To view original article click here
Mad World News
Posted on February 13, 2015
by
A British woman was caught on film by a reality television show production company doing something she was so ashamed of she thought her life was over, especially since the recording crew kept taunting her with the taping and insisted on airing it despite her pleas to keep it quiet. Now that the targeted woman, who once had a bright future, has killed herself over the incident, the crew has decided to not put the offending footage on television.
Elizabeth Outram was excited for her 30th birthday party her friends had planned, complete with a biker-style theme. In keeping with the aesthetic, Outram went shopping at a TK Maxx clothing store in search of the perfect leather jacket. She found the perfect one, but the price on the coat was more than she could afford, so she switched the tag with one from a lesser expensive item. Little did she know, she was being watched the entire time, not just by store security, but by a reality television crew as well, filming girls in the store for a “caught on camera” style show, the London Evening Standard reported.
With all eyes on her, she was arrested for shoplifting and brought back into a security room. Unfortunately, the crew continued to film, despite her pleading with them to stop and informing all personnel in the room that she was mentally ill, having suffered since 2007 with depression, anxiety, and panic attacks. Evidently, all these elements just made for better entertainment, but the young woman was mortified.
According to Outram’s 31-year-old sister, Alexandra Outram, Elizabeth couldn’t handle the humiliation from both the arrest and the reality show. In the days after the incident, her surviving sister said the crew grew relentless. “[The production company] hounded her, kept sending her messages and calling her, she told them she was receiving psychiatric treatment and she wasn’t well, but it was just ignored,” Alexandra described.
Although there’s never a valid excuse to commit a crime, the sisters had already suffered great loss in their lives with their mother passing from cancer when they were children and their father had more recently died, which were the root causes of her mental anguish. Elizabeth had first attempted suicide on August 14, by overdosing on her antidepressant medications, then following the theft she left a suicide note for her sister, asking to be buried alongside her father in the City of London Crematorium.
After an evening out celebrating her birthday, friends found Outram hanging unconscious in her home and tried to revive her, but their attempts failed.
Society downplays anxiety and depression as mental struggles people should just “get over,” but they are real and extremely debilitating conditions to sufferers around the world. Your words and torment of someone in public or online, which is often worse, can kill. Uplift others with what you say, not ruin them in the name of revenge or lust for financial gain, like in Elizabeth’s case with the production company. That one insult or expressed desire of someone’s demise, may be the last thing that person hears.