Paragraph 7 reads: "His wife said: 'He was very depressed, he didn’t have any confidence in anything. He was seeing a counsellor and was on medication. Nothing was lifting him out of it.' ”
A MAN suffering from severe depression killed himself after telling his family: “I can’t go on any more”.
Retired GlaxoSmithKline employee, David Alan Butterworth, was reported missing to police after his wife Elaine returned home and found a note from him saying: “I can’t go on any more.”
A massive search operation was launched, which involved a diving team sweeping the nearby canal, police dogs and officers walking along the viaduct leading from Ulverston to Grange.
But it was a lone dog walker who discovered Mr Butterworth’s body on September 3, five days after he went missing.
At an inquest at Barrow Town Hall yesterday, the coroner for South and East Cumbria, Mr Ian Smith, said: “The pathologist conducted a post-mortem and he found the cause of death was external bleeding due to self-inflicted wounds to the groin, thigh and wrist.”
The inquest heard that Mr Butterworth, 57, had suffered from depression for some time. His wife, son and daughter attended the hearing.
His wife said: “He was very depressed, he didn’t have any confidence in anything. He was seeing a counsellor and was on medication. Nothing was lifting him out of it.”
When the coroner asked her if her husband had seemed any different prior to his disappearance, Mrs Butterworth said: “He was quieter that weekend... he’d been crying too.”
Sergeant Rupert Johnson, of Ulverston police, was involved in the police search.
He said: “When Mr Butterworth was found he was hidden on all three sides by some dense gorse, which was covering him up.
“It appeared, from the scene and in my experience, that these injuries were consistent with self-infliction.”
The coroner gave a narrative verdict of Mr Butterworth’s death.
He said: “Depression is a very serious illness that people can’t pull themselves out of. He didn’t, in the cold light of day, know what he was doing – his illness had taken over.”