Ireland has lost a great researcher and a caring clinician with the death of the distinguished and eminent psychiatrist, Dr Michael Kelleher. Both the country and his fellow doctors are entitled to feel a deep sense of loss. He knew that he was dying. He knew that his days were drawing to a close and that cancer was to deny him his continuing love of research and his even greater love of his dear family. Yet, despite this knowledge, he never, for a single moment considered giving up.
To the very end he continued to work on his research. To the very end he continued his lifelong encouragement and support for his junior doctors. And to very end he continued to contact friends and colleagues to discuss new ideas for research and to inquire after their own health and that of their families. He drew great comfort from his religious beliefs, but the anchor and inspiration for his work, both in times of good health and in times of desperate sickness, remained his wife Margaret and his family, of whom he was intensely proud and for whom he was himself a constant source of inspiration and strength.
It is, of course, for his groundbreaking work on Irish suicide that he will be best remembered. But he was an eminent researcher and clinician across much wider areas of psychiatric medicine. His early work involved a very substantial international study under the auspices of the World Health Organisation, investigating diagnostic processes in Britain and the US. Thereafter he published in the areas of arson, personality disorder, and psychiatry of the elderly.
His interest in suicide was relatively recent and was spawned by his support for a newly qualified psychiatrist who suggested that together they investigate the problem of suicide and self-harm in Cork. Over the subsequent 15 years, his work led to published research in an increasingly eminent range of peer-reviewed journals and he became, in the process, a leading international authority on suicide, travelling the world to lecture and to teach and becoming a well known figure in the Irish media.
He hosted a worldwide psychiatric conference on suicide in his beloved Cork, which attracted leading investigators to consider this important topic. And only five years ago he set up the National Suicide Research Foundation, which went on to make the most major of contributions to the National Task Force on Suicide. His well established and growing international reputation lead to the prestigious British Journal of Psychiatry asking him to write an editorial on Irish suicide research. It was his last academic work and will now, sadly, be published posthumously.
As a lecturer he had the unusual and rare ability to convey complex information simply. He was as much at home with an audience from the general public as from psychiatry, nursing, general medicine or international researchers. His clarity of thought and succinctness of style resulted in him being a much sought-after speaker. I shared a platform with him on many occasions and he was always an affirming and appreciative co-speaker.
In recent years he had become increasingly concerned at the growing support for assisted suicide, both in the popular press and within the medical profession. It led to a series of passionately argued articles in the national press which served to highlight his tremendous ethical and professional standards, standards which he constantly sought to impress upon his junior doctors.
In removing the taboo surrounding suicide in Ireland, Michael Kelleher performed a service that is immeasurable. He was a great man and his early death, at the apogee of his career, will create a loss that will be felt by the profession and friends alike.
P.C.