A Can of Madness by Jason Pegler | top

“The author has done all of us a service by writing about how it feels, not just to be manic depressive, but to have a life of fraught and edgy encounters with just about everyone” – The Times

 “A Can of Madness takes you as close to the manic experience as you can get, it makes ‘Prozac Nation’ look like a walk in the park.” – The Big Issue 2005

 “You can't help but marvel at the sheer lunatic magnitude of it.” – The Independent on Sunday.

 “A vivid and sometimes disturbing memoir”– Channel Four Online

 “He convincingly evokes the absolute parallel reality that mania creates and the devastation it wreaks.”– Health Service Journal

 “A strong point of solidarity for those of us from the Chemical Generation for whom things got a little out of hand.” – DAIL Magazine

 “A few more books like this and maybe we'll all be listening.”– The Times

 “It is a pleasure to see this incredibly vivid and moving memoir come to print. I hope it will go on to inspire others whose lives are touched by manic depression”– H Hill, MIND

 “For those who work in the healthcare system, many of Jason’s descriptions should be a warning: this is not the way it should be. This is a strong book. Read it and gain strength.” – Dr. Teifion Davies, senior lecturer and consultant psychiatrist at St. Thomas ’ Hospital, London

I read your book, 'A can of madness' yesterday and it is the most moving and personally affecting book I have ever read. I guess you could say that you have helped one 17 year old with depression,
as unfortunately, I am exactly that. The book made me realise for the first time, despite having the illness for over 7 years on and off that there are other people out there who have the same feelings of loneliness and suicide as I do and that there are ways that this can be if not stopped, reduced and helped.

Eleanor Whittall

My friend who is in hospital at the moment has just finished reading A Can of Madness (he is bipolar, although the diagnosis changes to schizophrenic sometimes). He has just called me to say it has changed his life & taught him not to feel so ashamed. Its a great step forward for him to say that, so thanks.

Kirsty Morrison

'Jason Pegler's A Can Of Madness is a moving and intelligent approach to a subject that is so little understood and too often ignored. It deserves to be widely read and its contents debated. Certainly the publication now makes this possible'

John Calder - Publisher of 18 Nobel Prize Winners.

'I just wanted to say that I started reading your book as soon as I got on the train returning to Cornwall and I just could not put the thing down - It is WONDERFUL, such an insight, should be MANDATORY reading for all nurses and health professionals. Maybe then 'Who Knows'? they may find some care and understanding within themselves. I have been a health service professional since 1975 (a training officer since 1999) and with all the training, text books, seminars, conferences and everything else, your book is worth twenty times more than all of it. Thank you for writing the book. Thank you for allowing so many people into your life and sharing your experiences, your pain, your private moments, but most of all thank you for being Jason Pegler for all of us who need to understand that "There is never an end to learning".'

Mike Reeves

'An amazing book, as someone who suffers from depression, it was a difficult book to read as it brought home so many of my own feelings, but I was compelled to finish it and I was glad that I did. Jason, you are an incredibly brave man and I know that you will have made a difference to all those who have read your wonderful book.'

Nickie

'It is all too easy for those who are ignorant of mental illness to retain their prejudices when so few of the millions of people affected are prepared to share their experiences. Jason Pegler breaks this trend, employing an emotional honesty that can only demand empathy and respect. Full of slang and provocative language, 'A can Of Madness' has a raw, unedited feel and yet is incredibly readable. This memoir is a wonderful evocation of how it feels to be on the edge of social acceptance and should be acknowledged as an extremely valuable piece of literature as well as an insight into the reality of mental illness.'

Anna Mill, London.

'I thought it was brilliant........I read it through in two days from when I started it. It was one of those books you just couldn't put down. Your experiences were frightening, sad and at times very funny to read. I was totally ignorant on Manic Depression. It left my mind boggling.'

Maria Cartwright

'Jason's a survivor. He’s been through hell and back several times and that is probably what gives his book such an edge, with all the anger, the warmth, the humour, the compassion and the sexiness. Everything he says comes from his guts. He even manages to make madness sound attractive, because even at his lowest, his strength, his intelligence, his sensitivity and love for others shine through.'

T.V.

'As a fellow suffer of depression and a fellow Gloucestonian, I was fascinated to read you book. I was not disappointed. It was a truly moving account of your experiences. My experiences have never been as drastic and harrowing as yours but I could certainly relate to many of your feelings. My main battle is not being ashamed of my illness. I wish you the best of health in the future and thank you for your inspirational book.'

Liz

'A Can of Madness is striking for its brave, honest and often shocking account of one man's experiences of mania, depression and life in general. The passages where Jason describes the manic states take you with him with their pace and power. At these times the book is at its most vivid, real and alive. I believe I now have a level of understanding of mania that I wouldn't have had without reading the book.'

Angela Sweeney, London.

'A Can Of Madness is insightful and helpful to those who do or do not suffer/know someone with Manic Depression. It explores the situation in-depth and gives excellent views and advice on dealing with this intense illness. As a sufferer of manic depression I found this memoir helpful and helped me to set small targets for each day to carry on. This book shows that even with an illness like Manic Depression people can still make it in society - even though it is an ongoing situation. Hopefully this book will go on to open many peoples eyes about sufferers of Manic Depression - it certainly helped me....'

Emma Leadbetter, London.

'What a read, I never knew it was so hard having the illness but to write an interesting and eye-opening book like this takes talent and patience. Go on Jason.'

Bradley Hirst, Art Director, Leeds.

'The book that starts the debate on the last great taboo. Mental health is an issue we must at least debate, like the race issue unless it becomes main stream nothing is changed in society and only the voice of the so called - caring is heard. The establishment must not be allowed to operate behind closed doors.'

Justin Ashton, Pub landlord, Cornwall.

'It is a pleasure to see this incredibly vivid and moving memoir come to print.
I hope it will go on to inspire others whose lives are touched by manic depression'

H Hill Mind

"Raw! Step aside Irvine Welsh... Here comes Jason Pegler! And for all the girls there's even a bit of shot'n'tears romance yippee!!"

Renelda Chemaly (Durban, South Africa)

A CAN OF MADNESS is a compelling read for anybody interested in discovering more about this area, either for themselves or because of someone they know. Jason Pegler's prose vividly draws you into the intense ups and downs of his manic depression, matching his changing states of mind. I found it very revealing to read an account of manic depression written from the inside out. Particularly illuminating are the passages where Jason powerfully recreates in words those all-consuming manic states in which he believed that he really really could do anything.

Stephen Wyatt
Radio, television and theatre playwright

"Opens up a subject normally discussed behind closed doors, I now feel a relation and have got a bit of understanding of a subject that many people feel they know about, these people should read and learn as I was once one of them."

Mark Stallard London, UK

"A truly enlightening read on a subject which society is too eager to brush under the carpet. For an illness which affects so many, more people should read this frank account to reduce the stigma attached to mental illness."

G. Murphy, London

"I read this book in one go. It was so compelling, I couldn't put it down. The feelings of trauma and sadness it invoked stayed with me for weeks afterwards. Jason is a tremendously brave man who I hope, inspires many others with his courage and his insight."

Rachel Peel, London

"There can never be enough awareness of mental illness. This book pushes the frontiers forward and the reader will never be the same person again. One man's courage in writing it maybe the lifeline of many and the enlightenment of thousands."

W.A.Cook - Kennington, London

"As a mind opener for a different state of mind this book has changed me. From looking at people on the dregs of society to becoming the unlucky few, without sympathy but including them into the life which we all hide. I truly hope this becomes standard reading material on any school curriculum."

John, Dublin

"Really good book that made me want to know that lovely girl Sonia that changed Jason. I hope the best for your book."

Carole, Strasbourg, France

"A book full of strength, easy to read, showing the different aspects of an illness which touches so many people. I enjoyed it from the start to the finish and it definitely opened my eyes on a subject before unknown to me. C'mon Jase. Carry on, you're great. Good luck to you two."

