The parents of Thomas Kingston broke down in tears today as they spoke for the first time since he took his own life to call for new warnings about the ‘side effects’ of antidepressants.
Lady Gabriella Windsor’s husband died from a head injury and a gun was found near his body at his parents’ home in the Cotswolds, with a coroner finding in January that he took his own life while ‘suffering adverse effects of medication he had recently been prescribed’.
The inquest heard he had initially been given sertraline, a drug used to treat depression, and zopiclone, a sleeping tablet, by a GP at the Royal Mews Surgery, a practice at Buckingham Palace, after having trouble sleeping following stress at work.
Thomas returned to the surgery saying they were not making him feel better and his doctor moved him from sertraline to citalopram. Both of these drugs are selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) – a widely used type of antidepressant.
In the days leading up to his death, the former hostage negotiator turned financier had stopped taking any medication and toxicology tests showed caffeine and small amounts of zopiclone in his system.
In a heartbreaking interview with BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, his parents Martin and Jill Kingston paid a moving tribute to their son as they called for changes in how antidepressants are prescribed.
Holding back tears, his father said: ‘I would like him to be remembered as someone with a big smile on his face, while helping people to do difficult things.’
Mr Kingston said he believes both the patient and the people close to them should be told more explicitly about the potential side effects of the medication, including what can happen if they stop taking it.
The couple wants patients to sign a document confirming they have been told about the difficulties of going on and coming off the medication.
This could include the patient being told that ‘it’s an extreme case, but it could lead to suicide’, Mrs Kingston said.
‘We’d really like to see that a person, a spouse, a partner, a parent, a close friend, somebody, was going to walk with them through it. Maybe they should be at that signing time.’
Mr Kingston said if a person complained they were stressed and not sleeping and rejected the GP’s suggestion to try cognitive behavioural therapy, a talking therapy used to help with mental health conditions, the doctor might prescribe an antidepressant out of a ‘desire to help’.
According to the NHS website, the common side effects of sertraline – such as nausea or tiredness – tend to gradually improve as the body gets used to it.
People are told to call 999 or go to A&E immediately if they have thoughts about harming themselves ‘or ending your life’.
When people come off antidepressants, they should reduce their dose slowly over several weeks or months with the help of a doctor, to prevent withdrawal symptoms, which can include mood changes.
Mrs Kingston told the Today programme she was aware of why people take SSRIs.
‘We have many friends who are on them, and we totally understand why they’re on them at the same time,’ she said.
On the day of his death, the couple shared a ‘lovely lunch’ with Thomas, who appeared ‘normal’, according to his mother.
‘He was fun. We were laughing about various things.’
The family spent the day relaxing, reading and sitting by the fire, she added.
Recalling the tragic moment she and her husband found their son’s body, Mrs Kingston said: ‘There was a room nearby where he would have put all his stuff so we knew he’d gone up there, so that’s where i went to look for him.
‘When I went up it was all quiet and he obviously wasn’t up there so I went back to the house and checked his room and all his bags were all ready for going back to London, so I went back up and that’s when I noticed the locked door.’
Mr Kingston said: ‘When Gill couldn’t find Tom and realised one of the rooms in the outbuilding was locked and that was, yeah… I had to break the door down.’
With a shaky voice, he added: ‘I would have difficulty explaining what it was like without crying.’
Speaking about his grief, Mr Kingston said: ‘You have to make a conscious decision not to do the ‘what if’ or the ‘if onlys’.’
After his death, the family was sent more than 400 cards and letters.
‘So many of them told us things that we never knew,’ Mr Kingston said.
Thomas had been struggling with depression and anxiety before he took his own life and had been prescribed two types of antidepressants and sleeping pills.
The first was the SSRI Sertraline which he stopped taking after telling his doctor they were not working.
He was then prescribed another SSRI called Citalopram but he also stopped using those after he found them to be ineffective.
After Thomas’s death, Senior coroner Katy Skerrett raised concerns over whether there is ‘adequate communication’ regarding the risks of suicide with the pills.
In a statement read to the inquest, Lady Gabriella said while Thomas’s work was ‘certainly a challenge for him over the years’, she doubted it would have led him to take his own life.
‘If anything had been troubling him, I’m positive that he would have shared that he was struggling severely.
‘The fact that he took his life at the home of his beloved parents suggests the decision was the result of a sudden impulse.’
Lady Gabriella added: ‘The lack of any evidence of inclination, it seems highly likely to me that he had an adverse reaction to the pills that led him to take his life.’
A graduate in economic history from the University of Bristol, Thomas went on to serve in the diplomatic missions unit of the Foreign Office in Baghdad.
There, he had countless brushes with death, including escaping a suicide-bombing that claimed 22 lives.
Reverend Canon Andrew White, who for more than ten years presided over the only Anglican church in Iraq, got to know Thomas well after taking him on as an intern.
He previously described Kingston as ‘an exceptional young man’ who ‘makes things happen’. His great strength, he said, was to ‘see beyond the impossible’.
After leaving Baghdad, Thomas joined the private bank Schroders and then Devonport Capital, where he helped find investment for ‘frontier’ economies and those undergoing postwar reconstruction.
He met Lady Windsor in 2014 through mutual friends and they married five years later.