What's Normal Anyway? Celebrities' Own Stories of Mental Illness (14 page)

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I thought long and hard about speaking out in that parliamentary debate about my personal experience. I was planning to speak anyway to raise some issues about how people with mental health problems are treated by the welfare system, but then I thought: ‘Well, if I don't say anything about my own situation then actually I will feel a bit of a fraud.' And no one would have known, but I would have known. And people say: ‘It's easy for people in the public eye to do it.' Well, I think it's pretty hard actually, to be honest. But I think people talking about it
does
help and, I mean, if we could get to a situation like with the prime minister of Norway who talked publicly about his depression, can you imagine that? But why not, you know?

I said in the debate that I didn't decide until I was sat there and no, I don't think I did. But do I feel better for doing it? Yes, I do actually. I think the real cost is to the individual when they don't tell people because I think it chews people up on the inside, because there's always a fear that somebody might find out about their mental health problems. Charles Walker and I both said the other day that, actually, it's quite a relief to just say: ‘Fair enough, that's it.' It actually makes you feel better in one respect. But I do think it's a personal decision, I'm not going to start preaching to people, saying: ‘You should do this.' It has got to be down to the individual; if people feel comfortable about it then that's entirely up to them.

All I can say is that after the debate I was very surprised about people's reactions. I can't remember how many emails and letters I got – must be over 500 – but all very positive. The reaction has been overwhelmingly positive. So I do think attitudes are changing in this country for the better. And I think part of the reason for that is that there are a hell of a lot of people out there who either have personal experience themselves, or they've got family members, or people they work with, who have. And that's the issue. And the other thing, which I think Charles said as well, is that we're not – I'm not – looking for sympathy, I don't think anyone is. I'm not suggesting that we all get into group hugs and all this nonsense. But I do think it is more common than the statistics tell you it is, and that realisation that you're not the only one helps. You know, if you walk down the street, there's a lot of people suffering from the same thing but you just don't know it.

It's strange actually, on Saturday I was walking down the street in my constituency and a woman came up to me and she said: ‘Can I just thank you.' A woman perhaps in her late fifties, middle-class, and she says: ‘Oh, I had depression and I'm a recovering alcoholic; I still take medication but I'm fine.' And the key point is: if you looked at her in passing on the street you'd just think she was a normal housewife. But there she was explaining how she hadn't had a drink in about seven years now and how that was part of her depression, in terms of self-medication. But if I'd normally just walked past her, would you have had a clue? No. And there's other people you're walking past every day who have the same types of things.

Another odd thing for me was that some people I've known for many years have come and said: ‘Oh by the way, I've suffered from depression or this, that, and the other.' And some of them have been individuals who you'd think would be the last people who'd suffer from something like that – you know, like a major-general, a PLC chair, a chief executive – but they do. There was a good friend of mine, a member of my constituency, who wrote to me and said she's been on medication the last ten years. But if you met her you'd think she'd be the last person to be suffering from depression, as she is the most lively, bubbly character, a very confident individual, and holds down a key job.

So people who suffer from depression are all around us, and does it always stop you doing your job? No, it doesn't actually. It actually helps, I think, in some respects; in some respects it can be a positive. But that's the thing about stigma: that people often view mental illness and depression as a sign of weakness, they think the two are linked. Well, they're not; it's the opposite actually in some ways. I think if you look back into the history of politics – in this country and other countries – there's a lot of people who have had mental health issues who were very capable of doing their jobs.

For me, one of the positive things it's done is make me more productive, because I've learned through having depression – and I think this is in that Burns book – that motivation is actually about action. People think motivation is a thing in itself. Well it's not, it's actually about the action of doing things. It's no good thinking about a thing, you need to do it. An example? Well, take today. I've got to do a speech this afternoon to open this debate and I had the first draft on my desk last night, when I got in the office after about half past ten, so I took it home, read it, came in this morning and made some changes. Whereas before, I'd have been saying: ‘Oh I'll put it off until tomorrow morning.' In the past, I'd say: ‘I've got to cancel you this morning to . . .'. But you don't need to, you just get on with it, you know?

Also, I think if you can get your mind to think more logically and put things in perspective – which again, some of these self-help books talk about – it's actually useful in terms of thought processes and decisions. Say if you've got a difficult or stressful decision to make, if you step back a little bit and take in the whole then I think you can actually understand it better if you suffer from depression than if you don't. I mean, in the Ministry of Defence I had to make some very difficult decisions but I never thought they were overwhelming because I could put them into perspective. And the other thing it does . . . I'll give you an example, actually. When I was in the Ministry of Defence I had responsibility for personnel so I dealt with a lot of families who had lost people in Afghanistan and – although I could never put myself in their shoes – I think that I actually empathised with them better and perhaps understood better than I would have done if I hadn't had depression.

Also, because politics is a rough old game where people say and do nasty things to you, if you actually have perspective then they're not that hurtful. So I think a lot of people who've been through it say depression actually makes you a stronger person and I think, strange enough, it has. I think I'm fundamentally the same person I was before but I can just cope with situations a lot better now, because it allows you to put things in perspective and things become relative. So it's not necessarily an inhibitor to having a fulfilled personal life or a productive working life, quite the opposite in some ways.