Ben, Le Mans, France

 “ Like other books in this genre, such as ‘Prozac Nation’, the author is often painfully honest about his experiences. But, as well as educating us, the book also provides optimism and hope, showing that is it finally possible to learn to live with and accept having a mental health problem.”– Julia MacPherson - MIND

 “Pegler gives great insights into what it means to live with manic depression.”- Rethink

 “A compelling, funny and often shocking account of manic depression. An honest firsthand account of the author’s experience of life with severe mental health problems.”– MIND

 “Compulsive stuff.”– Community Care

 “A revolutionary way of understanding manic depression.”– Fiona Whelpton, author, journalist and mental health activist.

Name of Article: A Can of Madness

Publication: The Times Educational Supplement , 26/11/04

 Available at: http://www.tes.co.uk/search/story/?story_id=2054592

There are manic passages in this book. For instance: "I discovered I was sat next to Geoffrey from the old TV programme Rainbow on the train from Clapham Junction to Waterloo . He looked as pale and ill as I did. Maybe Geoffrey was mentally ill as well. That was such a pity. Zippy, George and Bungle hadn't been real people and all that time Geoffrey hadn't known. No wonder he was so depressed now that he had found out."

The author has done all of us a service by writing about how it feels, not just to be manic depressive, but to have a life of fraught and edgy encounters with just about everyone.

"Doctors just didn't listen to me. They didn't have enough time, there were too many patients, they had too much paperwork."

A few more books like this (thanks to Chipmunkapublishing, which is dedicated to getting people with mental health problems into print) and maybe we'll all be listening.

Name of Article: Paperback Reviews

Publication: The Independent on Sunday, 28/11/04

Available at: http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/books/reviews

/story.jsp?story=588038

A Can of Madness by Jason Pegler

According to Pegler's own preface, this is "the most honest account written about manic depression that you have ever seen". You soon get used to his remarkable monomania, make allowances for it and when it starts to get really out of control, you can't help but marvel at the sheer lunatic magnitude of it. The self-proclaimed cleverest boy at his Gloucester grammar school, chess master and star of the rugby field was admitted to hospital and diagnosed manic depressive at 17. By that time he'd already been raving for a couple of years which probably didn't help, but neither did it fully explain his conviction that he was destined to avert a nuclear war and create world peace through the widespread distribution of Ecstasy.

A Can of Madness moves in a repetitive cycle of mania, depression and relative normality throughout numerous stays in hospital. It condemns the mental health services, but works towards a redemptive conclusion, wherein Pegler sets up his own mental health charity and publishing house dedicated to combating misconceptions about mental illness. There's lots of wit and vigour in his writing, some shocking and brutal moments and a few tender ones.

By Laurence Phelan

Name of Article: Steady Article

Publication: MDF

 ‘A Can Of Madness’ is my autobiography on manic depression. (ISBN 0 954 221 826) Pegler says "I was diagnosed with manic depression when I was 17 and am now I am 27". My book has already helped a lot of people accept their condition, feel less isolated, come up with coping strategies and even snap out of depression. A word of warning though, Britain ’s answer to ‘Prozac Nation’ is not for the faint-hearted.

Name of Article: ‘ A Can of Madness’ by Jason Pegler

Publication: Breakthrough

I recently met Jason Pegler at the conference 'The Social Model of Madness & Distress' organised by Greater London Action on Disability (GLAD) in Brixton. I decided to purchase a copy of his book because it is always interesting to find out another person's experience of madness. Now I will set out my person opinion on this book:

I found reading Jason's moving account very educational in terms of appreciating what exactly a person is going through when they are experiencing manic depression and also the effect this must have on an individual's family and friends. But most important of all is the person who as an individual has to come to terms and live with their experiences of this mental distress.

I certainly feel a sense of solidarity in reading about Jason's heart-rending story about the ups and downs of living with madness. Also it was an indictment of the lack of compassion and empathy from those healthcare staff responsible for his care. It shows how more needs to be done in order to reform mental health services and bring them into the 21t Century.

It has certainly got me thinking about the possibility of having the courage to write my own story. I would certainly recommend others to read this book.

Richard Marx

 Name of Article: ‘A Can of Madness’ by Jason Pegler: Book Review

Publication: Southwark Mind 2002

 Review by Robert Dellar

 Jason Pegler, a survivor of manic-depression, has just self-published an autobiography, "A Can of Madness." Funded in part by the Mind Millennium Awards. I think this book is an amazing achievement.

Covering Jason's life from childhood, through having his first breakdown whilst doing his ‘A’ levels, to various shenanigans at university and nightclubs, this book articulates the lifestyle and head-space of a young man coming to terms with a manic-depressive ‘illness’ in an enormously charismatic and compelling way. The prose is refreshingly raw, it is fluent and it flows, jumping energetically off the page at the reader.

The book is very entertaining and accessible, Jason suggests at the end of his book that no-one in their right mind would choose to go through the experiences associated with a ‘manic-depression’ diagnosis and the pain, chaos and periods of hospitalisation involved. However, many of the episodes described make the ‘illness’ sound like a right laugh. Jason floats around Gloucester, Manchester, parts of America and finally London, getting up to all sorts of mischief: taking lots of drugs, drinking loads, shagging lots of women and generally partying it. The way he writes about this is boastful, but also hilarious and painfully honest. He gives mixed messages about the benefits or otherwise of psychosis, messages which probably reflect his own experiences accurately.

Jason Pegler is only 25. If this book is anything to go by, he may well have a successful future as a writer ahead of him. He is also helping the cause of the ‘mad’ people's movement by demystifying psychosis and in ionic ways making it sound glamorous. It takes courage to do this from such an intensely personal perspective.

If you'd like a copy, its available for £12 including postage and packing from Jason at: PO Box 6872, Brentwood, Essex, CM13 1ZT. Cheques payable to Jason Pegler.

"What follows is intended to help people understand the condition of manic depression and similar mental illnesses… My own experience is that it’s possible to emerge at the other end of adversity and live a decent life ... When writing this book, I often thought back to how long it took me to accept my own illness. I know now I can help at least one person cope with their illness better that I did. This alone makes the pain of writing it worthwhile.- Jason Pegler, taken from the preface.

Name of Article: Books

Publication: Rural Minds Digest, Issue 50, Dec 2002

 “As I was being driven off in the back of a police van in a space suit, I thought I was Donovan ‘Bad Boy’ Smith being driven to a rave…” This is the start of Jason Pegler’s book A Can of Madness, which is a hard-hitting and painfully honest account of the author’s experience of living with manic depression. The language is often strong and the book is not for the faint-hearted. Yet the book gives hope for the future and there is a recognition of the fact that “mania is a unique and sometimes beautiful experience”.

Name of Article: Book Reviews

Publication: Community Care, 12/12/02

 Julia Tugendhat on promoting responsibility among young people and Anthony Douglas on a cathartic autobiography

 ‘A Can of Madness’

Jason Pegler, Chipmunkapublishing,

Jason Pegler suffers from manic depression and his book, A Can of Madness, catalogues how his illness nearly destroyed him, those close to him and numerous friends and lovers along the way. Drugs and alcohol come and go, and the slide into addiction, as an unforeseen consequence of pain relief, is power­fully described.

This autobiographical work is an outpouring and as such there are clear lessons.

At the end, after 10 years of self-harm, Pegler has a recovery plan - an action plan, put together with the help of his psychologist. He is in a stable relationship, with hopes for the future, the same hopes all of us have.

The hidden lesson of the book is that health and social care services need to intervene early. Not doing so can ruin adult lives and waste untold resources on reluctant adults.

A Can of Madness is compulsive stuff and worth reading to understand better the numbing daily experience many service users go through.

Like much of social work, it is short of answers and like social work; its inherent optimism that life can only get better keeps Pegler - and the reader - going.

 Anthony Douglas is director of social care and health, Suffolk Council

 Name of Article: Reviews

Publication: DAIL Magazine, Issue 171

Disability Arts in London (DAIL) Magazine publishes news, views, previews and reviews of the work of disabled artists in London and beyond. It provides a forum where people can express different views about all aspects of disability arts.

