Prince and Princess Michael of Kent’s daughter Lady Gabriella Kingston yesterday spoke out for the first time since her husband Thomas Kingston took his own life.
Lady Kingston, 43, warned about the effects of drugs used to treat mental health problems as a coroner ruled Thomas stopped taking his medication in the days leading to his death. The coroner said Mr Kingston, 45, then used a shotgun to end his life, and was discovered dead at his parents’s house in Gloucestershire.
The financier, who married Lady Kingston on May 18, 2019, at St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, died of a head injury on February 25 and the inquest on Tuesday in Gloucester was told he had struggled with stress and with sleeping in the weeks before his passing.
He had initially been given sertraline, a drug used to treat depression, and zopiclone, a sleeping tablet, by a GP at the Royal Mews Surgery, a practice at Buckingham Palace used by royal household staff. Mr Kingston returned to the surgery saying they were not making him feel better, and his doctor moved him from sertraline to citalopram, a similar drug.
But Lady Kingston, a freelance writer, told the hearing she believed his death was “likely provoked” by an adverse reaction to the medication he had begun, and subsequently stopped. She said: “The lack of any evidence of inclination, it seems highly likely to me that he had an adverse reaction to the pills that led him to take his life.
“I believe anyone taking pills such as these need to be made more aware of the side effects to prevent any future deaths. If this could happen to Tom, this could happen to anyone.”
