Episode Summary
In this episode, I share my thoughts and experiences on the stigma associated with mental illness. Here’s what I cover:
- The shocking statistic about the rate of suicide in the UK .
- What I learnt about dealing with the challenges of mental illness and suicide prevention from a prominent football player, a retired rugby league star, a Northern Irish mother of 3, a doctor and a recently bereaved father.
- How the UK government has a Minister For Suicide Prevention who believes we need to tackle the stigma but more importantly reach out to those who might be struggling.
- I share the two sides to the stigma I have about asking those around me for help when I am feeling down.
- I express my admiration for those brave enough to be true to those around them about the challenges they face and the need for help.
- I explain why me being a hypocrite about the stigma is a good thing
- How my experiences have helped me to reach out to others who might be struggling (true story that happened just 2 days before recording this episode)
Episode Transcript (Edited)
Welcome to this episode of the Hope Help Happiness podcast.
Now today I want to talk about something I’ve been wanting to explore for a while now. And the reason I’m doing this now is because last night as I was preparing my evening meal, I put the radio on and caught the tail end of the BBC Radio Five Live drive time show.
I caught the last 15 minutes of the programme and there was a series of interviews on the subject of mental health. What I didn’t know was that Radio Five has been doing a whole series on mental health and emotional distress. I have not had the chance to find out more yet so I don’t know if this was a one off series for the week or whether it is gong on for longer.
I managed to catch the tail end of a series of interviews on the topic of suicide. What I didn’t realise was in the UK there is a suicide happening every 90 minutes! This is a shockingly staggering statistic. In 2017 alone, 6,000 people took their lives.
Even with the experience I’ve had just recently about contemplating taking my own life, it is still a staggering number to get my head round. So I was naturally drawn into listening to what was left of the programme.
I stopped preparing my food, I turned off the extraction fan and made sure I could hear everything going on. I just stood by the radio and listened. There was an interview with a prominent footballer who has gone public with his feelings about depression and his attempt at suicide. He talked about the challenges he face about depression and in asking for help.
There was a former rugby league player who when he stopped playing, got into all sorts of difficulties with drink and being promiscuous and ended up getting in trouble with the police. All as a result of depression. But he turned his life around and managed to deal with it. As a result, he has created an organisation whose aim is to help men deal with the problems of depression and the challenges that creates.
Tragically, there was also an interview with a Northern Irish mother of three sons who all had committed suicide. It was quite a difficult thing to listen to. Not because of my own challenges recently, but more so of the sadness and compassion I felt for the people struggling with these issues. I can’t even begin to imagine the grief she has endured.
It made me realise how important it is for me to not become part of that statistic and instead, maybe perhaps be able to offer some sort of help and support in my own way from the experiences I’ve had.
There was also an interview with Jackie Doyle-Price MP, the Minister For Suicide Prevention. She has the government portfolio for preventing suicide. She talked about the difficulties she has in her role and believes the way forward is to drive people’s behaviour towards the support of other people.
She talked about how we need to tackle the stigma of mental illness and encourage people to reach out to other people for help and support. She knows that saves lives and we all have a role to play.
There was also an interview with someone who’d called in earlier in the day in response to what he’d heard on Radio 5. It was the father of a boy who had taken his own life seven or eight weeks ago. It was heartwarming to hear him share his recommendations to hopefully help others avoid the pain and suffering he’s experiencing after losing his son.
He talked about the need for families to express love to each other more often. He grew up in an environment where his father didn’t tell him he loved him and he didn’t tell his father he loved him back. He knew the love was there, but there was no expression of it. So now his drive is to help people understand the importance of sharing love and sharing that compassion with those close to you.
They finished the piece with a song about being more kind to each other – which is probably the biggest part of the answer?
One interview that did strike a particular chord with me was with a doctor who talked about the challenges he had with depression when he was studying medicine. He struggled with low mood but was worried about asking for help. He was worried about what people think of him. He was concerned that if he went public about how he was feeling, they wouldn’t let him be a doctor.
He talked about how eventually he reached out to his friends and over time he was able to come to terms with it and deal with it. He has since gone on to become a successful doctor.
So underlying his story, and the others I heard, is the stigma of asking for help if you are struggling with mental illness. And that’s really what I wanted to talk about today and share my own views on that stigma.
There is a general societal stigma about mental health and people say there shouldn’t be, but there is. There’s also our individual, personal stigma why we don’t ask for help. What I want to do is explain why I don’t want to ask for help or share my challenges with my family and friends.
I just do not want to do that. I didn’t want to go to the doctors for help 8 weeks ago. It was a huge step for me, which is an indication to me of just how low I’d got.
Let me explain where my stigma comes from. There are two sides to it.
