My story began seventeen years ago, when I was a working mother and journalist. For no visible reason I went from feeling mildly anxious to being completely unable to function, in the space of three days. I was married with two children, ambitious, and thoroughly loved my career. I was blessed in many ways, with a nice house and a supportive, employed husband. I didn’t know that depression could happen so swiftly, least of all to someone like me who had a happy life, or that it could be so physically painful: I was in screaming agony. I was bed-ridden for six months.
Bone-tired, I would lie outwardly still, worn out by the effort of clinging on for dear life, but inside my body was furiously busy. I had a permanent headache, as though dozens of vicious, heat-maddened wasps were massed behind my eye sockets, stinging my soft, unprotected brain. My rancid stomach fiercely knotted and re-knotted itself, spinning like a sharp-pointed pirouette. Often I would throw up. It was as if I was on a plane which was about to crash. I had to have something to hang onto, either my mother or my husband. Their arms were livid with bruises, such was the fierceness of my grip.
After that first crisis subsided, I returned to working full-time until I became pregnant with our third child and left office life to become freelance. Years passed, twins arrived, and my anxiety levels remained high: I was pushing myself to be the best mother I could, while still trying to write, as well as being a wife, daughter and friend. The more I multi-tasked, the more I was multi-asked. In 2004, I succumbed to a second depressive episode even worse than the first – I was bed-ridden for a year, during which time the physical pain was so debilitating that I was often sedated. Ever since then I have been battling the Black Dog - and now, thank goodness, have him on a tight-ish leash.
When I officially ‘came out’ last week as someone with depression, the first reaction has been ‘You’re very brave’ in a ‘Yes-Minsterish-you-must-be-mad’ kind of way – which tells you a lot about the stigma that still exists around mental ill health.
The second has really moved me. Friends, colleagues, relations, and mothers at the school gate have confided that they too suffer from high levels of anxiety and depression. They are hugely relieved to open up and find a fellow sufferer.
I say ‘mothers at the school gates’, because although the World Health Organisation assures us that “overall rates of psychiatric disorder are almost identical for men and women,” there’s no denying that it is largely women who have been sharing their experiences with me. Yes, this could well reflect men’s traditional reticence, but also that women may struggle more than men.
Certainly the numbers suggest this. January 2014 figures from the NHS show that in 2013 almost 475,000 women were referred for counselling or behavioural therapy compared to only 274,000 men.
There may be discrepancies in what the experts think, but the fact remains: an awful lot of women suffer the clinical illness of depression. We can, at least, be thankful that attitudes to women’s mental health have evolved over the years: Victorian psychiatrists thought there was a connection between reproduction and madness.
Now, experts like Professor Daniel Freeman, an Oxford clinical psychologist who has researched the topic, don't think it’s because of our genes (unlike schizophrenia and bipolar disorder which have high heritability). Rather, major life events such as bereavement and unemployment may trigger an underlying tendency to anxiety, or we might be overwhelmed by what Dr. Freeman calls ‘distinctive pressures’ – by which he means trying to type this article while putting the supper on, calling my mother, squeezing into some skinny jeans and bursting the zipper in the process. And wanting my husband to tell me how clever I am to be such a multi-tasker, of course.
Others can manage, and all credit to them. But I am a cautionary tale to those like me who have an underlying tendency to depression and anxiety, and whose life falls into the quicksand of modernity with its multiple demands. For me, the pressures of trying to have-it-all lead to having a breakdown – twice.
Now, in the words of George Herbert, my ‘shrivelled heart’ has ‘recovered greenness’ - but at huge cost in wasted years, especially when my children were young. I now manage by treating myself like a rather nervous pet who must eat well, be exercised, not do too much, and uses therapy and medication as and when. Oh, and loves learning a poem to calm down in the middle of the night.
In Black Rainbow I write about my slow climb to recovery through medication, prayer, my family’s love and - unusually - the healing power of poetry. Sounds odd, I know, but for me, poetry can be one answer to depression: it is free, has no side-effects and can provide words to describe what we cannot: an expression of our common humanity when faced with the extreme isolation of feeling depressed.
I can even, on occasion, be grateful for the blessings that depression has given me. For one, having therapy radically changed the way I mother our five children. I used to be as demanding of them as I was of myself. Therapy has taught me to develop a more compassionate, less judgmental voice, both to myself and to others. Now my heartfelt hope is that they will learn from my experience and avoid falling into the nightmare of mental illness - not experience the terror of that trapdoor opening inside them.