Chas de Swiet reviews ‘A Can of Madness’ by Jason Pegler.

A Can of Madness is a memoir of a life in which there has been a constant battle with manic depression. It is an account that I found hard to put down. It covers Jason's journey through school, raving, drugs, alcoholism, violence, holidays, university, graduation, working in London and four hospital admissions.

 There are very lucid accounts of what it is like to have manic and depressive episodes. The recall of manic thought patterns is sharp and reassuringly familiar, including delusions of grandeur, perhaps brought on by lack of self-respect and familiar paranoia about events such as nuclear war. The dangerous attraction of solipsism also comes through. At one point he hits the nail on the head: 'Things seem so much easier when you are manic, as your imagination seems to become your reality. You don't actually have to do anything to believe that you have accomplished it.'

Jason thoroughly explores the nature of his past relationships, whether they are romantic, family, with friends or the strange projections that can take place on the ward. It is one of the few accounts of madness I have read that deals with great honesty and courage about some of the sexual experiences that can arise as a result of an episode. Other common issues discussed are the effects of a family history of mental health problems, whether to be open with new acquaintances or the loneliness of being mentally ill. The following made me smile in recognition: 'The only thing that I can remember liking was sponge pudding with custard. The taste made me feel, for the merest part of a second, OK; like I felt when I was writing a poem.'

The last part of the book goes into detail about the prevention strategy that Jason has worked out. This strategy is very much based on the medical model and around working out the right medication regime, but it seems to work for him. He is very strong throughout on the need for a lack of denial when facing manic depression. The change that a secure decent home makes to his life is reassuring to see, as is the awareness that general levels of expectation might have to be adjusted.

Some of ‘A Can of Madness’ makes for uncomfortable reading. For the first 20-odd years of his life, Jason was extremely violent and is still obviously more than capable of looking after himself. In the later part of the book Jason rejects this violent side but still seems proud of previous exploits. Some of the language used towards women is also offensive: he is happy to call them 'bitches' and 'sluts' when his own behaviour is not exactly perfect. One last criticism is that although Jason is obviously a multitalented guy - he was a junior chess champion and was talented at sport - the language sometimes comes across as quite boastful.

On the whole, the book is one that I can relate to strongly, not least because Jason's first breakdown was a month before mine whilst being part of the same rave scene in the West Country. It is reminiscent of Elizabeth Wurtzel's ‘Prozac Nation’; but whilst ‘Prozac Nation’ was culturally specific to the East Coast of the USA , ‘A Can of Madness’ provides a strong point of solidarity for those of us from the Chemical Generation for whom things got a little out of hand.

Some of Jason's writing is raw in parts but is always honest and he often mentions the cathartic power that writing has for him.

 Name of Article: Dancing to a Different Tune

Publication: Health News Journal

‘A Can of Madness’ by Jason Pegler.

Jason Pegler’s memoir about living with manic depression has been published with funding from the Millennium Commission and Mind. It may prove unsettling readers for those HSJ readers removed from the daily lives of the people who use their mental health services.

Pegler gives great insights into what it means to live with manic depression, which affects about one in 100 people. His frank admissions about his past behaviour are shocking when he describes alcohol fuelled fights and casual relationships with women. But he applies the same candour and directness to all aspects of his life, without censoring the more unpleasant parts of his past behaviour.

Pegler shows how there is a direct link between the quality of care he gets, and the success he has in managing his illness, The thoughtless and unkind words of healthcare staff take on a life-and-death significance for Pegler at times and he bravely recalls the most painful memories of hospital wards. The most harrowing of these is the suicide of a fellow patient and the reaction of staff to be severely lacking in compassion and decency.

Pegler’s writing style, at its best, is dynamic and evocative of his drink and drug-based hedonism of the 1990s and the bizarre delusions of mania. For him, these have included thinking that he could prevent a nuclear war by getting everyone in Europe to take drugs and dance together.

Liz Nightingale, Media Officer, Rethink

Name of Article: Review

Publication: Health Service Journal (HSJ)

‘A Can of Madness’ by Jason Pegler

Dance and pop culture informs his writing style, which is both casual and philosophical by turns. He convincingly evokes the absolute parallel reality that mania creates and the devastation it wreaks. Having experienced such highs myself, I would say he does so very accurately.

A Can of Madness is a welcome addition to the existing “canon” of self-help memoirs, such as Kay Redfield Jameson’s excellent An Unquiet Mind and Elizabeth Wurtzel's Prozac Nation.

Pegler’s work measures up very well to these, more, commercial, standards. He has reworked Redfield Jameson’s subject matter for a generation raised on a cultural diet of Oasis, house music and Scorsese films.

The book is essential reading for any mental health service manager who needs reminding that people can, and do, recover from a severe mental illness when they get the right services and support as early as possible.

 Name of Article: A Can of Madness Review

Publication: Mind Website

A Compelling, Funny and Often Shocking Account of Manic-Depression is Brought to Print with the Help of Mind

"I remember walking through Mosside buying Ethnic minority newspapers and thinking how I could save the world through the medium of film. I stayed up all night writing messages in books and on pamphlets that I had collected, also leaving my phone number to let people know who to call when the inevitable nuclear war broke out. News of the war was about to break the following day.

At about 4 am I thought I’d call Snoop Doggy Dogg to call for his help. There was an emergency number at the back of the CD cover of Doggystyle to contact his crew if anything went wrong. I rang the number and it didn’t matter that I couldn’t speak to anyone, my powers of telepathy had returned…By 7.30am, I thought that the whole world had turned into the red light district in Amsterdam and that Chorlton in Manchester was the centre of
world consciousness. I had never been so happy and intrigued in my life." – Taken from P98 of ‘A Can of Madness’by Jason Pegler

‘A Can of Madness by Jason Pegler’ (to be published on Friday 12th April 02, Chipmunkapublishing, price £12.00 pbk, funded by Mind) is a vivid and sometimes disturbing memoir about the experience of having a diagnosis of manic-depression. It is being published with funding from the Real Lives, Real People project, a unique collaboration between Mind and the Millennium Commission.

‘A Can of Madness’ was written using excerpts of a diary written at the time of the author’s flights into mania and his descents into depression. Like other
books in this genre, such as Prozac Nation, the author is often painfully honest about his experiences. He recounts a dizzying, dark and sometimes euphoric journey through a world of elation, despair, binge drinking, drugs, raves and psychiatric wards.

But, as well as educating us, the book also provides optimism and hope, showing that it is finally possible to learn to live with and accept having a mental health problem.

"What follows is intended to help people understand the condition of manic depression and similar mental illnesses…My own experience is that it’s possible to emerge at the other end of adversity and live a decent life. When
writing this book, I often thought back to how long it took me to accept my own illness. I know now I can help at least one person cope with their illness better than I did. This alone makes the pain of writing it worthwhile." - Jason Pegler, taken from the preface.

Jason Pegler lives in London and is currently working on his second novel.

Name of Article: Nothing Soothing about…

Publication: Openmind Magazine

 Nothing soothing about A Can of Madness.

Kay Jamieson was the first to link writing and bipolar disorder, and this book suggests why that might be. It is very hard to write about those mood swings, especially the mania, without making it all sound a bit glamorous (the manic depressive is the contemporary model of ‘romantic’ madness). Making a ‘story’ out of it presupposes survival and forces a shape and order on the experience. Other depressive illnesses are pretty dreary and it is hard to make narrative sense out of psychosis. In addition, because lithium does seem to work, it is a diagnosis with some hope attached. Pegler catches the wild energy of the illness but also the terrifying and hideous aspects of it; above all, the sense of loss involved in being ‘cured’. He writes a ‘good story’, vividly and movingly.

Name of Article: Dark Side of the Mind

Publication: Groundswell News, Issue 22, Summer 2003

 Groundswell News is a magazine for the homeless.

