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INTERVIEW

Why I opened a free treatment centre after the death of my son

Francisca Kellett talks to Clare Milford Haven, who was compelled to open an innovative suicide prevention centre after losing her child at the age of 21

Suicide is the biggest killer of men aged between 18 and 34
Suicide is the biggest killer of men aged between 18 and 34
GETTY IMAGES
The Times

In the days following the suicide of her 21-year-old son James, Clare Milford Haven realised she had to make a decision. “I had a choice,” she says. She could go to pieces over James’s death or she could “be strong, for my children, for everyone”. Like so many other devastated parents she’d go on to meet, she made her decision. She got up every morning, got dressed and brushed her teeth, and carried on. She was strong for everyone.

“It was awful,” she says of that time, fighting back tears 16 years later. “You can’t describe what it does to a family. It was hell.” We’re meeting in James’ Place in London, a centre offering free treatment to men in suicidal crisis. It’s the second centre Milford Haven has opened, part of her journey from distraught mother to charity founder, via fundraiser and government lobbyist. “We didn’t want any other family to go through what we went through.”

Milford Haven, a very youthful, polo-playing 63-year-old, who was once the social editor at Tatler, had no idea that her son was going to kill himself. “It didn’t cross my mind,” she says, although she knew that he “wasn’t right”. James had no history of mental illness or depression, he was popular and sporty. But he’d recently had a routine operation, and she knew he was worrying that it had gone wrong, despite assurances that it hadn’t.

Clare Milford Haven co-founded James’ Place after the death of her son, James Wentworth-Stanley
Clare Milford Haven co-founded James’ Place after the death of her son, James Wentworth-Stanley
WENTWORTH-STANLEY FAMILY

He’d come home from Newcastle University for a get-together with his father, Milford Haven’s former husband Nick Wentworth-Stanley, and various siblings and step-siblings. James looked terrible, “like a rabbit caught in the headlights”. Worried, Milford Haven called her GP and booked James in to see the surgeon the next day for reassurance that the operation had gone well. But James delayed the appointment and, on the drive over to his father’s house, seemed completely fine, even singing in the car along with his siblings.

“We all got to Nick’s house and we were having a drink and then someone came in and said, ‘There’s been a terrible accident,’ and . . . this primeval maternal thing kicked in. I said, ‘Where’s James, where’s James, where’s James?’ ” The worst had happened.

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The statistics are staggering: suicide is the biggest killer of men aged between 18 and 34, and men are far more likely to die by suicide than women. But the signs can be impossible to spot, often triggered by a personal crisis rather than a history of mental illness. “To this day I’m confounded. I always felt I knew James like the back of my hand. He was an open book.” She pauses to catch her breath, the grief still raw. “And then in the aftermath you’re looking for answers. You’re reliving every single detail, everything he did before, everything he said to his friends. You go through everything trying to get answers.”

It emerged that James had sought help, visiting a walk-in centre in Newcastle a week after his operation, where he said he felt anxious and suicidal. “A red flag should have come up,” she says. Instead, he was referred to A&E as a low priority, where he waited for a while but soon left. “He needed reassurance. He needed help with his anxieties. Instead he was shunted to A&E.” A few days later James was dead.

Some cards used in therapy at James’ Place in London, a centre that helps men experiencing a suicidal crisis
Some cards used in therapy at James’ Place in London, a centre that helps men experiencing a suicidal crisis
GETTY IMAGES

It’s exactly at that crisis stage, when men need urgent support, that James’ Place steps in. Milford Haven spent years trying to figure out what would have helped James, and she landed on this: a calm, welcoming place, offering an evidence-based intervention. The charity, which she founded with James’s father, established its first centre in Liverpool. It was opened by Prince William in 2018, after years of fundraising, including by James’s brother, Harry, who rowed across the Atlantic to raise £650,000.

Prince William unveiling a plaque during a visit to the London centre of James’ Place (with co-founders Clare Milford Haven and Nick Wentworth-Stanley, right)
Prince William unveiling a plaque during a visit to the London centre of James’ Place (with co-founders Clare Milford Haven and Nick Wentworth-Stanley, right)
GETTY IMAGES

The latest centre opened last year in London, just off Old Street. It’s a lovely old townhouse done up in soothing taupes, which feels more like a comfortable private club than a medical facility. Referrals come from local GPs, A&E, student counselling services and self-referrals, and treatment is a short, intensive intervention to dismantle a person’s suicidal crisis, moving them on to more support if needed.

“It’s usually around six to eight sessions with the best-trained therapists. It offers a permanent solution to a temporary crisis,” Milford Haven explains. The centres have treated 1,500 suicidal men since 2018, and they’re currently running an appeal for £10 million to open three more, starting with Newcastle this November. “With five centres we will be within reach of half of the male population,” says Milford Haven.

She wipes her eyes with a tissue as we speak. Even after everything she’s done, all the people her charity has helped and the families she’s personally met, she is, she says, still traumatised. “But now I can think about suicide in a very practical way. James’ Place means we can think and talk about James in the context of suicide prevention. We remember him every day.”
jamesplace.org.uk