SUICIDE is the biggest killer of men aged under 49 in Greater Manchester. Tragically, 200 people in the region end their lives this way every year. Reporter NEIL BRANDWOOD speaks to one mum whose life has been turned upside down by suicide.

“I NEVER thought that when I had my son I would end up burying him. It should have been him who was burying me. As well as the loss of him, it was the loss of all my hopes and dreams for him.”

Liz Nolan knows too well the devastating impact suicide can have on families. Her son Jamie, who was born on December 11, 1993, was her second child. He hanged himself April 12, 2013.

“He was a lovely little lad but even then he’d have strange little ways. For instance, he’d be two conversations behind when everyone else had moved on.”

Mental health issues began presenting themselves during Jamie’s last year at Highfield Primary School Primary School when he began hiding in cupboards and under tables.

Things became more pronounced when he spent the summer holidays with his grandparents and his aunt started noticing his unusual behaviour.

“My sister noticed that he banged the broom and switched the lights on and off a certain number of times. She had OCD and she recognised it in him. Jamie also developed anger issues - he became physically violent towards me, blacking my eye on one occasion.”

Mrs Nolan worked in schools with children who had emotional and behavioural problems and she saw in the 16-year-old Jamie what she saw in those children.

Naturally concerned, and thinking he was on the autistic spectrum, she took him to Bolton’s children and adolescent mental health services.

“They told me he wasn’t autistic because it would have presented itself earlier - which I’ve since found out is wrong.”

Jamie decided to leave the family home when he was 17, the same time as Mrs Nolan was being treated for breast cancer.

“He didn’t want to stay in college and he didn’t want to get a job. If I’d been well I would have tried to convince him not to leave but I was recovering from having a tumour removed so I was concentrating on trying to live.

“For a while, the only way I had of knowing he was okay was through his Facebook posts. He was staying with a friend’s family but when his friend’s parents split up the youth service placed him in a young person’s hostel, and later with a carer.”

By this time, Jamie had got back in touch and was building a good relationship with his mother who would often take him shopping for food.

However, he began smoking cannabis and his behaviour became even more concerning, with him telling his mother that he could see people chasing him

“He was becoming agoraphobic, refusing to go out. When he went to sign on, he ran out. He couldn’t cope,” said Mrs Nolan.

Because he wasn’t getting any benefit, he had to leave the foster home and ended up sofa serving and having spells of living on the streets before moving into a hostel in Chorley Old Road.

During this period, suicidal impulses began to reveal themselves.

“He’d phone me and tell me he was going to do it. I knew he’d be at the lodges where he used to go camping as a youngster so I’d get there in time and phone the police and get him to hospital. This happened about seven times. He was desperate, but each time he saw a different doctor and had to go through the whole process of explaining his history from the beginning again, which is something that frustrated him.”

Contributing to his deterioration was the the fact that his father died.

“He had Huntington’s Disease, which is hereditary - and this was another thing that was preying on Jamie’s mind. He knew it was terminal but I don’t think he actually believed that his dad was going to die.

“Even the night before his dad died, I was in A and E with Jamie because he was threatening suicide again. I went down on my knees begging them to section him, but they weren’t prepared to do that even though I’d told them that there was a history of suicide in the family - Jamie’s uncle killed himself and so did his great- grandad.”

Mrs Nolan last saw Jamie two weeks before he died when she made a regular visit to the hostel to take him food

“On he actual day I was thinking, ‘I’ll catch up, see what he’s up to’. Then the police came to tell me he was dead.

“I always knew there would come a day when we didn’t get to him in time. On the last day he didn’t phone me because I think he’d had enough. He didn’t want me to stop him. I think he was determined and didn’t want me to talk him out of it, or get help to him.”

Mrs Nolan tried going back to work as a supply teacher but, after something so devastating, she took early retirement.

“For the first six-months I cried every day. You relive the ‘what-ifs’ so many times in your head. .

“I attended a bereavement group and heard a lot of stories about how people had killed themselves at home or in the garden. My heart went out to them and I was grateful Jamie hadn’t done that.

“Eventually, came to terms with it by accepting I was allotted 19 years. In a way, because I nearly lost him when a wave swept him away on a holiday in France when he was two, I got an extra 17 years.”

Sadly, birthdays have lost their joy for her.

“Every time I have one it feels like I’m getting closer to seeing him again. That’s the way I look at it now.”

Jamie’s death had a huge impact on the rest of the family, too. Mrs Nolan’s eldest son lives in America and has cut all contact with his family, and Mrs Nolan said her youngest daughter, Sophie, who was seven at the time, lost a big part of her childhood.

“I think one of the reasons men commit suicide is because they are not encouraged to show emotions, although that was not the case with Jamie.”

Although Mrs Nolan welcomes the increased awareness of mental health in the public domain, she feels it still does not have the same standing as other illnesses.

“Innoculations mean we don’t lose our children to childhood diseases any more but now we are losing them through mental health issues.

“At the inquest into his death, two psychiatrists said if he had received the proper treatment, he would still be here today. For me, that was a sort of closure because I felt the medical staff and the mental health people had not been listening to me

“The so-called experts should listen to families more and involve them.

As a result of his death, Greater Manchester West Mental Health Trust carried out an internal investigation and introduced a number of changes into the way services are run.

“They said lessons had been learned, but since then there’s been other young people of Jamie’s age in Bolton taking their own lives. It’s carrying on,” said Mrs Nolan.