There wasn’t, I didn’t, I, my last working day led, I was a missing person, I tried to kill myself. I left work, I drove from work and tried to, to kill myself, and then was admitted. So my last working day ended with me, with a suicide attempt. So that was my last experience, and as far as I know my office has still got my books and paperwork in it. So, and I haven’t been back since.

And what can you remember of being admitted to hospital?

I can remember, I mostly try and be quite a clear-thinking sort of a person but I remember being almost childlike really, very pathetically, I don’t give a toss what happens to me. Just do whatever you feel like doing. And, and therefore because I was childlike, people did things to me, people told me what they thought was best for me, Well, Jenny, you’re a risk to yourself and, you know, if you’ve disappeared once and tried to die. In a rather bizarre way, indeed, but it’s, that was how it was. I didn’t want to die quickly so I, I wanted to die in the cold in the middle of [name of area] overnight. Which I didn’t do unfortunately. But it, it, so when people said, you know, If we leave you at home, Jenny, this might happen again. Will you agree to being admitted? I said in a rather feeble way, Yes, I don’t care what happens to me. I’d rather be dead. But you can do what you, the hell you like really. So it, it was in that confusion. And then I remember being very, very, very upset, and I’m not usually obviously upset. You’d have to know me quite well to know if I was upset by anything. So I don’t cry very often or get emotional about things really. I try and keep myself very, very clipped emotionally. But I remember being absolutely distraught on, on, what, since I was a teenager this was the first time I had been into a psychiatric ward, and what was upsetting was, Have I come to this? Has it come to this? Has it unravelled so much, my life, that all that’s left is this heap of humanity crying in a shared room in some grotty hospital ward? So I found it a very difficult place to have any even atom of self-belief or self-respect. And that was probably pretty well my lowest time. Because although I’ve been in hospital since then, always for the same reason because I say consistently, I’d rather be dead and then people get worried about that from time to time, I’ve not in a similar way not had my wits about me.

If, do you mind if I ask you about the time when you were suicidal and how that felt?

It felt quite comforting, I guess. Because when you, you want to exit this life and you’ve made plans to do so, it feels very natural and very calm. So it’s very kind of, yes, it, it felt kind of c-, normal for me at that point in my life. It wasn’t frenzied, it wasn’t driven by sheer emotion, it was just very calm and very calculated. And I think that’s what concerned the, the consultant psychiatrist.

And then a year or so later I had my second daughter. And it was probably about a year after that I started to become really depressed. And I can remember having to go to the Department of Psychiatrist and the psychiatrist interviewed me, and he went off to get some paper work and I just ran. I had a little moped at the time and I drove that home and took a massive overdose and I went to the general hospital and I have vague memory of it.

I think what happened was I panicked at the last moment and phoned a colleague of mine and she came and took me to the hospital.

So you went in to see the psychiatrist but, sort of, ran away half way?

Yes, half way

through. Can you remember anything else about that appointment or?

I don’t know why I was there by myself, why nobody came with me? My ex-husband must have been at work, or whether I just wanted to go by myself. I can’t even remember if it was an emergency appointment. I think probably it was an emergency appointment. I tried to hide my depression and I think that’s quite normal for a lot of people. You know, people were shocked that I was that bad really, because I’m quite a jovial person most of the time and I think a lot of people with depression hide it, mask their symptoms with mucking about.

No I can just remember the long corridor that I had to run and hope that I wouldn’t get caught. And I, oh I got on my moped and went to my friend’s house, but she wasn’t in, and that was the final straw. You know, how dare she not be in when I need her so desperately? [small laugh]. And I just went home and took all the tablets that I could find. How I haven’t got, how I haven’t mucked up my liver I don’t know.

