Guilt to regret: How Adelaide mother and mental health expert Jill Chapman ‘reframed’ losing her teenage son to suicide

Jill Chapman lost her teenage son to suicide more than 20 years ago – and she’s managed to turn guilt into something else.

Jill Chapman holds a photo of her son Michael Chapman taken on his 15th birthday. Picture: Tricia Watkinson

More than 21 years on from her son’s death, Jill Chapman has trouble remembering what it was like to have her teenage boy around – and she’s OK with that.

It’s a sentiment not often disclosed when reflecting on the tragic death of a loved one and Mrs Chapman said it took a long time to get there.

“It’s not forgetting the person or getting over it, it’s learning to get on with life,” she said.

Losing her son changed her understanding of the mental health system and it was through the bereavement process that she identified a gaping hole – the need for a walk-in service.

In 2008, Mrs Chapman founded MOSH (Minimisation Of Suicide Harm) House in the hope of supporting others grieving a similar loss.

Jill Chapman founded MOSH House following the death of her son, Michael, to suicide when he was 16 in 2001. Picture: Tricia Watkinson

Michael Chapman was a clever and caring teenager with a wicked sense of humour and smile “so large you could measure it”.

He enjoyed hunting with his father in the Flinders Ranges and showed a particular interest in scientific academia, professing his plans to pursue a career in medicine. But from the age of 10, his passions and aspirations were clouded by depression.

Michael kept his mental health concerns hidden from most, but willingly participated in psychiatric counselling and had been prescribed an antidepressant medication.

The extent of his turmoil was not known to those closest to him and he took his own life in August 2001 at the age of 16.

Mrs Chapman said in the weeks leading up to his death, Michael seemed “to have turned a corner … it just wasn’t the corner we thought he’d turned”.

“Looking back there were pivotal moments,” she said.

“But we acted with the knowledge and experience we had at the time … put me there now and I’d do it differently.”

Michael’s death at an Adelaide metropolitan high school was widely publicised, only to be revisited as part of a coronial inquest two years later.

Mrs Chapman said the investigation re-raised unanswered questions, but she determined there was no point in pondering the “why”.

“If I had a magic wand and could find out the answer, what difference would it make?” she said. She described reframing her guilt to better reflect regret.

“As human beings we only need to feel guilty about something knowing what the consequences are going to be,” she said.

Mrs Chapman is passionate about South Australia’s mental health system and varying levels of care facilities, funding and education top her reform list.

But it was an approach likened to a pyramid structure that tied it all together.

At the tip of the pyramid there is a group of clinicians, followed by a slightly larger group of psychologists and then a group of general practitioners and counsellors.

Those medical professionals are succeeded by the largest group – the everyday person.

“Fixing the top level is too hard,” she said.

“The more we can educate and build awareness at the base level, the better off we’re going to be at not funnelling people upwards.

“But it’ll take a generation, that’s why we all have a role to play.”

MOSH House closed its doors in late 2021, but still offers bereavement support in the form of twice-monthly group sessions.

While Mrs Chapman has stepped away from the organisation she once called “her baby”, she said working within the environment was a significant step in her own healing journey.