But I think it was probably, I needed to be on them but it’s been psychotherapy that’s helped me in a sort of more constructive way, and it would be useful if there were ways of being able to access that through the NHS, like through the, the doctors prescriptions for leisure, a model like that, or where you could sort of have a subsidised psychotherapy, because its only available to people that have got enough money or find a psychotherapist on a sliding scale that they can then afford. And, you know, it’s very inequitable really.

And I started off very anti, thinking this is a pile of nonsense and it’s a bit like waving a magic wand and, but over a period of time I realised that there were actually things in there that made a lot of sense, and if you just ignored the Americanisms and I suppose there are different bits that work best for different people, but I have found it helpful in the end, and I did the year’s course and yes, I think it still, it’s still helping and I do, you know, kind of think of various bits of it during the day and it does help.

What are the bits you tend to think of?

Well in the mornings I always think this is a new day it’s open to a lot of opportunities and you don’t have, you know, what’s gone is gone. What, don’t I spend all your time worrying about what’s going to happen tomorrow. Live now. And enjoy, you know, the things that you’re doing now and make the most of what you can do today. And I think for me that’s, that’s probably the best bit of it. Just live in the moment. Live now. This bit’s fantastic. You know, I’ve got a lovely house, I’ve got a lovely husband, I’ve, you know, everything’s absolutely fine. Why worry about all the dreadful things or kind of make things not good. Now is a good time to be, and I think that’s been an enormous help.

I know that a lot of GP surgeries have tried to get counsellors in and things. I’ve never found counsellors very good, but I have had a psychotherapist and that really made me think and, and cognitive behavioural therapies, I think that’s probably the best thing you could have, that gives you an option, you know, teaches your brain to choose a different pattern. I think something like that would have really helped me. But I just started some treatment like that when I moved up here.

The psychologist wanted me to carry on my treatment up here, it was never pursued either by the medical team or me, because I was better [laughs]. But yes, I do believe that cognitive behaviour therapy would be a really good thing, because it teaches you to think differently and I think people with depression need to think differently. And be taught not to be negative all the time. You know, when you hate yourself you’re not going to like anyone else either. And so life isn’t worth living and if you can be taught to like yourself then you’ll like other people and you’ll get on a bit better I think.

You were saying you’d had a better experience with psychotherapy?

Yes, it was a group psychotherapy meeting and we had lots of arguments because we were all very self-opinionated. But the psychotherapist really made me think about the way I think about things. Like she came in one day and she said, Just to let you know I won’t be here for much, I won’t be here for much longer. And we all had to go round the room saying why we thought that. What we thought about that and mine was, Oh my goodness, are you okay? I automatically thought she was dying. And in fact she was pregnant. But that didn’t come into my mind. And so she made me think about why I was thinking those things and I suppose that’s what the cognitive behavioural therapy does, it makes you think why you think, why you do the things that you do.

I think when I was 13 I got put into a children’s home, for my own safety, because my Mum had battered me unconscious. And after going from hostel to a children’s home and I was there for about nine months before they returned me back to the family home. But if during that time I’d had some form of, I don’t know, would it have been a talking therapy, or counselling or would it have been I did see a psychologist who thought that I was an ordinary 13 year old with ordinary 13 year-old worries. And maybe that’s how I did come across but I think if they probed a wee bit deeper, it would have been more apparent what was wrong and I think it would have saved a lot of what happened then to me, you know, in later years, but can I sort of go on what ifs and if what’s? You know, so but I do think, for children’s services, you need to be on the ball and you need to, because if we can stop a lot of, or in my opinion we can stop a lot of illnesses escalating at a later date if a child is treated rather than letting it just build and build. It kind of feels sometimes as if I fell through the cracks a bit, because there was obviously services involved with me as a child and you know when I was in a children’s centre and things, children’s home. But yes, I kind of feel that I kind of got lost a bit.

I’ve had an awful lot of psychotherapy. I’ve actually talked about it with the psychotherapist. And I think he was the only one that really understood where the past was coming into the future, sort of like causing problems, and whilst people say, Oh you got over it, it didn’t work, move on. It’s the psychological impact I’ve had through having ECT and thinking this is the ultimate treatment you could have.