Over to you!, Book Reviews, the dark side of the mind.

I count myself as someone who’s not scared easily, but Jason Pegler’s book A Can of Madness rocked me to my core and brought back memories that I wanted to stuff at the back of my mind and to keep them there, as a sufferer of depression.

There is a paragraph I have taken from the book that summed up how I felt when an attack of depression struck:

“I feel really shit. There’s no future. I’m so unhappy and I’ll never be happy again so I’ll fucking kill myself. I’ll jump off a building. That will kill me. Thing is I’m too depressed to even fucking stand up, let alone walk and walk all the way up a fucking tall building. You must be fucking joking. I could get a lift but I don’t want to see anyone. They’d only be wankers anyway and they wouldn’t understand the shit I’m going through. I’ll have another cigarette and kill myself that way. Shit, that’s too slow. I don’t give a fuck. Thing is, I don’t know what would kill me and I’m too depressed to go anywhere. Just want to stay here and feel like fucking shit. There’s no future anyway so it doesn’t fucking matter.”

Does this ring any bells? Good reading and stay safe.

 Eddie O’Neill Parker

 Name of Article: User and Carer Perspectives

Publication: Mind Publications Catalogue, Autumn Winter 2004/2005

 A Can of Madness

Jason Pegler

This is an honest firsthand account of the author’s experience of life with severe mental health problems. It does not flinch from describing extremes of feeling and using explicit language. The author, who published this book himself, with the help of a Mind Millennium Award, tells how he copes with his mental health problems and what life throws at him.

Chipmunka Publishing, 2002

Behind A Glass Wall | top

Warning: This is not for the faint hearted but for every parent to read. Chipmunkapublishing publishes this because we aim to change the way the world thinks about mental health. The time is nigh.

The Times August 19th

Letter to a Lost Daughter By Dorothy Schwarz

This was the note in perfectly legible writing found by the police lying on the front seat of your car, parked at Marks Tey station on August 22nd, 2000.

(To my family and friends and Hicham (their addresses are on a list pinned up over my bed.) No one is to blame for my death. I am killing myself because the circumstances of my life are unbearable. I love you all; but I can't live like this. I am in too much pain and I am just deteriorating. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. I used to work and see friends a lot; but now I can do neither because I can't function nor communicate. I've been in hell for 4 months and I can't bear the pain any more. Zoë you must have worked out careful plans: to arrive just minutes before the London express hurtled down the tracks, hide behind a concrete pillar, dash down the platform and leap high against the driver's cab. Your father phoned at 2 pm from Liverpool Street to say that his train was delayed: "Apparently there's been a fatality on the line." Neither of us guessed that it was you. Even though you'd tried to kill yourself once before. You were 18 that first time. We called it a nervous breakdown when Bristol University sent you home for "undisciplined behaviour."

Back home depression set in and you took an almost fatal dose of quinine. But you recovered completely, so we thought, and went back to university, made friends and took your degree. And as for unpleasant memories - we shoved them away. While you were at the LSE for your Masters, as our memories of the breakdown faded and you seemed set for a brilliant career, no one spoke about this first episode. "I've been to the bottom," you used to say, "I'm strong." We put the horror behind us. Your friends, your lovers and your family agreed: it was over. And then when you were 26, and your charisma and enthusiasms grew wild again, and aggressive, we all said "Zoë is just being Zoë."

We were in denial and so were you. We followed your lead. You gave up your job and against everyone's advice, went to Morocco "to find myself." I loved the emails you sent in those first weeks, full of enthusiasm about Islamic culture, learning Arabic and meeting the love of your life - Hicham. Then the emails grew wilder and wilder, your projects more farfetched, but we suspected nothing until we arrived for our three week holiday to find you in an episode of full blown mania: attacking the hotel staff, knocking my glasses off my nose, refusing to eat, hectoring everyone in earshot with grandiloquent schemes to save the universe. Did you ever forgive us for signing the papers that sectioned you into a psychiatric hospital in Marrakech? It was that or prison, and your father argued it would be harder to get you out of prison than out of a mental hospital.

When the hospital released you twelve days later and we flew home together with your mania brought down by antipsychotic drugs, it seemed only a matter of waiting a few weeks for you to return to some sort of equilibrium. But the depression seized you like a terrier shaking a rag and wouldn't let go. And neither we, nor the doctors, nor you yourself could have managed to prevent the terrible outcome. After your death, as we looked for answers, we found on the top shelf in your bedroom six cardboard cartons crammed with papers jumbled together in no particular order.

I never knew that you had kept so many. I found diaries in hard and soft covers, notes on loose sheets of paper, photographs and a lock of everyone in the family's hair, birthday cards and souvenirs. When I'd finished reading and sorting your diaries, my diaries, everyone's letters and memories I found no answer to the terrible question of why that haunts those who are left after a suicide.. When I'd finished reading the medical reports we had obtained from the Health Trust I found no answer. Weren't you yourself swinging between yes and or no? You wrote that last summer in the brown notebook I'd given you: Reality: Morocco/Hicham - can't go back. So you knew, as I guessed you had, that a life with Hicham was a fantasy. He would never have settled in UK as you hoped.

He didn't even want to come. He was your last love. Most probably have to accept a more humble job and more humble living arrangements than I would like - if I don't get better, but make the most of things - I can work my way up. Have to accept that at 27 I am not 'set up' job/house/relationship-wise. My friends will not reject me if I don't reject me. The challenge is to be happy and true to my nature, through deep self-esteem because I don't have any strength at the moment and may not have for a long time if ever - bad luck. I feel myself trembling on the brink of understanding your leaving like that - the essential mystery of suicide. But ultimately that you killed yourself -makes no sense to me. Killing is something that one does to something else - an enemy, an animal, an unfaithful lover. Not to yourself!

There is no pain to compare with the one suicide inflicts. Nobody who is healthy wants to die and nobody who is healthy wants to burden his or her loved ones with this kind of pain. And what was going through your mind during the confusion of your last weeks and what was going through our minds - not seeing that you were growing worse not better? That last summer, your Dad and I had such faith in the reassuring psychiatrist in charge of your case when he said that it would be only a matter of weeks before the medication would lift that crippling depression. You had recovered before. Suicide is like measles, I thought. Once you've had it, you're immunised from further attempts. The opposite is true. But none of us who loved you found this out until it was too late. Easier to tell ourselves when you did extravagant things like drive my car at 84 mph on the M25 in the rain and crash into the barriers, or fight with your beloved younger brother, that "Zoë is being Zoë," rather than acknowledge that you were suffering from swings of manic behaviour.

"No one is to blame for my death." Writing in your suicide note those eight words in biro then tracing over the letters so that some letters are thickened and others have two parallel lines from top to bottom. They are like railway tracks leading to your implacable act. Your friend Lizzie sent an e-mail a year later saying that she'd dreamed that you were giving her useful advice. When people dream of you sometimes you frighten them, sometimes not. My friend's fifteen-year old with a history of self harm, dreamed that you and she were running down a hill hand-in-hand laughing to escape, but she stopped halfway while you ran on to the bottom. She is 18 now and well again.

Your cousin dreamed that you held a menacing rifle but your elder sister dreamed that in our sitting room, a wind blew through your hair and you turned into a butterfly among a cloud of other blue butterflies that fluttered outside. Your father went to Scotland the spring after you died and saw the trees that we had paid for. Six hundred of them. No plaque or anything. In the forest book, there's a grid reference for the actual spot. He took photos. They are just young native trees, a good memorial for you. Most of your ashes (you'd be as surprised as I was, the volume of ashes one body makes) have been scattered are under a mossy stone where Tigger is also buried in the front garden. I sometimes fight an urge to raise that stone and see what's happened to them. Are they mixed with earth? When Tigger died you were pleased that I wrapped the cat in white muslin instead of burying him in a dustbin liner.

