And it’s really good that you had these supportive interactions now and you trust your friends and your husband and your daughter and so on. Has that always been the case when you’ve talked about either mental health issues or ECT or?

[shakes head] No, a lot of people get really, really frightened, but its people that don’t understand. You know, some doctors don’t even understand. You know, so these, you know, if doctors are medically trained how’s Joe Bloggs in the street going to fully understand what mental health is? In fact everybody has mental health. It just depend on whether It’s good mental health or bad mental health, but hopefully stigma, the barriers will be broken down, but I do feel that theres a lot employers need to do to help support staff. But it’s like everything in life you get good and you get bad, you know, so, but I’ve had some really bad experiences of manager who have almost treated me like a leper and then they’re realised. I’ve left jobs, not because I don’t like the job but because I couldn’t cope with how colleagues treated me. But I suppose I’m quite an open person and if somebody asks then I will say, you know, because I don’t think theres anything to be embarrassed about, but just there is a fear, you know, theres a fear, theres a fear.

With my wife, it hasn’t been a problem because basically once she found out when I had my first episode after getting married then I told her, to be very honest with you, even though I was a medical student, that episode of mental illness I had as a medical student, I did not at that time know that I had bipolar, nobody diagnosed as bipolar because at that time, I had never ever had a high episode, I had only ever had an episode of depression which the label was labelled as a nervous breakdown. And many people had nervous breakdowns and I did actually even perceive as depression, even though I had ECT and anti-depressants, and you know, as far as I was concerned it was something that happened in the past and was probably never going to happen again which is one of the reasons why I didn’t divulge it to my wife before I got married. But I think obviously in the early years, I think my wife was obviously aggrieved that she wasn’t given this information before we got married, but it hasn’t really damaged our relationship I’m pleased to say.

But in terms of family, well I’ve got a very medically orientated family because I’ve got one sister who’s not a medic, but I’ve got two younger brothers, both of whom are also doctors. My middle brother, the one younger to me, is a general practitioner. And the one, the youngest one is a consultant vascular and transplant surgeon. So basically my family probably understand about depression and bipolar and ECT just as much as I do.

But in terms of telling the extended family, it’s not something that I’ve gone, weve gone out of our way to advertise. Some of our extended family, of which theres a very large family, they are aware that I’ve been ill, but they probably don’t know the details of what kind of illness I’ve had, and apart from people who find out at work that you’ve been off ill with a breakdown, I haven’t gone out of my way to tell people that I’ve got bipolar. And most people know that I’ve had mental illness which is why I have prolonged periods of time off work, but they don’t know, most of people don’t probably know that it’s bipolar. Although in recent years in the letter that my psychiatrist has sent to the workplace before returning to work, they have actually mentioned the diagnosis. So I’m sure some of the people at work do know. But it’s not something that worries me as much as it did in the past. I’m no longer embarrassed or ashamed to have this illness because it’s not something I’ve invited, it’s something I’ve been afflicted with.

I guess the kind of the cultural baggage of it was quite significant. And given that [name of wife] was already really uncomfortable with people knowing that she was ill, people knowing that she was on medication, people knowing that she was in hospital. I mean she was in hospital for three months, the second time, three or four months. And she kind of wanted me some how to pretend that she wasn’t and was worried about people finding out that she was in hospital and that was really difficult.

And so ECT was kind of one more thing that somehow was embarrassing or shameful or you know, people weren’t supposed to know about. And you know, that was all part of her experience of illness and since recovery, shes been quite comfortable talking to people about being ill and about being hospitalised and having ECT, but still ECT is a kind of, the last thing to surface and sometimes in a way I think, she kind of enjoys startling people with it. Yes.

And she was absolutely terrified, in the way some medical students are, terrified that I’d already had one quite significant head injury and that whatever ECT would do it would damage or worsen memory and cognition. And she knew that actually feeling as if I’d lost a few IQ points and much less able than I had been before I hurt my head had been an upset to me, and she didn’t want that to get worse. So I started ECT in an atmosphere of almost deceit. So [name of daughter] would phone every day and say, How are you? And my biggest memory of ECT is of that unhappiness, knowing that I was lying to, or at least not saying anything to her if I wasn’t directly lying. [Name of husband] obviously knew that it was happening. And [name of daughter] indeed came to realise it was happening because I started ECT in hospital and I had twelve treatments, five of which happened once I had gone home. And so she came home around that time, so she indeed took me in for several of those last five treatments, much to her distress because she objected all the time to it, she really hated the idea of it.

I didn’t talk to, my son was travelling, away travelling at the time, my eldest son. I didn’t talk to my two younger children, who were at the time both of them on the at risk register. And one I think remains there, the under-16-year-old remains there. So I, and I don’t tend to talk to people. I don’t, I have very few friends, I don’t make friends easily, and I don’t talk, in fact I don’t think I’ve got any friends I would talk to about something like that. The only person I would talk to and did talk to was [name of husband].

I can remember, I was trying to hurt myself with everything I could lay my hands on. I just felt, I felt very frightened. The staff they were very good, but, you know, they tried to help me through everything every day but it was a very frightening experience the first time of going and having treatment and you also feel, almost as though, kind of I’ve got a mental problem and everybody’s going to be kind of looking at me, people will treat me differently. Well if they do, you kind of come to realise that that’s their problem not mine. And the funny thing is I’ve met some incredible people. That I would never have met any other way and some of the nicest people. And I’m really grateful for that, because theres a good group of, of us, you know, kind of go around together do things. A lot of fun, and yes it’s a pretty good side to it and people have been very supportive, very helpful and I always feel that I want to tell people that, if it’s appropriate that I had a problem with depression and it’s amazing how many people kind of, will then open up with problems that they wouldn’t otherwise mention to people. So it’s a good way of helping other people to.