218 Dr Brown observed that it was very unusual for a person to suffer a fresh onset of anxiety or depression after an extended period without displaying or experiencing any symptoms consistent with either condition in the interim, but, accepting that it was possible, in her view, the likelihood of it occurring was dependent on the type of stressor the individual has been exposed to, the psychological profile of the particular individual, and the degree of connection between the stressor and the event or events that resulted in anxiety or depression at the earlier point in time. Where a traumatic event is said to be re-experienced by exposure to a subsequent event she emphasised the importance of looking at each individual case in order to determine whether the particular subsequent event is likely to have a sufficient connection with the primary event to induce a relapse or recurrence of symptoms. In so far as the plaintiff was concerned, Dr Brown was of the view that in the absence of what she could identify as a significantly sufficient stressor, the recurrence of the anxiety and depressive symptoms the plaintiff experienced from early 2002, and the progressive onset of panic type symptoms and avoidance from that time, were most likely associated with a separate or spontaneous onset of illness unrelated to his mistreatment at secondary school.
219 I have already highlighted the divergence in the accounts the plaintiff gave to Dr Diamond in December 2004 and to Dr Brown in November 2006 and the evidence he gave in the proceedings as to his reaction to the Myall magazine and thereafter. Rather than describing the experience of acute symptoms of anxiety in the immediate aftermath of reading the book, Dr Brown gathered from what the plaintiff told her that his depressive and anxiety based symptoms began to gradually develop and became more severe during the following year. She went on to say, however, that it was not simply the fact of delayed onset of these symptoms that caused her to doubt that reading the magazine was a trigger event of a relevant kind but, equally as importantly, that the information in the magazine was not new to the plaintiff, however embarrassing and humiliating it may have been for that information to be exposed to a family friend. She emphasised that the plaintiff was aware he was unpopular and, in one sense, should not have been surprised that some of his peers may have reflected that in one form or another as part of their Year 12 profiles, despite it being wholly inappropriate for the school to publicise that commentary. In addition, she pointed out that the plaintiff had worked in school environments in the years between leaving high school in 1997 and reading the magazine in 2001 where he confronted the issue of bullying from a teacher's perspective with a robust determination to deal with it without it being productive of any adverse psychological reaction. In short, in her view, there were a range of potential triggers for the plaintiff to develop anxiety or depressive type symptoms because of their reminding effect well before he was confronted with the magazine in 2001. In these circumstances, she thought it more likely that the emergence of depressive symptoms after he returned to the Glengarry campus and before the school year commenced in 2002, symptoms that became pronounced as the school year progressed, while temporally and contextually related to reading the magazine causing the plaintiff to ruminate over his past life events, were not causally related in a clinical sense. Dr Brown did not challenge the plaintiff's perception of the link between reading the magazine, his mistreatment at Farrer and his disturbed emotional state, but adhered to the view that to attribute his condition at that time to his troubled past did not equate with the magazine being a stressor in the clinical sense.
220 When she was taken by Mr McIlwaine to the plaintiff's evidence where he described being upset, angry, embarrassed and humiliated when reading the magazine she agreed that they were words of distress and upset and, from a subjective point of view, he was doubtless experiencing distress and anger. However, viewed objectively, she did not regard his reaction as indicating a severe emotional decompensation such as might explain, in clinical terms, the plaintiff's development of more acute emotional problems in the months that followed. Similarly, the argument with his parents and his decision to leave the family home and return to campus was not in her view significant in clinical terms. When it was suggested to her that in the clinical setting she had failed to thoroughly investigate with him what his feelings were beyond reportedly being annoyed at the publication she said:
"I would have, had I been alerted to the possibility that he had had a more severe reaction, from my understanding of his description of being extremely annoyed, that was the limit of what he said. He did not tell me that he was humiliated by this."