First of all, the challenge that I face, the deep seated challenges, are of low self esteem. Pretty much all of my life, I have been over compensating for that by trying to be a high achiever in everything I’ve ever done.
I was good at school. I went into the military. I came top of just about every course I sat and was constantly striving to be good at what I did. This was because I felt the only way to achieve acceptance or approval or “love” I suppose, was to be really good at what I did.
It wasn’t about BEING someone, my sense of worth came from what I was DOING. I know now intellectually that doesn’t make sense. I can see its’ destructive nature and my recent challenges are the manifestation of the problems it causes.
But that drove my behaviour.
When you feel your only way of being accepted, your only way of being loved, you want to put your best foot forward. You want to present the best you, you possibly can. This is because of the fear that if I express or share any vulnerability, any hint of weakness, it means in my eyes I’ve failed. And my belief is I will have failed in the eyes of others. That I wouldn’t be accepted and wouldn’t be “loved”. The roots of that comes from my childhood and how I was brought up as a trophy child
That is why I just do not want to be vulnerable and share my challenges with other people.
Then I went into the military soon after leaving school where the problem was probably compounded. The cultural environment of the Armed Forces back then in the 1980s was not one of empathy or one of love and care. It was one of survival of the fittest. The ego surrounding the machismo associated with being in the forces meant you couldn’t show any form of weakness. And if you did, whether that be physical, mental or emotional, then you were easy meat for those tougher than you were.
Of course, everyone had their own insecurities, but they masked that with ego. But I didn’t know that at the time. So faced with that type of culture, the stigma was strengthened even further.
Now let me expand on that with a specific example.
Whilst I was serving in an operational unit, we were going through a really tough time, getting ready for a operational deployment. The stresses and strains on everyone in the unit from the commanding officer down, were significant. I was a junior officer and like everyone else, I was struggling with the stress. But the mistake I made nearly 30 years ago now, was I admitted that I was suffering from stress.
I had problems with tension in my neck. I had trouble sleeping. I was exhibiting the classic symptoms of workload based stress. But I made the mistake of going to the medics saying, “Look, I’m struggling here a bit, can you do something for me?”
I was naive. Everyone else in my unit was having the same problems. I was perhaps just a little bit more vulnerable to them, a little too honest and certainly a little bit naive. In hindsight, I wish I’d kept my mouth shut.
Here’s why.
In the military they had an administrative form used whenever someone had mental health challenges and it was known as an F-Med8.
They may still be using it today. It was the form raised if someone threw a “wobbly” (military slang for significant mental health issues). It was known for being used if someone had a mental breakdown or just went “crazy” – which did happen enough for a form to be created for such occurrences.
So in my mind, I just went to ask for help about stress and the medics raised the same form on me! It was the same vehicle used for mild symptoms of stress and major psychological breakdown. It was that it was all lumped together.
What ended up happening is they sent me on a week long stress management course and it turned out to be what was colloquially known as a “basket weaving” course. All of the terms I have used here, and the general regard held for the F-Med8 might be misguided, but are perfect examples of the reason a stigma existed then.
I was a junior officer in rank, but quite a key figure on the unit that I was serving. I was a professional running a team of technicians looking after some quite serious kit and doing it very well as my reports up to that date were indicating.
And yet I still found myself placed on the same course that also catered for the problems faced by drug addicts, recovering alcoholics and someone who’d lost their confidence because they’ve been in a car crash. Essentially it was a crude (in my mind) catch all course people for people who are struggling with a wide variety of mental illnesses.
I’ve never felt so out of place and let down in my life.
A few weeks later, I was interviewed by one of the military’s top psychiatrists to check I was fit to continue serving on the front line. I understand the importance of this because I was in an operational unit looking after explosives and weapons. Potentially dangerous things could go wrong if someone “threw a wobbly”. But I was just suffering from mild stress! It felt too extreme a response for my circumstances.
And essentially as a result of that experience, I believe that my military career was effectively over. My reports had, up to that point been showing I was an officer with high potential for the fast track to early promotion and a glowing career.
But because of admitting I was suffering from stress, my reports went down a couple of notches even though my performance had not dipped. I had gone for help and support so my performance wouldn’t dip.
So that’s what happened when I asked for help. The experience really shook me. And because of that experience, I’ve been very, very wary of asking for help.
The two times when I’ve been so low that I have considered ending my life and forced myself to ask for help, (once 10 years ago and the one just 8 weeks ago), I’ve not received the support necessary to move myself forward.
All that has contributed to the whole stigma.
Then every time I have to declare the challenges I’ve had, for example if I’m getting an insurance policy and I have to answer questions on my health, I have to declare it. And I feel dreadful every time I do that. I feel I’m weak. I feel I’m deficient in some way and it doesn’t make me feel good.