And also from that point on I was acutely suicidal which I hadn’t been until I actually had the shock treatment. It’s a bit like hospital, you’re not on tablets when you go in but when you come out of hospital you sure as hell are on tablets. And it was the blackness that you were really in outer space and just I can remember walking along the motorway in the dark and phoning the Samaritans who have also been very good over the last years because they’re an impartial body. I overdosed quite badly and that left me blind and they weren’t very kind either the doctors, they’d shove tubes down your throat and in post war Britain it was cowardice and they made it clear that I was wasting their time and they needed to be spending their time on people who were ill.

Plus I’ve got to be honest at the time, I was using the excuse of going there to try put myself in a position where I could commit suicide and he felt I was using that as an excuse, which was perfectly true, perfectly true. I certainly tried two attempts to try and get away from the unit. And he blocked my exit on one occasion. He was very intuitive. And the two members of staff, excuse me, like she took me there, I disappeared somewhere and of course they were chastised about that because they’re supposed to be available at all times. But because I’m not violent in any way of course, I didn’t try pushing them out the way or anything. And he just blocked by his physical presence really and he asked someone to go and find the two members of staff. Then they complained about the two members of staff not being there, and I think it was quite a frosty sort of reaction from staff towards me then, and they became quite, what am I looking for, their attitude towards me? It sort of degenerated didn’t it?

And did self- harm when she was feeling really dreadful, shed come down during the night and hurt herself with a knife one time she did it so bad I had to call the ambulance out and take her into the hospital to get stitched up. And the way I managed to first aid that was to put a pad of tissue over the wound and bind it with post office tape, post office tape is waterproof and seals very well if you bind it tight and so that enabled us to get into the hospital and get it stitched up. But the health service had sort of deteriorated and they didn’t have a bed to put her in under observation for the rest of the night they’ve closed the beds in the mental hospital that shed gone into before.

They had two mental health hospitals with beds for taking in people with mental health problems one is a 100 miles away and the other one is about 30 miles away from the original hospital where we took her in, where I had her taken in with her arms. And worse than that on another occasion she was feeling so very low that she took an excess of tablets and wanted to end it all, I very fortunately keeping an eye on her and discovered her passed out on the couch here and so I tried to wake her up and I realised that she was a bit gaga and shed taken a number of tablets. So I didn’t know what to do so I phoned NHS Direct because I knew it was useless trying to phone the local health centre and pretty well useless to phone the hospital where shed been in as an inpatient.

I spoke to a psychiatrist on the NHS Direct which was more useful. Who asked me to describe what condition she was in and so on and agreed with me that what was needed was an urgent visit to the hospital which we did. But on that occasion as well they didn’t have a bed to take her in so on both occasions she was released in my care and it’s impossible for me to stay awake without a wink of sleep all night and all day so that is the situation with our local health service which makes it difficult for somebody caring for someone who is severely clinically depressed.

Well I’ve, I finished work full time, so that I could be with him. I used to do two days a week. But, so that I could maybe be with him. He hasn’t, hes lost his confidence about driving. Hes changed, he says hes lost his emotions. He, although he knows hes got a home, hes got me, hes got our daughters, hes got a good support network. He can’t see it like that, and he knows, and hes had the Crisis Team involved with him. Hes totally changed with everything and I’ve found it quite difficult. So much so that its happened every, well only once it’s happened while I’ve been here, no twice actually, that hes taken overdoses, and hes taken six overdoses. The first ones were when I was actually at work and once he took, eighteen months ago, he took a massive overdose, he took anything and everything he could find in the cupboards. And I spoke to my daughter. I went to work and I was really worried about him, and I spoke to my daughter who was taking my grandson to playgroup and she was due to come in and see my husband at quarter past twelve when she picked up my grandson up. But I said to her, I’m really worried about Dad. I said, Do you mind popping in? She said, Well I’m going out into town, but I’ll pop in Mum after I’ve dropped my son off at play group. And she did come in and she actually saved my husband’s life, because he hadn’t even made it to the bed, he was unconscious at the top of the stairs. Now if she had come in at the time that she said she would, if I hadn’t have rung her, she would have found him and he would have definitely gone, because he ended up on life support and in Intensive Care because of what, you know, what had happened.