I got to see the occupational health officer at work pretty much straight away. He called her and said, you know, “He really needs you to see him now”. And she sat down in the office, talked about a few things, about how I was feeling. She asked me a few questions about, you know, had I been having difficulty sleeping, had I been having difficulty concentrating and things like that and she said, “It sounds like you’ve got symptoms of depression now”. So she suggested I go and see my GP that day, which I did. And the GP signed me off. I don’t remember initially how long it was for, possibly a week, two weeks, I was signed off work.

And they just basically advised me just to relax, try just not to think about work, not to feel any pressure about going back to work. My GP said, “You know, you’re under no obligation to go back to work, the most important thing is your health, that you relax”. There was a lot of guilt there, there was a lot of pressure thinking no, I should be at work. You know, just because I had this bad day, I should be at work, I’m expected to be at work. You know, everyone is probably at work saying, “Why isn’t he here, he hasn’t got a broken leg, you know, ok he just had a really bad day, but you know he should be here, we all have bad days!’

And what happened was the depression gradually went. It didn’t go over night, and I – I saw the clinical psychologist again, and I remember her saying to me I think your depression has lifted, but it’s left you very unconfident and very anxious. But I could see the black moods had gone, but I had become very anxious in social situations. I managed to go back to work, again I went for half a day, then a day, then gradually built up to the three days I’m doing now, and for a little while I just shadowed other people. I could do the job, but when it came to sitting in the staff room and talking generally I wouldn’t say anything because I just felt so anxious about how people perceived me because I’d been so ill. And what were they thinking, and were they thinking if I could do the job? So I found that very difficult, and I also found it very difficult with other people in other settings.

And one of the ladies who knows me, shes had depression before and so she knows what it’s like anyway. Excuse the way I speak but I had a fit recently at work, I had a couple of fits basically, and the one where she… the, the one that she helped me…. well she helped me on both. Basically, one, one day they put me out on this run. And when I found out the run I was doing I said, “I don’t want to do it,” I says, “its too heavy.” And they, they said, “All right, [participant’s name], well change you around and come back, come and work in the morning and well have changed you around.” And when I got to work the following day they hadn’t, and I was shaking and I said, “I can’t handle this,” I said. “I can’t do that run.” And the girl I was meant to be working with, she, she was there as well. And I was in the toilets crying and I said, “I can’t do this.” So I went, I went home sick.

In November I was very stressed at work and I was being challenged in a kind of very negative way, and there is this guy who doesn’t like me and I don’t like him. And so, I was kind of being pushed to my limits of I was challenged all the time, blah, blah, blah. So I had basically to produce I was putting a proposal for a client, a very important client to the company and I did this without any support. And the guy I was working with was saying that what I was doing wasn’t good enough, but in a very negative way. And I felt really, I’ve never felt in my life so kind of. feeling that I wasn’t capable, unable to perform. I did suspect he might have been homophobic. At the same time I think the first symptoms of depression started with me losing interest in sex, and I’m a very sexual person, so it was totally lost’ And then after Christmas I got back to work and in my first week in January this year, I learned that I had been successful in this proposal so that gave me a boost.

And I wasn’t getting the help that I had been told I was going to get for some of the training sessions that I was suppose to be doing. Because it was basically a physical impossibility for me to be in 2 or 3 different places at the same time and I had been told that I would get… it was part of the new agreement in my contract that I would be getting the help during this particular time of the year. And only later to be told by the Director that if I couldn’t do it by myself, what had I been doing all these years? And so it was a little bit of bullying really, which is another story altogether because one of the seminars that I went on actually covered one of those items. And in that case the company kind of supported me because they know I could sue them basically, not that I would because I just couldn’t be bothered dealing with it. But because all the work and I, mentally I just couldn’t take it any more…

Because of exhaustion, bullying, burnout?

Yes, I mean, people all knew how much I put into my work and how important it was to me. And yes I had this person who come along, and basically told me I wasn’t doing the job. And gone back on what we he had previously agreed on. Whether it was to, I don’t know… Anyway since hed left the company, he had been asked to leave the company because he had be doing it to several people. But yes in that sense I have to say it was partly to do with just an impossibility of work overload.

And for me, the way that university used to get rid of people was they would put you in a job that you didn’t like. It wasn’t your boss that does the hiring and firing, it’s the personnel department, and shed put you in a job you didn’t like so you would go. Well I was told that you know because I wasn’t well and things I was told that I was going to be moved to another job. So when I came back from personnel he said, ‘What did they say?’, so I told him. He said not a word and walked out and he was gone for about an hour and he came back and he said [pause], ‘You will never hear from them again’ [pause]. Not a lot of people would do that [pause], not a lot of people would do that. And he wouldn’t give me a, I mean it was a heck of a busy job, I was working for the entire research team and the students and him and everything else. And he said, ‘Right that’s it, I’ll give you one job at a time, you won’t go home to feel sorry for yourself, I’ll give you one job at a time [laugh]. ‘Do that, type that and I’ll give you something else. And how many people would put up with that? You know that was tremendous. We would all have walked on hot coals for him because he just did those things for everybody, you know. You’d never get that in industry, would you?

And I really don’t remember if it was just a reaction that I had, or if I just decided. I can imagine myself doing it. Just thinking, right then, they don’t want me to say anything in class, I won’t say anything in class. But somehow it evolved so that I couldn’t, could not say anything. Like if I had to, I would just be like sweating and just hated it, I really hated it. But what upsets me about it is that it affects my life now, and it affected my life for. you know once I got to University there was no problem with me speaking up because everyone was in the same boat. No one was going to go, ‘Oh you think you’re really good’, because I was like pretty average for my University. But the fear was still there and it’s taken, even now, you know I find it hard to speak up at meetings and stuff like that, I find it really difficult.

But, moving on to University, yes I was saying that I was supposed to be quite intelligent, but I hadn’t worked out how to do stuff in a structured way, how to get myself going, how to really organise my time. I hadn’t had that much contact with kids my own age outside school before, so at university the idea of having a social life was quite new. And I think, although I had hopes when I went there, within a few months, I found it wasn’t at all enjoyable. I felt more, I didn’t seem to be able to enjoy any of the things that I tried at first, and I was just feeling very low and very lonely, needy. I was aware I needed something, I wasn’t quite sure what. And I was, I think, probably about 4 or 5 months after starting my first year, I did become very depressed, actually, and just took to moping around.