Call centre worker kills herself over job stress

Hayley Gardner, 36, who had been diagnosed with a social phobia, was taking a daily dose of the tablets fluoxetine to combat her concern over changes to her job at the Ventura call centre in Manvers, South Yorkshire.

She went with her mother Linda Cruise to Goldthorpe’s Primary Care centre where a GP filled in a standard patient health questionnaire for depression.

Mrs Cruise told a Sheffield inquest the doctor ticked all the boxes on the form, including one which stated “Do you want to end your life?”

Miss Gardner replied “yes.” She was already taking two anti-depressant tablets daily and the GP told her to take three.

Despite Miss Gardner’s reply, in a letter to the coroner read at the inquest the GP, Dr Maurice Mann said: “There was no reason to believe she was going to do anything to harm herself.”

Miss Gardner, of Bolton on Dearne, saw the GP on July 25 last year. Three days later she was found hanged.

A post-mortem examination showed she had two-and-a-half times the legal drink-drive limit of alcohol in her system, as well as fluoxetine. The cause of death was given as hanging.

Assistant deputy coroner Donald Coutts-Wood adjourned the inquest and said he needed to make more inquiries of the GP.