When the vet opened his bag, I ran out of your room, too squeamish to watch the final injection. You held Tigger in your arms. When I came back a few minutes later, he looked asleep and peaceful. No one held you. The police sergeant insisted that you could have felt nothing. That can't be true! You must have felt something as your body smashed against the window of the driver's cab. The train driver said at the inquest that you jumped high. He was sent to hospital with shock. Remained there for several days, I believe. A friend of a friend of yours said: "What an egotistical way to die. Didn't she think of the train driver?" "At that moment she wasn't thinking of drivers." I said, "Fuck off!" I've never seen him again, nor want to. "I can't bear the pain any longer," you wrote in that note. I've laminated it, a souvenir together with a lock of your hair.

Why couldn't you wait longer for the pills to work? Fourteen weeks of pain should not have been unendurable. You slept a lot. But there are other ways of looking at your tempestuous life - your friends, your lovers, your writing, your work, your enthusiasm, your joy. Perhaps you were too fine for us? The beat of the drum you danced to didn't fit in with our drab, calculating world where what a person has counts more than what a person is. Or was it simply random chemicals misfiring, turning your reactions from vivid to florid and shocking the sensibilities of everyone around you? I had never seen a mad person until I saw you when we came to fetch you home from Morocco. Sensitivity - we lacked it. Honesty - we bamboozled ourselves. And you - the silent, sullen one behind the glass wall retreating; we thought you were improving but you had already decided to leave us. What doppelgänger took you? I hate her.

You accepted her and the two of you must have worked out the suicide plan most carefully. To be loving is not enough when we are also ignorant. So dreadfully ignorant of the suicide risk that accompanies manic depression. I wondered in the days, weeks, months and now years that have followed your awful choice whether we could have stopped you. We complained to the hospital authorities that we only learned after your death that you had spoken of suicide to doctors and nurses. They told us that patient confidentiality had been respected. But you had told the psychiatrist that "suicide was not an option." That's what you told me, too, during the only evening that we talked properly together and I never questioned you again. Zo, my beloved daughter, stay in our memories as long as we're alive and stay alive in the memories of many other people who also loved you. Sometimes, Zo, I go places and meet someone new and I don't tell them about you.

Every parent who loses a child to suicide has to accept that the dead fade from active daily consciousness; they have to or none of us could carry on. There comes a stage when grief must subside or life becomes subordinate to pain. You would be ruefully amused with one of my responses to losing you. The single grey parrot that you let perch on your wrist until depression stopped you reacting to anything has been joined by another (and another and another). The little flock live in an aviary in the garden. One pair of Amazons is sitting on four eggs. You would have loved them. "Please forgive me," you wrote. When I forgive you, will you forgive me? You left an unexpected legacy. You used to complain in letters and conversations and emails, that I moaned too much about my problems. Middle class syndrome you called it. Now that the next to worse thing has happened, I moan less. So is there an answer? You killed yourself because your brain grew too disordered to give you enough time to wait for the antidepressants to take effect. You killed yourself because you couldn't face returning to hospital. Or as your eldest sister says: you just wanted to stop the pain and thought that you could come back later. Life itself is a mystery - why should death be clearer? [Ends]

Lessons of Zoë's suicide

Walter and Dorothy Schwarz One in five manic depressives eventually commits suicide. When Zoë did, we were not aware of that statistic, though we ought to have been. She had been ill for five months - first manic then depressed. Her psychiatrist probably knew about the suicide rate, and he, too, might have acted more aggressively to prevent it. It's true that at 27 our youngest daughter was an adult and she chose to die, "I love you all but I can't live like this," she wrote, sitting in her car at Marks Tey station before throwing herself under an express train. But if she had lived, we believe she could have found a way of coping with her treatable but incurable illness, as others have done with the help of antidepressants and therapy.

Two and a half years later our grief has grown scar tissue but remains infected with guilt and shame. Something waiting to happen was not prevented. Why? Perhaps the story of Zoë's death could help others. Bipolar affective disorder, as the ancient illness is now called, has been associated down the ages with originality and charisma, often with genius: Byron, Coleridge, Melville, Graham Greene, Virginia Woolf, Strindberg, Spike Milligan, Louis Althusser, Otto Klemperer, Stephen Fry, Vivien Leigh, Sue Lyon, Kurt Cobain, Francis Coppola ……. The illness is now regarded as a genetic neurobiological brain disease affecting one person in a hundred to some degree.

Its victims swing inexorably, according to the Manic Depression Website, between "increased energy, restlessness, racing thoughts, rapid talking, excessive or euphoric feelings, extreme irritability and distractibility" and "a persistent sad, anxious, or empty mood, feelings of hopelessness, pessimism, guilt, worthlessness…." Our mistake with Zoë was our refusal to see her eccentric behaviour as a symptom of mental illness - not just the familiar neuroticism of middle-class professional families. We had plenty of excuses because parents are required, above all else, to believe in their offspring. And Zoë had emerged triumphantly "cured" from an earlier bipolar episode when she was 18. It had begun following a bout of glandular fever just before her first term at Bristol. She ascribed her altered mental states to a chemical imbalance. At Bristol she was wild, bizarre, promiscuous and aggressive: she was sent down. The depression which followed ended in her taking an overdose of quinine. We saved her - that time. With a minimum of drugs and 2 years of counselling she considered she was 'cured:' went back to college, achieved an MSC with distinction and told us. 'I've been to the bottom. I'm strong". We believed her. We blotted out the nightmare episode. Throughout her twenties her behaviour was mercurial - too many boyfriends, too much pot - but it always seemed on this side of acceptable.

She did a pioneering job with United Response, a major charity, where her intelligence, charm and energy brought in more customers and money than anyone expected. "A sparkly, beautiful, vivacious woman with a keen sense of humour and a rare ability to engage with everyone she met," her boss wrote after Zoë's death. She was charismatic, compassionate, full of laughter and love. True she had a famously filthy temper. Even when, as we know in retrospect, she was becoming manic again - her plans for her future became irrational and her outbursts of temper became physically violent - she willed us to believe in her. She brainwashed us. "Zoë is Zoë" we said, and so did her two brothers and two sisters and her many friends. If we questioned her, let alone criticised, she would march out and slam the door. The glass panel in our kitchen door still has a crack. So, brainwashed, we didn't think of manic depression when she punched her elder sister in a quarrel (Zoë was very strong) and, in another quarrel, bit through her younger brother's sweater onto his chest. Or when she almost killed her mother and best friend by crashing the barrier at 85mph on the North Circular in heavy rain.

Zoë is Zoë. She began smoking pot as more than a recreational drug and we later found from her diaries that she was taking cocaine as well, even while trying to build up a business of her own. A desperate attempt, we now believe, at self-medication. When her life began to disintegrate, she refused the offer of a job and went to Morocco for an indefinite stay. "Over the top" was how we all described her emails - deliriously happy in Morocco with a lover she planned to marry. "To the best parents, best brothers and sisters in the world" she wrote, inviting us to a holiday, which she lovingly planned for us in meticulous detail. Almost as soon as we arrived at Essaouira, she turned against us. In high mania, anyone who potentially brings you down is an enemy, and who is more back-to-earth than Mum and Dad? She acted crazy, haranguing the entire hotel with exalted spirituality mingled with obscene abuse, until the hotel manager gave us a choice - the police or the hospital. The local psychiatrist asked the obvious question: has she been like this before? Of course. Of course. No more denial.

We had to sign a Section committing our daughter to the secure mental hospital in Marrakesh. There they treated her (we checked it out) in exactly the same way they would have done anywhere else, with the same drugs to bring her "down." With help from the British Consul we got her home after only 12 days in hospital. Ten days later the depression we now expected set in which worsened by the week until Zoë became a hollow, silent woman. Again the drugs to bring her "up" were routine, the ones they use everywhere. Colchester General Hospital has a state of the art mental health unit and the specialist in charge visited Zoë at home once a week. She liked him.

