The school started saying I was depressed and I needed to see an Educational Psychologist. And I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to see anybody. I think now looking back, I feel quite angry that they thought that I was the problem, when in actual fact it was my family that was problematic, but it was like they were pointing the finger at me, ‘You are abnormal and you need to see somebody, a psychiatrist or a psychologist.

We went to see my GP and my Mum told me what to say to him, and she was there making sure that I said what she had told me to say, and so I just sort of said that I had classroom problems at school, which is true, I mean I did, I wasn’t popular at school. I didn’t have friends. I was appalling at games, which makes people very unpopular and yes, so I didn’t have any friends and I wasn’t, I wasn’t popular with the teachers either, but I just said that I had school problems and it was just, it was an ongoing battle for like about four years, between the school and home. You know, they would look for any evidence they could that I was, because what happened, somebody wrote to them and said I was depressed and that I needed to see a psychiatrist. And they picked up on that, and I think because they were a private school they didn’t want any kind of problems there. So they just kept saying to my parents, you know, ‘If she doesn’t see a psychiatrist she can’t continue her education here. And they would look for any evidence they could, like you know, I wrote a poem, and like they would bring a poem, a poem, in on subjects, and they would bring it up, like two terms later and say, ‘Oh, she wrote this poem so she must be depressed. And it was things, that you know, it as just like they were looking for evidence that they could find, just to hassle me, and of course it made everything worse at school. It made everything worse at home, because they were going back to tell my parents. And my Mother was getting angry and saying, ‘Why are you behaving like this, and letting them think there is something wrong?’

And yes, the whole thing kind of culminated in me taking a massive paracetamol overdose in my mid teens. And I subsequently got thrown out of school, because they said, ‘That meant that I was going to be a problem to teachers and pupils and they didn’t want me there. [sniff] And that was when, I suppose, I did, finally get all the input from people who I hadn’t wanted to see. I was made a ward of court. I was forced to see a psychiatrist, a social worker, a court welfare officer, a psychotherapist, and I never, you know, I never told them what was going on, because my Mum had this lie sort of ready fabricated and she told me if I didn’t tell them why I had taken an overdose, they would, they would put me away.

Saying that two factories I worked in I had nervous breakdown they always had to cart me out of the factory [smiles]. They call my, one, the first one come called my mum and dad, they got, carted me off to hospital. The second one called my wife, carted me off to hospital [laughs] so although the first one was my apprenticeship, you know my apprenticeship? And that’s the time I said to you, I said to you, I said, they said You must go and be rehabilitated but you won’t be coming back here And I said it wasn’t like that I couldn’t do the job, I went elsewhere and got a job. Second one I did tell them about mental illness and I was slow at my work because basically I couldn’t function because of sleepiness and tiredness and so on so I got the Speedy didn’t I [laughs] which speaks for itself. So I got the nickname Speedy and coped with that and I had a breakdown at the factory.

But otherwise were they, were they sort of quite accommodating aboutnbsp;

Yeah they were, yeah they’re always understanding to a degree. They, there were no malice, I felt no malice there, I felt comfortable working there, but it’s just that I was so precision in my work that it does take me long to do the work properly because I really like just to get it done right. And if it’s done wrong I will let them know. If it’s, I work to thousandth of an inch so when they, you work to 2000th of an inch sometimes and sometime it’s just under the 2000th of an inch and this, I say, Oh my God it’s under the tolerance But the foundry man, the factory foreman he said, No that will be alright, let it go. Although it got a tolerance you can give it a little bit more either way So luckily my job is highly scrapped by I always work to a precision size. I do know you can’t actual, actual dead size, there’s no way you can get a dead size but I work as closely to a dead size as possible. So they’re aware of that, so they call me speedy because, but the thing is they’re give me the job, they know, want the accuracy so I don’t, but they call me Speedy and so on. I get the job which demands a lot of skill and concentration which I tend to lack a lot of after a while so I go round the back to have a sleep often, come back and do the job. And they’re not really aware why, what I’m doing as such but they just say, [Lorenz] had gone out the back again But it was only till I’d had a quick nap and feel fresh again.

