Mental Health

Article by Linda Gillard from the Depression Alliance newsletter

I’ve written a novel, EMOTIONAL GEOLOGY about bi-polar affective disorder, depression and suicidality. It’s not fictionalised autobiography but sadly I’m qualified to write about these subjects with some authority being a long-term sufferer from depression and mild bi-polar affective disorder (aka manic depression.) I’m a member of Depression Alliance Scotland and when I lived in England I was a member of Depression Alliance. I don’t remember how I first heard of DA but I do remember receiving my first newsletter and weeping with relief to find that I was not an isolated lunatic, there were lots of people like me with exactly the same problems! Some of them had even found solutions. DA helped me accept that I wasn’t going mad, I was ill. A lot of people, sick and well, have trouble making that distinction. That’s one of the reasons I wrote EMOTIONAL GEOLOGY, for the 26% (according to a DA survey) who don’t believe mental illness is a genuine illness.

Chances are, if you’re reading this you’re already a member of DA. (If you aren’t - join. You won’t regret it. And don’t let your membership lapse when you get better. Your subscription makes sure that the precious service is there when someone else needs it.) If you are a member, you might still be ill or recovering. You might be struggling today and if you’re anything like me you’ll be looking for help, someone or something to hang on to, to stop you falling back into The Pit. (And if you’re reading this you are out of The Pit because you found the energy to pick up this newsletter and grapple with print. Well done!)

So, for all of you who, like me, struggle on a daily basis with Bloody Life, here are some suggestions from the “It worked for me” dept:

1. Cry. You may fear (like Alice) to drown in a pool of tears but you won’t. What you will do is grieve for your life. (Healthy process). If nothing else, crying tires you out so you can sleep. (Another healthy process.) You maybe need to cry, especially if you’re male. See tears as part of a healing process.

2. Read. Try to read at least a poem a day. Take a look at the STAYING ALIVE anthology. (Norman McCaig on landscape and wildlife makes me think life might be worth living.)

3. Write. A journal, a story, an email, a letter, a list. There is a useful and inspiring book by Louise de Salvo, WRITING AS A WAY OF HEALING. That book got me writing the novel that’s now published.

4. Sing. Play loud, energising rock music - Sting, Genesis, Peter Gabriel. (You can tell I'm 50-something, can't you?) Something with lyrics to make you think, lyrics worth singing along with. I have a young friend who reckons Springsteen saved her life when she was suicidal. I think he probably saved mine too. Play Born to Run and feel depressed – I dare you.

5. Live. Say to yourself over and over, "Living well is the best revenge". Believe it. Some bastard(s) probably brought you this low (or maybe it was just Western civilisation?) but don't let them win. Survive, despite everything. Spit in the eye of fate. Which brings me to...

6. Get ANGRY!! Depression is internalised anger - fact. I’ve found if I externalise anger - yes, that can get messy and loud - the depression doesn't get so much of a hold and it passes sooner. (Actually, if you can work out who you're angry with and why, you'll be well on the way to recovery.)

I don’t have all the answers, in fact I don’t have any answers, but these strategies helped me. I share them with you and hope sincerely that they help. If they don’t, you can still think of me as someone who became ill, stopped working (for years), was suicidal, then found a road to recovery (and I’m not recovered, merely recovering). I went from cracked-up teacher to published novelist. I re-invented myself at 53. If I can do it, then so might you.

Good luck, my dears. Good luck to us all.

Famous manic depressives - a celebration 

EMOTIONAL GEOLOGY features a manic depressive textile artist. Manic depression (properly known as bi-polar affective disorder) is a mental illness that many creative and high-achieving people have suffered from.

A documentary, Stephen Fry - The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive was shown on BBC2 in 2006. In the programme Fry says, "At the age of 37, I had a diagnosis that explained the massive highs and miserable lows I've lived with all my life."

The following is a list of people who suffer from or are thought to have suffered from manic depression.


Alexander the Great
Hans Christian Andersen
Bach
Beethoven
Berlioz
William Blake
James Boswell
Jeremy Brett
Emily Bronte
Robert Burns
Byron
Chopin
Winston Churchill
John Clare
Kurt Cobain
Coleridge
Christopher Columbus
Patricia Cornwell
Noel Coward
Charles Darwin
Ray Davies (of The Kinks)
Charles Dickens
Emily Dickinson
Donizetti
Richard Dreyfuss
Alexandre Dumas
Thomas Edison
Einstein
T S Eliot
Sir Richard Eyre
Carrie Fisher
Stephen Fry
Peter Gabriel
Alan Garner
Goethe
Gogol
Goya
Graham Greene
Tony Hancock
Handel
Ernest Hemingway
Jimi Hendrix
Kerry Katona
Keats
Otto Klemperer
Vivien Leigh
Abraham Lincoln
Robert Lowell
Mahler
Herman Melville
Michelangelo
Edna St Vincent Millay
Spike Milligan
Marilyn Monroe
Mozart
Mussorgsky
Lord Nelson
Isaac Newton
Florence Nightingale
Picasso
Sylvia Plath
Edgar Allan Poe
Cole Porter
Rossini
Rubens
John Ruskin
Schumann
Robert Louis Stevenson
Tony Slattery
Ben Stiller
Strindberg
James Taylor
Tchaikovsky
Dylan Thomas
Tolstoy
J M W Turner
Mark Twain
Van Gogh
Tennessee Williams
Hugo Wolf
Virginia Woolf
Mary Wollstonecroft


 

Extract from EMOTIONAL GEOLOGY 

Rose, a manic depressive, talks to her psychiatrist.


"We can ease the pain, Rose, you know we can… and you can make something out of it, something positive. You of all people will know how to make a silk purse out of this particularly nasty sow's ear."

"Ha, ha, very funny."

"You will survive. You will grow as a result of all this. I've seen it happen many times. Your illness is a terrible gift. It makes you see things differently, it makes you create. Without it you would probably not be an artist, a maker. And if you didn't make things, who would you be? After all, isn't that the reason you stopped taking your medication?"

"But the pain in my head..."

"It will pass, believe me. But you must let us help you."

"If a dog or a horse suffered like this you would put it down!"

"The fact that you can articulate that thought shows how far you are from being a dog or a horse."

"But why should I have to suffer more than them?"

"You don't. You have choices, Rose. Very hard ones."

"What do you mean?"

"You could have killed yourself. If you had slashed your throat instead of your wrists I doubt you would have survived."

"I wanted to die!"

"You no longer wanted to live."

"Is there a difference?"

"Oh, yes, a great deal of difference… We can do very little for those who want to die."