As weeks passed her depression refused to lift. She sat around all day. The drugs were changed twice without effect. We believed, as many friends and relatives told us, that she would "come out of it in her own time, when she's ready." We cannot now forgive ourselves for reacting, some of that time, like normal parents when their unsmiling child is surly and irritable. After her death we found cardboard boxes of her diaries, cards, letters, memorabilia and photos. A bedroom full of clues. In the final depression she wrote little. One page in tiny writing: "…. a terrifying place. …Very difficult to describe which makes it harder for others to understand. The stigma is hard too… it's hard to imagine being out of it…. you feel you've gone mad even when you're lucid. Don't know what to do with myself. What to think? Where to start? Cannot envisage improvement in the future. Everything is quite frightening."

Once or twice she tried desperately to break free, applied for a job, bought clothes, went for an interview. But it was hopeless: she had lost all her spark and confidence. Nothing could shake her despair. The psychiatrist had advised us to leave her alone but we wish we'd hugged her more often, even when she exasperated us. Asked how she was, she answered in monosyllables: "the same." Many times we preached to her a gospel of hope which seemed only to accentuate her hopelessness. There was talk of admitting Zoë into the ward but she hated the idea and would surely have walked out unless she had been sectioned and nobody wanted that. There was talk of electroshock treatment which we discouraged, haunted by memories of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

In August the psychiatrist took his annual three-week holiday. He assured us Zoë would be well looked after. But in his absence she hardly spoke to anyone and was under the supervision of a junior psychiatrist of her own age. When the specialist returned, on August 21, 2000, he called a conference for the next day to start the "new strategy". Zoë was to be admitted as an inpatient on August 23. August 22 at 11 am: Zoë told her mother she was going to visit a friend. We had repaired her old car, which she had neglected, to give her some independence. Her real destination was Marks Tey, the first station up the line from Colchester, at the point where the London-bound express trains reach full speed. Zoë had told her mother a month earlier that suicide was "not an option."

Once again we were conniving with her - once more in denial. You cannot accept - it makes no sense - that a young woman who is clever, beautiful, talented, loved and witty should be in such pain and despair that she would end her own life. Because of patient confidentiality, we were not told what she said to the specialist but she apparently gave him the same assurance. We decided that if Zoë was not home by 8pm we would call the police. At 7.45 the police arrived. Her suicide note was on the dashboard. "To my family and friends…no one is to blame for my death… I love you all but I can't live like this. … I'm sorry. Please forgive me….I used to work and see friends a lot but now I can do neither because I can't function or communicate. I've been in hell for four months and I can't bear the pain any more……Zoë.' In her depression she had only read one book, which we had given her: Kay Redfield Jamison's The Unquiet Mind, the inspiring story of the author's struggle with manic depression until she became, with the aid of the drug lithium, professor of psychiatry at John Hopkins University. Zoë gave us back the book and said crossly: "there you are, you never get over it." She had given us a clue to her coming suicide which we hadn't recognised. Afterwards, her best friend said: "it was her pride which killed her".

Her siblings and friends were all forging ahead in careers and loves. Zoë knew that, in time, she could have lived an acceptable life. But she rejected the prospect of living under the shadow of lonely horror. She did not want a life with lithium. She struggled throughout her last depression and repeated: "I'm living behind a glass wall." She contemplated a future on medication. In her last diary entry she wrote: "….If I don't get better I will most probably have to accept a more humble job and more humble living arrangements than I would like… but make the most of things: I can work my way up….Have to accept that at 27 I am not 'set up' job/house/relationship wise. My friends will not reject me if I don't reject me. The challenge is to be happy and true to my nature, through deep self-esteem because I don't have any strength at the moment and may not have for a long time if ever…" Neither she nor any of us could give her that strength. So she took the wrong decision. Looking back on her own life and career, Kay Jamison writes that she would rather have had manic depression than not, because the highs were worth the lows. Zoë, too, must have owed something of her joie de vivre, compassion and dynamism to her highs. She lit up a room when she entered.

After her death a young woman who had met Zoë in Morocco wrote to us: "she made me understand for the first time the power of charisma. Zoë seemed to emanate strength, glamour and excitement. When we met she introduced herself to me, saying 'I have been watching you for days and I can see you are a genius and a poet'. She was seductive, hypnotic, and all consuming. For more than a week we were with her ... acting as willing participants in the dramas that were the actualisations of her instincts and imagination. Zoë saw a horse on the beach that she felt was in pain. She was convinced that [her friend] Mohammed was spiritual and religious enough to heal the horse. She made him believe he had the power to heal, and for several days he stood with the horse whilst a congregation of Essaouirian drummers and singers created spiritual songs to aid the healing process, again at Zoë's behest.... Zoë was the director or author of a world that was at once coltish and miraculous, but ultimately too fragile, too raw to survive... My abiding memory is of her dancing to a song by the 'Mamas and Papas' which she had included on a compilation tape for her sister's birthday.

She was dancing [with her lover Isham] in a way that I can only describe as ecstatic. She was performing, but she was so happy and in love that I know I was not the only person who had stopped dancing to watch her, and to think of my own comparatively realistic life as passionless and dry in the face of such intensity..." Two days after her death 40 friends and relations came to sit round a bonfire on the lawn. They told tearful stories we'd never heard before, of how Zoë had helped, inspired and empowered timid people, especially the young. What if she herself had had better care and attention, if she had not felt so alone? Her death deeply shocked the staff at the mental health centre and they held an inquiry. We were not allowed to see the report but told its highlights informally: it called for a better anti-suicide strategy; parents who were also the carers must be given more support and told more of what passed between patient and doctor, in spite of patient confidentiality. We hope it also recommended that psychiatrists should not go on holiday leaving at-risk patients without equivalent care, and that more attention should be paid to an outpatient's ability to plan suicide while pretending that suicide is not an option. For ourselves we conclude that parents, siblings and friends of bipolars need, before the crisis overwhelms everyone, to see it coming and find a way to persuade the patient to seek treatment instead of smoking pot from breakfast to bedtime. Zoë had tried to cope on her own, too proud to confide in her closest friends and family. And then, when the crisis happens, family and friends should not kid themselves that "she'll come out of it when she chooses." Zoë had tried but failed to overcome her despair and that left her, she thought, no choice. Could anyone have convinced her otherwise? We will never know. If only, while she was such a bundle of morosity and self-absorption, we had kissed her more often. [End] Lessons of Zoë's suicide (2,200 words) Walter and Dorothy Schwarz One in five manic depressives eventually commits suicide. When Zoë did, we were not aware of that statistic, though we ought to have been.

She had been ill for five months - first manic then depressed. Her psychiatrist probably knew about the suicide rate, and he, too, might have acted more aggressively to prevent it. It's true that at 27 our youngest daughter was an adult and she chose to die, "I love you all but I can't live like this," she wrote, sitting in her car at Marks Tey station before throwing herself under an express train. But if she had lived, we believe she could have found a way of coping with her treatable but incurable illness, as others have done with the help of antidepressants and therapy. Two and a half years later our grief has grown scar tissue but remains infected with guilt and shame. Something waiting to happen was not prevented. Why? Perhaps the story of Zoë's death could help others. Bipolar affective disorder, as the ancient illness is now called, has been associated down the ages with originality and charisma, often with genius: Byron, Coleridge, Melville, Graham Greene, Virginia Woolf, Strindberg, Spike Milligan, Louis Althusser, Otto Klemperer, Stephen Fry, Vivien Leigh, Sue Lyon, Kurt Cobain, Francis Coppola …….

The illness is now regarded as a genetic neurobiological brain disease affecting one person in a hundred to some degree. Its victims swing inexorably, according to the Manic Depression Website, between "increased energy, restlessness, racing thoughts, rapid talking, excessive or euphoric feelings, extreme irritability and distractibility" and "a persistent sad, anxious, or empty mood, feelings of hopelessness, pessimism, guilt, worthlessness…." Our mistake with Zoë was our refusal to see her eccentric behaviour as a symptom of mental illness - not just the familiar neuroticism of middle-class professional families. We had plenty of excuses because parents are required, above all else, to believe in their offspring. And Zoë had emerged triumphantly "cured" from an earlier bipolar episode when she was 18. It had begun following a bout of glandular fever just before her first term at Bristol. She ascribed her altered mental states to a chemical imbalance. At Bristol she was wild, bizarre, promiscuous and aggressive: she was sent down.