I drink coffee all the time, you know, I have, oh saying that about coffee and things there was an occasion where the drug wasn’t working very well, I was so sleepy, splashed water on my face, at work, next time different, I thought that would wake me up but water, coffee, absolutely no. And that was the time I was mentioned about almost going into the machinery that was pretty bad. I lost the job about three months after that, they just said you wasn’t up to standard but I couldn’t really cope with that sleepiness I was getting. Drug was changed, tolerated a little bit better, still got the sleepiness and so on, it’s continuously it is sleepiness but with all the jobs I must say the psychosis side of the hearing voices, seeing things, that’s all disappeared so that’s the good thing about them all. But the concentration sort of heavy head and trying to think through a cloud like remain through almost all the drugs until this present one. And it’s the trying to do a job of work under a cloud of heavy head and thinking through a cloud, that’s the way I can portray it. It’s very, very difficult.

But in terms of working, as a person who has a mental health condition, I’ve been in my job three years now. The first year was quite easy. It was new, it was, it was fresh, it was building. I was so busy I hardly ever saw staff that I worked with because I was constantly out in the field talking to people etc, building the project. Coming up to the end of the year, then there were, there were problems, there were problems. I think I found it harder that somebody would personally attack me the way I am as a person than the work that I do. Nobody had any complaints about the work that I did, it was character assassination. And considering I took so long to build this perfect me that I was completely happy and contented with as a person, to have someone sit there and, and rip that to pieces, or attempt to rip that to pieces, was extremely disturbing for me. And it did cause me to really rethink, ‘Well, you’re not past it. You can become unwell again.

I’d actually thought that I’m past it. I’d, I thought, ‘Right, I’ve sorted that one. I’ve conquered that. It’s sorted. I take my little pills every day just like everybody else. If you had cancer or diabetes or whatever, you’d pop a pill. I pop my pill and I’m good. And then all this things started happening and I realised that my health was not so secure and in the bag, and I could become unwell if I allowed external factors to really get into my head. Because once they got into my head, all my voices just went bonkers. They had a field day. ‘See, it’s not only me saying it. Look, everybody else is saying it,’ sort of thing. So that was interesting. Becoming quite ill and having a lot of time off work was interesting in terms of how people viewed me. On returning to work, unlike most illnesses that you might get, part of my recovery was to do what I normally do. So I normally go to work, so, ‘Go to work. As opposed to you’re still not 100 per cent, so you stay home. But in order for me to recover I had to start doing what I normally do. Which involved coming to work, which involved coming to work in quite a doped-up state and not being as coherent as I normally am, and having people just ignore you, like you wasn’t even there. That people could actually come to your desk and pick up a piece of paper and actually do it as if you wasn’t there, was quite amazing to me.

That my place of work lacked a certain level of understanding. I mean we overcame it, but it was there. This desire for me not to be around because people didn’t know how to take me. So it would be better if I stayed at home until I was better. So once again, ‘let’s just tuck the mad person away because they’re making me uncomfortable’ type scenario. And I must admit, it didn’t help me to speedily recover, having to, to deal with that.

But I spoke to my manager about it in length, and we had to work it out. Because I thought to myself, at that point strangely enough it gave me the fight to recover, because it was an injustice. And one of my voices that are extremely strong cannot stand injustice. And she will kick my butt out of bed to try and effect change because she can’t stand it. And something forced me back into work and, and challenging negative behaviour and stigma and forcing people to fear, face up to their fears and admit their fears, so that it can be talked about. And we got over it. It didn’t happen overnight, but we did get over it. But it, it really did show me that, in 2006 as it was at the time, that these things are still going on. And you’d think that with all these equal opportunity this and DDA and everything else, that people wouldn’t dare behave in such a way. But they do, they do. And it, it was like, ‘My God. Wow. I can’t believe it. And number two, it’s actually happening to me. It wasn’t happening to somebody else, some

