Well, earlier this week I found out that a man I saw on Thursday died on Friday.
This is a shame. It is a shame for a number of reasons. Firstly, although not confirmed yet, I think he probably killed himself. Secondly, and perhaps slightly relevantly, he was coming to see me as his doctor (I'm a junior doctor on a stint in general practice). He was in his early 50s. He seemed low for sure, and we talked about whether he would harm himself and how bad things had got. His wife had left him one week previously and he was feeling terrible about it. His main reason for seeing me was to ask for sleeping tablets "I feel as if i want to go to sleep for a month and wake up with everything back to normal". I didn't give him any, I explained why i thought that they would not help, and other things he could do to help himself sleep. I explained how he was going through a grief reaction and that in itself this was a normal response. He said that he'd thought of harming or killing himself but wouldn't do it, in part, because his daughter lives with him and he couldn't put her through it. I talked to him at length and explained that suddenly increasing his antidepressants as he had done was probably no helping and to slowly reduce the dose. He went away disappointed that i couldn't give him sleeping tablets, and i explained that he could try what we'd discussed and come back in soon to talk about things some more.

He died the next day. Not sure how. The hospital apparently think he might have had a heart attack or something. He smoked had high blood pressure and had had a stroke previously so was at risk of that. When he arrived in hospital he was in asystole. The post mortem should tell us what happened but I can't help thinking if i'd given him some sleeping tablets........