Behind Kaitlyn's suicidePage 3 of 4 -- Kaitlyn was clearly affected by her relationship problems, Poulten said; she also showed signs of clinical depression and anxiety. But she asked for help and her parents were trying to get it for her. ''Everyone thought Katie was getting better," she said. ''We don't know what happened from there. I think it was an impulsive act. I think it's not clear that she intended to go through with it."
In fact, just hours before she killed herself, Kaitlyn had been e-mailing her sister, Jennifer Olson, about dresses she might wear to her junior prom in May, Olson said. And Kaitlyn's suicide note in some places sounds like it is the farewell note of a runaway. It reads, in part, ''Please don't call the police. I'll be fine. Please trust me. I love you so much. I'll be back someday." Kathleen Kennedy says Kaitlyn had packed a bag that night, as well. The Kennedys received Kaitlyn's medical records from Westwood Lodge in Westwood, where she was hospitalized for a week after she cut her arm with a paper clip badly enough to drip blood on Feb. 10. It was her 18-month anniversary with her boyfriend. Her journal entry from that day reads ''THIS IS HOW MY [expletive] DAY WENT" and the page is smeared in blotches of blood. Her Westwood Lodge discharge summary notes that when she was admitted on Feb 11, she said, ''I thought about hanging myself or killing myself with a razor." She also said she had been waking up at night and ''hears voices telling her to kill herself." The summary notes that her Zoloft dose had been raised from 100 to 150 milligrams per day while in the hospital. Her Seroquel -- an antipsychotic drug -- was also increased. There is no hint in the records of any suspicion that Kaitlyn might be reacting badly to Zoloft. One nurse wrote on Feb. 11, a week after Kaitlyn's Zoloft had been raised to 100 milligrams a day, that the patient ''reports increase in emotional lability, irritability and anxiety," but did not link it to the drug. Kaitlyn was diagnosed as having a mood disorder and possibly a borderline personality disorder, and a nurse's notes include recent stressors: ''ex-boyfriend threatened to kill himself yesterday" as well as ''conflicts with mother" and ''school failure, social isolation from friends, related to controlling ex-boyfriend." One note also mentions that Kaitlyn needed a ''tattered, crocheted baby blanket" from home for comfort. After six days in the hospital, three of them on a holiday weekend, Kaitlyn was discharged, over her parents' protests that it was too early, said Kathleen Kennedy, who works as a companion to the elderly. They got no explanation for the timing of the discharge, she said, and none of the staff members told her what she later read in Kaitlyn's medical record: that she had repeatedly described her plan to hang herself. Continued... |