And then I got involved with my local community, and joined my local community church. All this time I am suffering from paranoid schizophrenia and depression. But because I was suffering from that it made me want to do more of what I am doing. More of this music, more of this drama, helping people. Anyway, I got involved with my local Baptist church and then I got involved with the church itself, they made me Deacon, a Deacon in the church, I was preaching, taking Sunday School, doing entertainment within the borough in the hall of the church. I used to organised music events and at one of the event, the group that was organising it I met two people from my local hospital who knew me when I was admitted to the hospital. Because they know me and knew I played music, they said they were looking for me, they were looking for space in the community to do music with a few guys from the hospital, like myself.

And I said to them, ‘Oh, there is a space round the local Methodist Church. Let me know ask the minister because I know him. Because I meet him when I preach, I’m a preacher there. And yes, and he said they could use a space that they have got in the basement, of the basement studio which was a proper music studio, which actually had people working there professionals, it was a professional studio. But they had a bit of a problem with the church, they weren’t paying and rent and stuff like that so the church got rid of them.

And at the same time I asked him so I said to the two persons from the hospital, ‘There is space here. So that is how we, I got involved with a few people at Sound Minds. It wasn’t called Sound Minds then. It was just the music group. And then they asked me, they said, ‘Devon would you like to get funded and run this, because you are a music man, you used to do music with the bands from Balham, for people in the community’ So I said, ‘No, I can’t do that, I’m all, I’m sick, I’m all drugged out, I can’t cope with that. But if you get someone else to do it with me I don’t mind.

So they applied for funding, they got funding, and then they employed someone from the community. We had advertising in the local, in the press and the national Guardian and they found someone and interviewed and I started to work at Sound Minds Black person and that is how Sound Minds started, plus I was working at the local hospital where I was admitted, they took me on as an OT technician to work with the same person who I spoke to in the community who started with the music with me. So he felt, he helped me to, to work at [the psychiatric hospital], to work at the hospital, so that I get some sort of background of working within mental health. And he, and my position there was an OT technician so I did that as well as working for Sound Minds I did three days at Sound Minds and two days working with the, in the hospital.

I would leave the hospital grounds, come, drive down to Sound Minds, do a session there and drive up to, in the evening time, drive up to Mitchum, do a drop in at Mitchum and then from that time from 8 oclock go home. And the next day do a bit of [psychiatric hospital], come back do a bit of Sound Minds. It was very hard work then, because at that time, people with mental health problems was working. I was one of the first person to work as a mental health patient full time and in mental health because of the project which was headlining down in the local hospital called User Employment Project, was a new thing. Where, the, the people who employed were people that were part, who had a sickness working within the same hospital that they were admitted in which was never done before. So I was one of the first people to be on that project and that is how I first went to work at Sound Minds and work as an

And do you think having depression has affected your life in any way?

It has, yes. A lot of people, when you’re depressed, you’ve got an illness, they don’t, you know who your friends are. Most people that know that I have, really, don’t really say much, don’t speak to me.

And this has happened since you had the depression?

Yes.

Do you know why that might be?

Well, they just probably think that I’m not, not good enough for them, to be a friend, you know. Black people are, they’re full of pride. I mean if something goes wrong they tell you, you know. Like, you know, always with whites, when somebody is ill they still get help. But, you know, with blacks, you know, they don’t want to, they just don’t want to be involved, involved in things like that, get involved.

So basically I had, I’ve had massive huge problems with women. It’s like some how I repulse them. I’m okay, I’m actually excellent with people who I want to be friendly with and I have, I would consider, excellent people skills. Wherever I go, everyone knows me, I know everyone. But starting the relationship with a girl is something that I’ve found near impossible. It’s like, I don’t know what is wrong with me in that respect. I’ve tried to analyse it so much, so much, but I couldn’t. Sometimes I would come to a conclusion that, ‘Okay, I’m not good looking enough’, but then later on, you know, I would see that, okay, there are people out there who have good personalities and that’s I think all there is that counts. But I think it’s something in my head that stops me from doing it. I don’t know what that is. I’ve never been able to identify it. Friends have always been there. I’ve always been able to make friends’