And I also lost heart. If this is the ultimate treatment and I haven’t responded [claps hands] what is there? And I became more suicidal, which was initially why I was in hospital. And I also, that has a knock on effect, because each time I’m sectioned, it’s usually because I’m highly suicidal and I reach the stage, well nothing’s worked and I’m still in this same place, and with people saying to me, oh, you know, like it might never happen again. How many times have I heard that? And I just sort of brush it off, thinking you don’t really know me. Especially new people who work with me, who don’t really know me. Its sort like seems like a throwaway comment and I think theres very few people that have been with me all those seventeen, eighteen years, I’ve been within the mental health system here, who can actually follow the whole thing.

But, you also said, that you’d been waiting for psychological therapy and, but you didn’t actually have that?

Ironically, I finally accessed the NHS’s psychological therapy, I was offered a ten-week course, just as I knew I was getting better. And I remember phoning them up and saying, Look, I’m not being funny, I’ve waited like fourteen months for this. This would have been good, a long time ago. And they said, Well, if you turn this down, and if you ever got ill again, you wouldn’t get any help. And so I then, went through their therapy as well, at the same time, which was really difficult, really, because they had a very different, their approach was looking back, and, Where in your past has this been caused by? Whereas the counselling with the CBT, and CAT, was very much about looking for the solutions, to help me adjust my thinking, so I could live in a better place. I mean I think the first thing the charity did, was they helped me understand that this is an illness, this isn’t me being lazy, or selfish, or can’t be bothered to clean up the house, or something, this is me. They used the analogy all the time, This is like a broken leg. You wouldn’t try and drive a car with a broken leg. Stop trying to do it now. And the NHS’s therapy, I remember saying to her one day, I said to her, I’m sorry, but I’m finding this harrowing. And she went, Harrowing? That’s interesting. Do you know what the word harrowing means? Do you know what harrow means? I said, Well, it means to dig deep and break things up. And she said, Well, harrow does. She said, It means to turn the soil completely over. I said, Yes, you’re ripping me open, and opening me up. And what was interesting, was at the end of the ten weeks, they kind of went, Right, weve gone really deep. And I went, Yes, but you’ve broken me open. You’ve not fixed me. Well, you’ve had your ten sessions. Right, okay, well, I must be fixed then. Whereas with the charity it was never, there wasn’t, I wasn’t on their agenda, they were on my agenda.

I did go through a lot of counselling a couple of years after ECT treatment. And that really helped, but I think it was because the depression had become better, so I was able to speak more openly and I was able to grasp what people were saying to me in the counselling sessions. You know, where with my first admission here would have been no point in trying to put me through counselling. Seeing as I didn’t know what time it was, let alone trying to take in what people were saying. I did na have the concentration. But ECT was definitely the first step to me being able to recover.

It’s so good talking to you because it’s gone now. I’ve been, I’ve talked to you. Six months ago I’d have still been, a year or so. And it’s all gone, it’s all gone. Yes, I’ve been healed really. It, it is all gone. Yes, that was, that was the biggest problem in lots of ways. Even I was made to feel that my dad’s suicide was my fault, my brother’s brain tumour was my fault, that me having an illegitimate child was my fault. And it’s only been through counselling and working through these things in my head, I thought, None of it was. I was a kid, you know [laugh]. And I’ve let go of it all now, I’ve apportioned it all. And, no, I wasn’t responsible for any of it really. But that was the only way my mother could survive was by putting that horrible stuff on me, you know. If someone gets left, their husband committed suicide, it was all going to be on her. And she was obviously a damaged person and there was no help in those days, no help at all. And her way of surviving psychologically was to put it all on to me and on to my sister. And the healing has been that shes been dead for two years really. Once shes died, once shes died, you, at first I was making excuses still and being sugary and sentimental about the good points and hanging on to that. And I had made my point, peace with her, and that was good. But as I’ve worked through that with a counsellor, yes, I’ve come out with the fact, I realised she was just really evil, really wicked and really terrible. But also it’s all gone. You know, forgive her because like myself she was just human. But you’ve got to, you can’t forgive people and you can’t deal with them till you acknowledge what’s happened. That’s the problem a lot of the time. You have to acknowledge this happened, this was done to me, and that’s real and that’s wrong, and then you can forgive it. But you can’t forgive I… a lot of that, with all the Christian stuff we, and you can’t, not until you’ve actually acknowledged something and felt it and got it out.