I am a psychiatrist, and I’ve had depression on and off for most of my adult life. I’m now retired from practice. I’ve written about depression in a book, and people are saying how brave I am to ‘come out’ and say it. Yet if I had written about having arthritis, or some other physical condition, no one would have described my ‘coming out’ in such terms. Why should it be such a surprise that a a person who worked as a consultant psychiatrist for almost 25 years, and has spent her life researching and teaching the subject, should have first hand experience of it herself? Probably because, in the health professions, the last thing we usually want anyone to know, particularly our colleagues, is that we too are vulnerable to exactly the same stresses and problems as our patients. We like to see ourselves as strong; indeed maintaining our position on the career ladder often seems to depend on that. There is stigma related to having depression, even though mental health workers profess that they are always ‘fighting’ it. Depression is something that others suffer from, not us.
It is exactly this ‘us’ and ‘them’ attitude that I set out to challenge in the book. It started off as a memoir of my own fairly extensive treatments for depression, both with medication and psychotherapy. However as I began to write it, the close parallels between my own experiences, and those of the people I had tried to help throughout my professional life just became more and more obvious to me. There certainly wasn’t a clear boundary between my own experiences and those of my former patients. We all had complex lives- experienced loss, grieved for those who have gone from our lives, felt lonely, wanted to be loved, and sometimes felt compelled to self medicate with alcohol to ease our distress. Some of us made the same mistakes in our relationships over and over again. Many of us wanted or even tried to end our lives. The stories I tell in the book are taken from my own work as a psychiatrist but have been extensively altered and merged to create people who are true to life, but not ‘real’ case histories. However my own story is very real indeed. It wouldn’t have been appropriate to have been so open when I was still practising- when people came to see me the focus was rightly on their problems not mine. When I was unwell I withdrew from seeing patients until I was recovered. I’ve never tried to hide my illness from colleagues. I’ve just never been quite so public about it.
So far, I’ve had some interesting reactions. As I mentioned above, I’ve been described as brave by some, but others are still clearly unsure what to say to me. When I’ve talked in the past about treatment, in particular the fact that I’ve taken antidepressants now for the last 20 years, I’ve certainly picked up from some of my colleagues that ‘this isn’t the sort of thing one talks about’. Why not? Isn’t this exactly what mental health professionals talk about every day? How can we challenge stigma in society if we cannot face up to our own tendency to stigmatise both our colleagues and, even now, our patients?
I have listened to junior members of staff describe people with depression who are not actively suicidal, or psychotic as the ‘worried well’. I’ve been told that depression is not a ‘severe’ mental illness warranting more investment of psychiatric and mental health nursing resources. I’ve read articles written by my colleagues, which describe it as ‘medicalising misery’. Only people who have never experienced the pain, despair and hopelessness could talk about depression in such terms. I’ve spent my life challenging such attitudes. I made it as far as being a Professor of Psychiatry, despite repeated episodes of depression. I know I’ve had better treatment than many people ever receive and my aim has always been to improve access to, and quality of care for depression. I’ve managed to live with depression and found ways of coping with it- though that has been far from easy. That is also what my book is about. I refuse to be ashamed of it.
Nobody should be.
My book, ‘The Other Side of Silence: A Psychiatrist’s Memoir of Depression’ is published this week by Summersdale.
Patching the Soul 