So I think employment is one field where stigma can really waste opportunity: when it labels people as not being able to work, whereas actually many perfectly well can with the proper help and support. But in a lot of jobs I think there's a reluctance for people to come forward and say how they're feeling, cos they think about how they're going to be judged in terms of promotion and things like that. So I think there's a huge education programme to be done, not just in how employers perceive mental illness, but also to train employers who have employees with mental health problems to understand how they can support them when they need it. And, as I said in the debate, work is actually good for you – for most people – it's just the level and degrees of it.

If people do have problems, employers have got to, I think, give them time, and if they have to make adaptations for work– life balance, then do it. We're a time-based culture: you know, more added hours into the day means more productivity. But I don't think it actually makes people more productive at all, it just puts more pressures on people's lives. I've always worked – and the people that work for me – on the basis that as long as the work gets done, I'm pretty flexible. And I think if you treat people with that type of respect and flexibility – rather than saying: ‘It's five past nine, you're five minutes late' – then you get happier and better, as well as more loyal and productive, employees. I think if you look at Scandinavia and other countries, like Germany, they do this, and a minority of employers are starting to do it here already: experimenting with different hours, split shifts. And that's the way forward I think. It's the old BT thing: ‘It's not about working harder, it's about working smarter.'

I think another thing we have to look at is the pressures on younger people. I think there's a hell of a lot of stresses on them that weren't there when I was growing up. The Internet age means you're supposed to be on top of information and accessible all the time. It's a faster pace of life and people expect instant answers to things in the 24-hour media age. And is that good in one way? Well, yes it is, but I also think it actually brings pressures on people to have to do things. For younger people it actually changes the way they interact as well: you don't sit and talk to people for hours like we used to do, you do it electronically. And although you've got all these friends on this, that, and the other, you're actually on your own. When I was growing up it was a lot slower in that sense, you know? So I don't think that's good in that respect – the depths of those relationships are a lot shallower than they were before. And I think that is an issue that affects a lot of people and brings added pressures. And I see it getting worse.

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I still get black dog days. I don't think it's something I'm, in quotes, ‘cured from'. I don't think you are. But, you know, I have my black dog days, but I think I know how to deal with them now. And I think I actually know when it's coming up on me now, I can actually recognise it, that it's coming. It's that lack of interest in things, or putting things off, fretting over things that you should frankly just get on with and do. If it's something simple like, I don't know, changing a light bulb at home that's been out for ages and you keep saying: ‘I'll do it tomorrow', then that's a sign for me. So I know when that's happening now, so what I do is I just get on and do things. I think: ‘The light bulb needs changing', so I'll do it. I actually say to myself: ‘Why are you putting it off, why are you thinking about this thing?' You know?

But sometimes I'll need a bit of bullying, sometimes that can help. Sometimes you just need that. I don't think you should look at people who've got depression and think you should, like, walk on eggshells around them. When it comes to family, they're important in terms of support, but I don't think they always need to treat people who've got depression with kid gloves. I think in some cases, for a character like me, that's the worst thing you can do. ‘Go and put that light bulb up and do that', is actually better for me. Encouraging me to do something practical is good.

While the worst thing possible that you can ever say to anybody suffering from depression is: ‘Pull yourself together.' Cos it is the most irritating thing. You know, my line is, if somebody says that to me, I say: ‘I'm not a pair of curtains.' It just doesn't help people. I mean, if you could actually explain sometimes why you get depressed it would be a lot easier. I keep saying this to my partner, when she says: ‘You seem a bit down' – because she's got like these antennae with me – and I say to her: ‘If I could explain it, it would be actually rational.' But, you know, I think it's one of those things where you can just feel it, it just comes up on you, it just gets you sometimes, or just creeps up.

My best technique now is what I call the ‘step back' technique. I just step back and look mindfully, and if you do that it doesn't solve it straightaway, but you do actually think: ‘Ummm, right', you know? Because I've trained myself now to know when things are coming on. So I just think: well, one, find something to do, even if it's just sitting reading a book. Or, frankly I've never been one to exercise, but I also walk a lot now and that helps a hell of a lot. Now, if I get my black dog days, I can walk for miles and you come back and you feel a lot better. And I usually try – I can't today because I don't have time – to take half an hour at lunch to just walk round the park. That helps in terms of, one, the exercise, but two, I think, in taking yourself out of where you are at the moment. I mean, we're very fortunate living in beautiful countryside in North Durham and on – was it Sunday? – we walked for about ten miles. And it just seems to relax you. So that's a technique I use.

I'll tell you a very silly thing I also do sometimes – about putting things in perspective – I love sitting in my garden at night looking at the stars in the summer. I look at the massive universe and just think: ‘You're actually pretty insignificant in this great scheme of things; you're just one person and you're here for a short period of time, so get things in perspective.' A spiritual element? I don't know about that, but you look at the stars and think that you might as well enjoy it while you can or make as good a contribution to it as you can. And it doesn't matter what that contribution is: it might be being good at sport, or being a politician or even – I say even – doing a job that you like well and bringing a family up. It's a contribution. People might say it's too logical a perspective but when I see some of my constituents, in terms of struggling on low pay and bringing families up, it's bloody tough for them, you know, and I look at my own position and I think: ‘Well I'm a lot more fortunate than the position they're in.' And actually, if you're asking me how it's affected my life generally, I'd say positively. One thing I've learnt very much from my depression is that, frankly, if you step back and think about things, some things are meant to happen.