There was a period, about one year period, in the past two, three years where I couldn’t even speak to a woman. That was something that was – and then people started judging me, and people started making remarks, and I became a real weirdo. It was like a very anti-social person who lost all the confidence, and very, very self conscious. I am all those things right now, but I sort of put a mask on me successfully. And I think it worked anyway. And that, I think that was the lowest point of my life, where I would feel so sad and so down that it was unbelievable, it was beyond help. And I don’t think it was beyond help, but I never seeked help, that’s the thing’

I mean I mentioned women. I mentioned my lack of competition, self esteem, confidence, but I think these things are lost because of depression. Depression is not there because of them. I think they are because I had depression and lost all these things.

And it always felt difficult to make, make friends as well. So it just stayed like that for, you know, for like so many years I think up to like when I was 18, from seven. Didn’t have any friends, I didn’t really enjoy doing what I’d do, you know, I couldn’t I hated like holidays because there was no, you know, sort of things to do because I didn’t have anybody to go with that way. I used to enjoy sort of, well now, I used to enjoy going to school because it was something to do.

But then when I was there, you know, I didn’t actually enjoy it. So, everything was like a chore. You know, I, I’d go there because I felt, you know, I’d be at school I’d be with people or I’d be with family that I didn’t really get on with much on weekends, and the visiting relatives and things like that. And it, it took a long time to, don’t know, say to adjust to that kind of, I knew in, in my mind as well that, you know, from people’s reaction, my family’s and that, that I knew they didn’t understand me or they didn’t realise what was happening. So I just, you know, I did, kind of got used to spending a lot of time on my own, say like if I wasn’t at the library or at home doing my work I might go into town, go to the shops but mostly it’d be on own, on my own.

I might meet somebody from school or, you know, relative in town but that I found that really hard because I didn’t have the confidence, I didn’t know what to talk to them about if I saw them, so I’d, sometimes I’d avoid them. You know, like, if I’d see somebody coming I’d, you know, either cross the road or go into a shop or and , you know, just found it really hard to do any sort of talking like that, you know, on the spot.

On the other hand I was like, in a way like forced as well to go, well not forced but sort of it’s the cultural thing like, you know, with weddings and things it was like every, every time there was a family wedding you had to be there. And I’d find it hard really being there with lots of people and my appetite used to go all the time. I didn’t really eat much a lot of the time I found it difficult eating, quite a lot of places. I mean, I couldn’t force to myself to go say to the wedding or restaurants where they, if my family went or my cousins went, I might go with them sometimes but I wouldn’t eat much and I wouldn’t say much during the meals and things.

Sometimes I’d, you know, feel physically sick because I’d, so like that kind of thing, you know, I knew that I didn’t , you know, I didn’t fit in. But, on the other, I just kind of blamed myself as well because I thought oh it was just me, you know, I can break out of it or, if I do more things I’d learn about it. And I was expecting to, like you know, sort of collapse one day with this, you know, with the anxiety and stuff but it never happened.

It never, you know, it’s like, so I’d always manage to sort of always, well I get through situations like the, you know, exams and things. I found them quite difficult and even though I was good at , you know, did well in them, in my school and initially I just always anxious about you know, how well I’m going to do or how badly I’m going to do. So I was always constantly worried about them. But the sort of fears never materialised so I just thought, you know, I’m just going to either get better or just going to collapse and that’s how people will realise, you know, there’s something wrong. But nobody really seemed to notice because I think I’d been like that for so many years that people just, you know, thought it was just me.

Before I was ill, I could do a lot of things for myself. Everything was normal. I could take care of myself; I could manage my life well and very smoothly. But since I became ill, things started to go wrong. My illness means that my mind does not function properly; as if my mind is not entirely under my control and that I have to do what my mind feels like doing. People who haven’t experiences this would obviously find very difficult to understand. Whatever tasks you want to perform is always under your control, right? But what I am doing is not entirely under my control.