'Collapse of NHS system pushed dentist to take her own life'

Ingrid Gill's resignation from a dental practice in North Yorkshire two years ago seemed to be yet one more illustration of a collapsing NHS dental system. "Outdated and failing patients" read the Yorkshire Post headline over a story detailing her departure and that of a neighbouring Lithuanian dentist who said the system resembled something from the Soviet era.

But the dental practice's public assertion that Mrs Gill was simply suffering "ill health" belied the psychological toll which her immense workload - dealing single-handedly with 1,500 NHS patients - had taken on her. An inquest has heard that Mrs Gill never recovered from it. Her husband, Ian, believes the anxiety she developed at the Birdgate dental practice, near Pickering, led her to commit suicide by taking an overdose of anti-depressants and whisky in January this year. She was 46.

North Yorkshire's NHS dentistry problems had been well chronicled when Mrs Gill, also a talented artist and ceramicist, took her job at the practice in November 2005. With dentists deserting the NHS in droves (largely because of the failure of salaries to keep pace with workload), more than 300 people queued to register when a Dutch dentist arrived to take NHS work in Scarborough in February 2004 - only to resign weeks later when it became clear that she had a previous criminal conviction.

But the job opportunity at one of Pickering's two dental practices still seemed perfect for Swiss-born Mrs Gill. She and her husband Ian, a dental technician, liked the area and the couple had ambitions to open an art gallery there. Mrs Gill had worked in NHS dentistry for 20 years but within weeks the new workload began to take its toll. The former cancer sufferer felt she lacked support from the practice's other dentists, who had private clients.

Eventually, Mrs Gill was taken to hospital with colitis, an inflammatory disease of the lower intestine, and one of the owners of the practice, Sarah Glover, asked her to resign from the NHS list, the inquest heard. Mrs Gill was told that the practice was considering converting the NHS patients into private patients and that she could possibly pick them up again when she recovered. The North Yorkshire Family Health Service wrote to Mrs Gill's patients, explaining the situation.

"In my opinion it was a very nice way of getting rid of the NHS list," Mr Gill told the inquest. "They said they would consider converting the NHS list into private so she could return once she recovered, but that put her in an impossible situation because she was too ill to make that decision. She was too ill to deal with such a tough call, so was forced to resign. She felt guilty and let down.

"Her name was even printed on Teletext. People were furious at losing the only NHS dentist. But Ingrid was ill. She didn't deserve that. We actually celebrated when she developed colitis, because we were so scared it was secondary cancer."

Though the couple opened their own dental practice after her departure from Birdgate, she continued to need treatment for anxiety and often complained of tiredness. On 2 January this year, she left her husband a letter indicating that she had gone for a drive, in search of some peace and quiet. But a short time later her body was found in her Peugeot 206 car by a park ranger near Crosscliff Brow in Dalby Forest, near Pickering. A bottle of whisky was found on the floor next to her and a post-mortem examination revealed she had taken an overdose of the antidepressant Dothiepin with the alcohol. The coroner, Michael Oakley, sitting at Pickering magistrates' court, said: "There is no other conclusion to be drawn than that Mrs Gill intended to take her own life."

Mr Gill said: "I'm not at all surprised that so many NHS dentists leave the profession, retire early or go private, because it is such a stressful job. Ingrid never fully recovered from the stress of being at that practice. Her downfall was that she was too clever. She looked so deeply into things."

The switch to private practice

A small number of dentists has been left to deal with huge patient demand in Britain because many in the profession have abandoned a lot of their NHS work - in which they are paid a fee for each treatment in a "piece-work" system, rather than for the number of patients on their book. Private work is simply more profitable. Most dentists now carry out both NHS and private consultations.

There is also a shortage of dentists in the UK: around 30,000, but nearly 2,000 less than is needed, according to the British Dental Association. According to the BDA, the number of dentists earning most of their salary from the NHS dropped from 75 per cent in 1993 to 60 per cent in 2003. In the 1980s private dentistry accounted for less than 10 per cent of dentists' income.

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