The depression which followed ended in her taking an overdose of quinine. We saved her - that time. With a minimum of drugs and 2 years of counselling she considered she was 'cured:' went back to college, achieved an MSC with distinction and told us. 'I've been to the bottom. I'm strong". We believed her. We blotted out the nightmare episode. Throughout her twenties her behaviour was mercurial - too many boyfriends, too much pot - but it always seemed on this side of acceptable. She did a pioneering job with United Response, a major charity, where her intelligence, charm and energy brought in more customers and money than anyone expected. "A sparkly, beautiful, vivacious woman with a keen sense of humour and a rare ability to engage with everyone she met," her boss wrote after Zoë's death. She was charismatic, compassionate, full of laughter and love. True she had a famously filthy temper.

Even when, as we know in retrospect, she was becoming manic again - her plans for her future became irrational and her outbursts of temper became physically violent - she willed us to believe in her. She brainwashed us. "Zoë is Zoë" we said, and so did her two brothers and two sisters and her many friends. If we questioned her, let alone criticised, she would march out and slam the door. The glass panel in our kitchen door still has a crack. So, brainwashed, we didn't think of manic depression when she punched her elder sister in a quarrel (Zoë was very strong) and, in another quarrel, bit through her younger brother's sweater onto his chest. Or when she almost killed her mother and best friend by crashing the barrier at 85mph on the North Circular in heavy rain. Zoë is Zoë.

She began smoking pot as more than a recreational drug and we later found from her diaries that she was taking cocaine as well, even while trying to build up a business of her own. A desperate attempt, we now believe, at self-medication. When her life began to disintegrate, she refused the offer of a job and went to Morocco for an indefinite stay. "Over the top" was how we all described her emails - deliriously happy in Morocco with a lover she planned to marry. "To the best parents, best brothers and sisters in the world" she wrote, inviting us to a holiday, which she lovingly planned for us in meticulous detail. Almost as soon as we arrived at Essaouira, she turned against us. In high mania, anyone who potentially brings you down is an enemy, and who is more back-to-earth than Mum and Dad? She acted crazy, haranguing the entire hotel with exalted spirituality mingled with obscene abuse, until the hotel manager gave us a choice - the police or the hospital. The local psychiatrist asked the obvious question: has she been like this before? Of course. Of course. No more denial. We had to sign a Section committing our daughter to the secure mental hospital in Marrakesh.

There they treated her (we checked it out) in exactly the same way they would have done anywhere else, with the same drugs to bring her "down." With help from the British Consul we got her home after only 12 days in hospital. Ten days later the depression we now expected set in which worsened by the week until Zoë became a hollow, silent woman. Again the drugs to bring her "up" were routine, the ones they use everywhere. Colchester General Hospital has a state of the art mental health unit and the specialist in charge visited Zoë at home once a week. She liked him. As weeks passed her depression refused to lift. She sat around all day. The drugs were changed twice without effect. We believed, as many friends and relatives told us, that she would "come out of it in her own time, when she's ready."

We cannot now forgive ourselves for reacting, some of that time, like normal parents when their unsmiling child is surly and irritable. After her death we found cardboard boxes of her diaries, cards, letters, memorabilia and photos. A bedroom full of clues. In the final depression she wrote little. One page in tiny writing: "…. a terrifying place. …Very difficult to describe which makes it harder for others to understand. The stigma is hard too… it's hard to imagine being out of it…. you feel you've gone mad even when you're lucid. Don't know what to do with myself. What to think? Where to start? Cannot envisage improvement in the future. Everything is quite frightening." Once or twice she tried desperately to break free, applied for a job, bought clothes, went for an interview. But it was hopeless: she had lost all her spark and confidence. Nothing could shake her despair. The psychiatrist had advised us to leave her alone but we wish we'd hugged her more often, even when she exasperated us. Asked how she was, she answered in monosyllables: "the same."

Many times we preached to her a gospel of hope which seemed only to accentuate her hopelessness. There was talk of admitting Zoë into the ward but she hated the idea and would surely have walked out unless she had been sectioned and nobody wanted that. There was talk of electroshock treatment which we discouraged, haunted by memories of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. In August the psychiatrist took his annual three-week holiday. He assured us Zoë would be well looked after. But in his absence she hardly spoke to anyone and was under the supervision of a junior psychiatrist of her own age. When the specialist returned, on August 21, 2000, he called a conference for the next day to start the "new strategy". Zoë was to be admitted as an inpatient on August 23. August 22 at 11 am: Zoë told her mother she was going to visit a friend. We had repaired her old car, which she had neglected, to give her some independence. Her real destination was Marks Tey, the first station up the line from Colchester, at the point where the London-bound express trains reach full speed. Zoë had told her mother a month earlier that suicide was "not an option."

Once again we were conniving with her - once more in denial. You cannot accept - it makes no sense - that a young woman who is clever, beautiful, talented, loved and witty should be in such pain and despair that she would end her own life. Because of patient confidentiality, we were not told what she said to the specialist but she apparently gave him the same assurance. We decided that if Zoë was not home by 8pm we would call the police. At 7.45 the police arrived. Her suicide note was on the dashboard. "To my family and friends…no one is to blame for my death… I love you all but I can't live like this. … I'm sorry. Please forgive me….I used to work and see friends a lot but now I can do neither because I can't function or communicate. I've been in hell for four months and I can't bear the pain any more……Zoë.' In her depression she had only read one book, which we had given her: Kay Redfield Jamison's The Unquiet Mind, the inspiring story of the author's struggle with manic depression until she became, with the aid of the drug lithium, professor of psychiatry at John Hopkins University. Zoë gave us back the book and said crossly: "there you are, you never get over it." She had given us a clue to her coming suicide which we hadn't recognised. Afterwards, her best friend said: "it was her pride which killed her".

Her siblings and friends were all forging ahead in careers and loves. Zoë knew that, in time, she could have lived an acceptable life. But she rejected the prospect of living under the shadow of lonely horror. She did not want a life with lithium. She struggled throughout her last depression and repeated: "I'm living behind a glass wall." She contemplated a future on medication. In her last diary entry she wrote: "….If I don't get better I will most probably have to accept a more humble job and more humble living arrangements than I would like… but make the most of things: I can work my way up….Have to accept that at 27 I am not 'set up' job/house/relationship wise. My friends will not reject me if I don't reject me.

The challenge is to be happy and true to my nature, through deep self-esteem because I don't have any strength at the moment and may not have for a long time if ever…" Neither she nor any of us could give her that strength. So she took the wrong decision. Looking back on her own life and career, Kay Jamison writes that she would rather have had manic depression than not, because the highs were worth the lows. Zoë, too, must have owed something of her joie de vivre, compassion and dynamism to her highs. She lit up a room when she entered. After her death a young woman who had met Zoë in Morocco wrote to us: "she made me understand for the first time the power of charisma. Zoë seemed to emanate strength, glamour and excitement. When we met she introduced herself to me, saying 'I have been watching you for days and I can see you are a genius and a poet'. She was seductive, hypnotic, and all consuming. For more than a week we were with her ... acting as willing participants in the dramas that were the actualisations of her instincts and imagination.

Zoë saw a horse on the beach that she felt was in pain. She was convinced that [her friend] Mohammed was spiritual and religious enough to heal the horse. She made him believe he had the power to heal, and for several days he stood with the horse whilst a congregation of Essaouirian drummers and singers created spiritual songs to aid the healing process, again at Zoë's behest.... Zoë was the director or author of a world that was at once coltish and miraculous, but ultimately too fragile, too raw to survive... My abiding memory is of her dancing to a song by the 'Mamas and Papas' which she had included on a compilation tape for her sister's birthday. She was dancing [with her lover Isham] in a way that I can only describe as ecstatic. She was performing, but she was so happy and in love that I know I was not the only person who had stopped dancing to watch her, and to think of my own comparatively realistic life as passionless and dry in the face of such intensity..."

