But I can’t talk to my family about it. They don’t know about the therapy. I think it’s the stigma thing. I think it’s the… I’m the youngest of a big family and I think I would be seen, my perception is that I would be seen as weak and not coping, so it’s easier for me not to admit to that weakness and just say, oh, just fudge the issue really. I could never dream of saying to my family that I was seeing a psychiatrist. I mean that would be you know, horrendous. Because they wouldn’t understand, certainly where I am now, the position I’m in now that it is actually a good thing. Whereas if I said I’m seeing a gastro-enterologist – fine, no problem, but seeing a psychiatrist that’s it, theres something deeply wrong with you. So I’ve chosen to keep that from my family, and living on my own I can do that to a certain extent.

I think that my mother had very similar experience to myself. She had, you know, I remember these highs and lows that she had. And I remember a couple of cases where she had you know a depressive, depressed period where she actually was on antidepressants. She didn’t like taking them. She was ashamed of her depression, and she stopped taking them probably far too early, but you know this was just a period where I was in my probably late teens, early twenties. But then unfortunately she died shortly after that, so it’s difficult to follow that through.

And I suppose she wasn’t seeing the real me in the short periods that we had together by that stage, because I had left home and was only coming back for a few days at a time. But whether you… she didn’t see her depression as being a chronic illness. I’m not sure, I… part of me thinks that I am better at recognising it in others now. I sometimes see it in patients that are exhibiting maybe those early signs of what could be clinical depression that I might have missed before or given another reason for. But there is a familial link and I don’t know if there is, but if there is a familial link you know I would hope that I would be more aware of how they are dealing with things in general. And maybe how I could help them if indeed they became like that. I think, I have a much more open relationship I think with my children now than I ever had with my own mother.

Well, I don’t feel ashamed because I educated myself. If I stayed in the family circle and not talked to a therapist, not got help really, then perhaps I would feel ashamed. Sometimes I think it was all my fault… but on the whole I think it wasn’t my fault…. I was labelled with, like being psychotic. I was on psychotic drugs for a number of years. And the fact that I felt so ashamed was because it was written in black and white that I was psychotic.

It was like saying… they may have well have said I was a mad woman. We all have different experiences and different realities at different times. Feelings are fluid. They come and go and we experience them for a reason. There is nothing ever to be ashamed about with mental health. You know, there really isn’t. I would really like to change the public’s perception of mental health problems and depression because people sometimes, you know, they would want to say well what’s the matter, what’s the matter with you? It’s like you can’t sum it up in a sentence, what’s the matter…. you know. I’ve spent a year in therapy and I still don’t know what the matter is, I haven’t got to the bottom of what’s the matter with me. It takes time, you know. It takes discovery and it takes courage and it takes persistence and energy.

And depression, albeit it is still stigmatised I think…. Is less stigmatised among young people that it was… You should tell someone now, it doesn’t have to be the doctor or a therapist, it can be a friend you know. The older I’ve got, the more I’ve found that it’s acceptable to say to people, “I’m depressed at the moment,” and they know what it means. And you don’t want them telling everyone, and theres me as the great sort of I don’t know you know I tend to preach the gospel of, ‘Hey depression is no different from anything else, blah, blah, blah… and I do believe that. And you know, you wouldn’t make a secret of it if it were a diabetic would you…. Hang on, actually you would, you wouldn’t want to go tell everyone, but you wouldn’t mind telling your best friend who you can trust, “Look I feel shit and I really think I’m depressed and I need some help.

“Why have you been off work?” And I went, “I’ve been in hospital.” “Oh, are you alright?” “Yeah, I’m fine thanks yes, thanks for asking.” “Um, nothing too serious I hope?” “Mmm, yeah it was, but I’m ok, I’m dealing with it, thanks for asking.” And they went, “Oh, oh wh- what was it then?” you know what people are like, they will try and get it out of you, and I think if you try to hide it gives them something to use against you. So I was just really outright, and I just said, “Ok, I was in a psychiatric hospital for a month and then outpatients for a further month and now I’m at work part-time to try and get back into the swing of things slowly.” And he just looked at me. “I’ve suffered with it most of my life, and I’m just dealing with it now.” And I… honestly he, his eyes were just, popping out of his head. His jaw hit the floor, and he just didn’t know what to say to me.

So he touched my shoulder and I said, “It’s ok though,” I said, “I’m not loopy” and he just started laughing, because I’d just turned it into a joke. You know, I’d sort of was like quite light hearted about it. I said, “It’s ok, I’m not loopy, haven’t lost my marbles yet. It’ll take more than a bit of depression to get rid of me.” And you know he was just like, “Oh my God,” and I said, “Well,” I said, “you’ve probably got all sorts of questions going through your mind right now, but if you want to know a bit about it, and about what it consists of I’ll tell you.”

I think that lobby groups are tending to change things because we had an issue with Frank Bruno. You heard the story that there where a lot of people who bombarded the Sun newspaper with e-mails saying, “You know it’s not acceptable to talk about ‘bonkers’ nowadays, and you know, the attitude, do you realise you’re actually offending twenty-five percent of your readership”? [Laugh]. Effectively you know, if you think about it. So you know that kind of theres more sort of pressure perhaps to stop people being, well to get people to be a little bit more… I don’t really like “politically correct” but that sort of thing you know. And theres various taboos, you can’t be sexist, you can’t be racist you can’t be ageism or you can be a little bit ageist but you know it’s getting that way. But you can still talk about nutters and psychos and so on. And so it’s getting to a stage where those sort of words as well you know, what do you mean by that when you use that word you know?

Explode it (stigma) whenever you can I say, but I’ve been very out because I’ve campaigned a lot on this. Theres also, theres and extremely useful charity called Mental Health Media, and they train, and I’ve actually did a bit of some of their training. They will train service users on how to face the media. If they want to go and talk to the papers say about a new service in their area, or theres been some bad press or something and they want to give their side of the story. Or want to, to give their case history or whatever, you know as an example.

Mental Health Media trains people on how to do interview on radio, TV and for the press. They’ve just started a new tool kit to try and tackle stigma and discrimination, and they’re training people around the country at the moment on how to respond if you face stigma and discrimination. And they also have a wonderful award ceremony each year at BAFTA called the Mental Health Media Awards, and the best radio documentary, radio drama, tv drama, tv soap, website and various other….. There, basically, it’s like an award ceremony and they’ll, you know there might be four different clips from soaps, and you decide which one best expresses and best, honestly pursues a mental health issue, and that informs an audience well, as well as providing good drama.