Family’s history of mental illness

LIKE his two brothers, who both killed themselves, John Hogan has been dogged with clinical depression since childhood.

But he had stopped taking antidepressants seven months before he leapt from a fourth-floor balcony with son Liam and daughter Mia in August 2006.

At a previous court hearing, Hogan said he might have been driven to the incident because his “mental functions” were unhinged.

He said he was “mentally disorientated” when the tragedy occurred.

A statement from Hogan, handed to Greek judges by Mr Xiritakis in 2006, said: “I have suffered from a mental illness for many years, perhaps from birth.

“My brothers, Stephen and Paul, committed suicide because of serious personality disorders.

“My dad, John, died following a long battle with MS. My father’s illness had changed our house into a little hospital, where despair and grief ruled.

“The death of my brother, Stephen, who I was very close to because we were a similar age, shocked me very much.”

His older brother, Paul, had been a manic depressive who had been sectioned in a mental hospital. In 2004, after setting fire to the home, he committed suicide by jumping from the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol.