Zoe Thorogood was walking back to her flat in Bradford last month when she got the call. For two days she had been trying to track down her younger brother, but with no luck.
The 26-year-old graphic novelist had sent James “some funny reels on Instagram, and they were ignored”. This wasn’t unusual – sometimes he would take days to get back to her.
“But it was when his girlfriend messaged me saying that James hadn’t seen her message in 10 hours that I phoned him. His phone was off. I then phoned mum and it all exploded from there.”
Nobody knew where James was. His absence was reported to the police, which Thorogood calls a “hideously infuriating experience”, leading her to try to track him down through friends and online contacts.
“And that’s when I started to panic because they also claimed to know nothing,” she says. “I walked home and as I was around 50 metres from my flat, my dad phoned. He was crying. Dad doesn’t cry. I knew what that meant. He just told me to come home, and nothing more. I just remember falling on to the floor screaming in the street.”
James had taken his own life. And once the dust had begun to settle from the bomb that had been thrown under the family, Thorogood decided she had to do something to help other families like them, and perhaps stop what happened to James, “now eternally 23”, happening to others.
Thorogood has a platform and a following, as one of Britain’s top young graphic novelists. Last year, at the famous San Diego comic convention, she was nominated for five Eisner awards, the comics industry’s Oscars, almost unprecedented for such a young creator.
She debuted as a graphic novelist in 2020 with The Impending Blindness of Billie Scott, published by Avery Hill and based on her own experiences of when it was feared she might lose her sight as a child, and her major breakthrough work was It’s Lonely at the Centre of the Earth, an autobiographical tale of her own battles with depression and mental ill health, which brought her international attention.
Her work, she says, “feels worthless right now. I’ve had people claim that my work may have ‘saved their lives’, yet, I couldn’t even ‘save’ my own brother. I think being a ‘mental health artist’, or whatever you want to call me, and going through this feels like a giant hand coming out of the clouds and pointing at me and laughing. I know this feeling is temporary, but right now, I hate art.”
But in the wake of James’s death she announced that all profits from It’s Lonely at the Centre of The Earth, which was published by US comics giant Image, will be donated to mental health charities. The publishers of the Italian, French and Spanish editions have said they will match the donations.
“The idea was a very knee-jerk reaction I think,” said Thorogood. “I was in shock for a few days and I think I felt desperate to do something. It was after a conversation I had with my dad, where we agreed that good things had to come of this for our own sakes. We’d heard from others who’d lost loved ones that the pain never goes and your life is never the same. And we just decided that’s not us.
“So even if I had to force it, I need positive things to come of this. For my own mental health. Maybe that’s selfish but I figure an initiative like this is helping everyone, so whatever. This book is about mental health, features James, and it’s how I make money – it made perfect sense to me.”
Male suicide is a growing problem in the UK. According to government statistics released this year, out of 5,354 suicides between April 2023 and June 2024, almost 4,000 were men or boys. Many charities and awareness campaigns have been trying to get men, traditionally reticent about opening up about their feelings, to talk more.
James, who ran his own 3D printing business, did suffer from mental health difficulties, but what was even more of a shock to the family was that, according to Thorogood, he did not fit the traditional mould of the young man keeping his troubles locked inside. “I understand the narrative of men not talking about their feelings, but James did not fit that,” she says. “I shut down when I’m depressed and ignore the world, but my brother would phone me sobbing at four in the morning, and I’m glad he would. Though, in the past few weeks he was better than he’d been in a while, at least to me.”
The siblings grew up on a farm, and with a three-year age gap were close as children. “I think mostly because I forced him into friendship,” says Thorogood. “I was a very brash child, and James was very reserved. But we spent a lot of time together. Playing Lego and video games. We were close but we bickered a lot – a standard sibling relationship I guess.
“In my teenage years we drifted entirely. I had just been diagnosed with depression and anxiety at 14 and was handling it poorly. I was skipping a lot of school and being a general menace. James was always so good and well behaved, very lawful and kind, quite serious. And I was the opposite. I’d kind of decided James and I would never be close, thanks to our opposite personalities. This was until around three years ago when he, pretty randomly, asked to phone me.
“He was telling me about worries with his mental health, and I guess because I’d been through it a decade prior he thought to talk to me about it. We discussed our childhood and life situations, and slowly over the last few years became, from my perspective, and I hope he felt the same, best friends. We phoned almost every week, and texted almost daily.”
Thorogood has put her own struggles into her work, and had discussed with James a follow-up to her book, “telling other people’s stories of mental health and trauma”. She had discussed with him using his experiences for a new project, to be called It’s Crowded at the Centre of the Earth, detailing his issues, treatment and recovery.
“I don’t see myself making that book anymore, at least for a long time,” she says. “I think I could make something poignant and helpful eventually, but I don’t know when.”
Thorogood and her family will decide at the end of the year which charities will benefit from the profits generated by the sales of It’s Lonely, but they will be organisations that help men struggling with mental health.
She says: “I think men have a real issue with discussing their feelings and being able to admit to mental health issues. There’s a shame women don’t feel as much. I assume there’s pressure to appear strong, but there’s nothing stronger than going against the grain and stepping out of the box you’ve built for yourself.”
Contact the Samaritans for free from any telephone on 116 123. You can call even if you don’t have credit on your mobile, and the number won’t show up on phone bills. Or you can email jo@samaritans.org or go to www.samaritans.org to find details of your nearest branch, where you can talk to one of our trained volunteers face to face.
In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international suicide helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org