It’s embarrassing. It really is embarrassing for me.
And I think some of the support services dealing with mental health challenges don’t help matters either. In the process I’ve experienced recently, I’ve had whispered conversations about getting permission for them to send letters to my address or leave messages on the phone numbers I have given them. I understand they’re doing that to make sure people can keep their medical history private, but it just perpetuates the stigma.
That’s why I personally struggle to go public about my challenges to my friends and family who I’m sure would support me. But if they knew, I would feel deficient. I know I have to deal with that, but that’s why I don’t do it.
However there’s an irony here that could be seen as being hypocritical, because I do tell some people about my challenges. I share them with the occasional individual I encounter in my daily life who tell me they’re struggling with those issues. Sometimes it comes up in conversation even with the briefest of encounters. If I feel it is appropriate and that sharing might help them, I’ll talk about my challenges too.
I admire people who are brave enough to say “I’m struggling with depression” or “I’ve had suicidal thoughts”. I admire their courage to be able to reach out for help.
For example, I was on a course once and I got chatting to a young lad and asked him why he was attending. It was an improvisational comedy course and he told me he was there because it was going to help him deal with his feelings of depression because he had been thinking of committing suicide.
When he told me this, straight away I came out and just started chatting to him about my own challenges and the things I’d done at that time to help me deal with them. Based on his brief experience of me (because outwardly I appear confident and enthusiastic) he was completely surprised I’d been having similar issues.
I’ve done that quite a few times when people have opened up to me, even random strangers and I feel comfortable doing that. It’s like I know, I feel, I understand. And they understand me.
Here’s another reason why I think I’m a bit of a hypocrite when it comes to the stigma attached to depression and mental illness in general.
When I encounter people who appear to be down, I will ask people if they’re okay and if they’d like to talk about things. It’s getting easier and easier to spot people struggling, even if they are trying to hide it, because I know all the tricks I’ve used and they leap out at you when used against me too!
Asking if someone is ok is a question I would flatly refuse to answer or just brush it off with a quick change of subject or a flippant “Oh I’m fine!”.
But I like to think I’m a hypocrite in a good way.
To give you an example, the politician I mentioned earlier said we should reach out more because reaching out will save lives.
The rugby league player interviewed said the key thing he’s realised is that what’s most important to him is family, friends and time experiencing true human connection. It’s not something you can get sat in front of a TV screen or looking through your smart phone or tablet. It’s that real live human connection.
One of the things I secretly wish would have happened to me when I was at my lowest was someone knocking on the door and asking me if I was okay. But because of how I’ve isolated myself, there was no one who was going to do that. That’s something I’m starting to work on.
So I have taken it upon myself to perhaps be that person for someone else who I think might be struggling. It is being a hypocrite because I won’t ask for help, but I’ll give it. Maybe me giving it is part of my healing journey and may help me come to terms with it.
Here’s an example from just two days ago,
Someone I’m connected to on Facebook wrote a post that was very dark. This person was railing against the fact that people just sit on their phones and don’t connect live and face to face anymore.
There was this feeling of desperation and isolation coming from her post that touched me and I sensed and could see elements in her language similar to mine when I am at my lowest. So I could see the undertones of some of the dark thoughts I know I’ve had.
So I contacted her via Facebook Messenger. I didn’t do this publicly because I don’t think it’s the right place to do it on someone’s public post. I said, “Look, are you okay? I saw your post and just want to make sure you’re okay”.
We had a brief exchange via Messenger and it turned out she wasn’t ok. In her terms, she was in a dark place with all sorts of challenges to face. So I suggested we meet up for a coffee and a chat.
Now I don’t know this person very well, but I know them well enough to say hello and have a brief chat whenever we see each other. So there was no reason for this person to agree to meet up. But I said “I sense something is wrong. I think I know how you feel. I’ve felt the same. If you want to chat, then the offer is there”.
To this she opened up, told me a few more things and agreed to meet up. I went and had a cup of coffee with her that day and she was very grateful that I’d shown an interest, that I had cared enough to contact her. We had a good chat about all sorts of things and even had a bit of a laugh.
As it turns out, things weren’t as bad as her post may be indicated. She’s having a few issues. She was just having a rant against the things she was unhappy with. It was just an expression of her frustration rather than depression.
So I was wrong there was a risk. However, I’d rather be wrong and it not be than have been right and not done anything about it. If it’s hypocritical, then I think it’s the best form of hypocrite to be!
Today is Wednesday which means it is therapy day. I’ll probably tell you all about that tomorrow.
Until then…
Post Edition Follow Up
Here’s a link to the UK Government select committee on suicide prevention sharing a number of reports produced trying to address the issue.
Here’s a link to a list of resources the BBC recommend if you are experiencing emotional distress and need help.
