mother – with the support of friends. But I was told a short-term foster placement might be considered. I became convinced they would be taken from me by the end of the week.

Desperate to check on them, I snuck out of the hospital and got the train home. The children were at school so I took the long route home through a nearby quarry. I was there when the ward manager rang, insisting I tell him my whereabouts. Back in hospital that evening, I was put in a high-security ward.

Once a day, I was led like a prison inmate into a tiny internal courtyard where I could walk round for 20 minutes.

Worse, though, were the relentless assessments focused on the risk of ‘harm’, to myself and to the boys. I appreciate that the psychiatric staff felt compelled to do this because they could be held accountable if something terrible happened.

But at no time during my breakdown was I aggressive towards myself or anyone else. At my lowest point, I was so worn down, I falsely confessed to wanting to throw myself and my children over the quarry cliff, even though I had no such thoughts the day I’d strolled home. It seemed like what the hospital staff wanted to hear and I wanted the questions to stop.

For the next month, the boys were no longer allowed to visit.

By now, six months after John’s death, on six different psychiatric drugs, I felt like a zombie. I was unable to think or speak clearly. I was unable to cry even though I was deeply distressed and miserable. Yet again, no other forms of therapy were offered.

I spoke to the boys most evenings. But every time I heard their voices, my heart broke at the thought of my poor fatherless children with no mother to hold them tight as they fell asleep.

Gradually I was able to think more clearly, because my illness was resolving itself and perhaps I was adjusting to the cocktail of drugs. I was no longer gripped by obsessive thoughts and I could sleep and eat again.

However, my fight to see the boys in person continued. After a month, there were supervised visits. Then a terrifying Children Protection Conference, when it was agreed I could return home with a Child Protection Plan in place for a period of six weeks.

From the moment I returned home, I slipped back into my role of mothering my two children.

Finally, I was able to tackle the tasks I had been forced to abandon after John’s death. I sorted through his clothes and his correspondence, helping me reconnect to the man I’d lost so suddenly. No attempt was ever made to tackle the root cause of my breakdown.

It was only with the help of a private trauma therapist that I was able to deal with the grief as well as the anger and powerlessness at how I’d been treated.

Once weaned off the medication, I began to feel things more intensely again, but that helped me rediscover the joy of living.

With the love and support of my family and friends, I emerged from my year of trauma stronger.

But I often wonder how damaging my experience would be for someone to whom life had previously been more unkind.

A decade on, there isn’t a single day when I don’t think about John. I see him reflected back at me every time I look at our sons.

They share his joviality and wit, his independence of spirit and thought. Watching them thrive, despite that calamitous year, feels like a victory.

Adapted by Charlotte Kemp.

The Episode by Mary Ann Kenny (Sandycove, £18.99) is out now © Mary Ann Kenny 2025. To order a copy for £17.09 (offer valid to 24/05/25; UK P&P free on orders over £25) go to www.mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937.