Two days after her death 40 friends and relations came to sit round a bonfire on the lawn. They told tearful stories we'd never heard before, of how Zoë had helped, inspired and empowered timid people, especially the young. What if she herself had had better care and attention, if she had not felt so alone? Her death deeply shocked the staff at the mental health centre and they held an inquiry. We were not allowed to see the report but told its highlights informally: it called for a better anti-suicide strategy; parents who were also the carers must be given more support and told more of what passed between patient and doctor, in spite of patient confidentiality. We hope it also recommended that psychiatrists should not go on holiday leaving at-risk patients without equivalent care, and that more attention should be paid to an outpatient's ability to plan suicide while pretending that suicide is not an option.

For ourselves we conclude that parents, siblings and friends of bipolars need, before the crisis overwhelms everyone, to see it coming and find a way to persuade the patient to seek treatment instead of smoking pot from breakfast to bedtime. Zoë had tried to cope on her own, too proud to confide in her closest friends and family. And then, when the crisis happens, family and friends should not kid themselves that "she'll come out of it when she chooses." Zoë had tried but failed to overcome her despair and that left her, she thought, no choice. Could anyone have convinced her otherwise? We will never know. If only, while she was such a bundle of morosity and self-absorption, we had kissed her more often. [End]

The Cycle Path | top

"After reading The Cycle Path I came away with a better understanding of the issues sufferers face and of the opportunities."- Sir Nigel Crisp,
Chief Executive of the NHS

 “ Delightful and full of expression and pathos." – Sheila Johnson, Christian Herald

 Article: The Cycle Path of Suffering

Publication: Christian Herald Nov 2004

 ‘The Cycle Path’ is a semi autobiographical story written by first time author, Fiona Whelpton. What makes this an unusual tale is that Fiona suffers from a very rare mental health condition known as Conversion Syndrome Disorder.

Sufferers of CSD exhibit similar symptoms to Multiple Sclerosis patients, except that the limb paralysis is caused by heightened emotional states which result in the brain sending faulty messages to the central nervous system. Fiona’s case was so severe that she experienced episodes of interrupted walking, unconsciousness and loss of speech.

For four long years Fiona was unable to find out what was causing her symptoms, all medical tests proving negative. Then one day, quite by chance, Fiona switched on BBC Radio 4 where psychosomatic illnesses were under discussion. Her particular symptoms were tagged as being due to a condition known as Conversion Syndrome Disorder.

At last Fiona was able to get the correct medication and keep her condition under control. In preparation for her cognitive therapy treatment, Fiona was asked to keep a record of her emotional experiences and attempt to link them to any changes in her physical condition.

Fiona’s story is a record of her experiences handling her disability, and she hopes that in publishing her story she may not only aid her own recovery, but also to bring hope and strength to fellow sufferers.

Fiona says: “There have been many times when I have felt unable to communicate with people and felt misunderstood. I knew I could write about what it was like to be disabled, but had no intention of attempting to have anything published”.

Fiona was led to think about publication when hearing from a friend about Jason Pegler and his publishing company Chipmunka Publishing. Fiona saw that the company’s raison d’etre was publishing books or material about mental illness, the director of the company himself being a manic depressive. Fiona felt encouraged to send in her own manuscript for a second opinion. She was extremely surprised to receive an e-mail back from Jason, saying that he wanted to publish the book.

Jason says: “I have a great deal of admiration for Fiona. Fiona’s book and the way she helps others is inspirational to all of us, and proves that people with severe mental ill health can and do get better. The cycled path is also a reminder to us all that those who struggle through adversity and overcome it have the ability and positivity to help others who go through similar hardships. It is a must-read for anyone who feels sorry for themselves.”

Chipmunka Publishing is the World’s first patient-driven Mental Health Publisher. All of the books which the company produces are written by people with mental health problems, and are available to order online from the company website http://www.chipmunkapublishing.com/.

Jason says: “Our books are changing the way the world thinks about people with mental health issues. We work with the government, the health service, mental health organisations, charities and private businesses to successfully publish and promote literature that brings a positive attitude towards mental health issues. I call mental illness that last taboo of the 21 st Century”.

The title of Fiona’s book ‘The Cycle Path’ not only describes one of her favourite walks which features strongly in the story, but also symbolises the journey towards wholeness. The poem which concludes the book is printed below with the author’s permission.

THE CYCLE PATH

As we travel on life’s journey
It takes us down a path
Of rich experiences – that mould us and
Make us into the person that we become
at the end of the journey.
The cycles move forward completing
Life’s cycle.
So we reach our goal and hold onto the journey of
Life’s rich promises.

The book deals with Fiona’s struggles as she tries to cope, first with a fairly uncooperative partner and then as a single mum. This proves doubly difficult as Fiona experiences sudden bouts of paralysis, unconsciousness and speech loss.

After the separation from her partner, Daniel, she meets a kind and sympathetic man called Peter, but this relationship also seems doomed to failure and ends in Fiona having an abortion. But the book concludes on a strong note as with out the emotional stress a relationship Fiona has, for the most part, been able to regain her physical health, leaving the worst of the symptoms behind her.

Since writing this book Fiona has been able to attend a postgraduate journalism course and do work experience at Chipmunka Publishing. She has also been able to write various feature articles about mental health issues, and in March 2004 received the coveted Snowdon Award which helped to fund her journalism course.

At the end of the course Fiona would like to travel to Europe , to do some investigative journalism into the state of mental health services abroad.

Fiona says: “I had no idea that God would turn my life around and that so many doors would swing wide open in the way that they are now doing. One verse from the Bible kept coming back time and time again: ‘I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper and not harm you, plans for a future and hope’.”

Sheila Johnson is a journalist based in Cheltenham .

Article: Fiona’s on the ‘Write’ Path!

Publication: News from the Forum Nov 2004

The newsletter of the Dunkirk & Lenton Partnership forum.

Recently, Lenton-based journalist and writer Fiona Whelpton landed a prestigious media award to study at a top journalism school in London , where she is taking a part-time postgraduate NCTJ (National Council for the Training of Journalists) course.

After receiving a grant of £2 000 from the Snowdon Awards Scheme for disabled postgraduates, Fiona was invited to an awards ceremony on 17 17th March at the House of Commons in Westminster , and presented to Lord Snowdon. She was accompanied by her publisher and work experience supervisor, Jason Pegler, of Chipmunka Publishing.

Fiona’s career in journalism began while she was a mature student reading English Literature and Media Studies at Nottingham Trent University , where she contributed to the Student’s Union newspaper, Platform.

After graduating in 2003, Fiona sent her creative writing dissertation – entitled ‘The Cycle Path’ – to Chipmunka, specialists in publishing work by writers who have experienced mental illness and physical disability. Fiona’s piece is a partly fictional journal focusing on mental health and disability issues.

 Fiona says, ‘I was flabbergasted when I got an e-mail from Jason Pegler, offering me a two-year contract. For the dissertation we’d been told to write about real life experiences. I’d spent four years of my degree being unable to walk off and on. The doctors didn’t know what was wrong with me, and I wrote the book in desperation. It helped me to regain my confidence. Even though I have always dreamed of becoming an author, I never dreamed thought that my first piece of work would be accepted immediately’.

Fiona’ book is set in Lenton, and the title refers to the cycle path behind Abbey Bridge . The story features various local haunts, such as Unity House, and locals may even recognise certain personalities!

In Fiona’s words, the book is about ‘close encounters of the third kind’ and a ‘romance with a twist’. Sounds intriguing…!

Fiona is currently doing an extended work placement with Chipmunka as a freelance journalist. The Cycle Path is due to be published on 10 10th October 2004 . It will be available to order from all major bookshops or online at: http://www.chipmunkapublishing.com/

Article: Celebrating The Cycle Path

Publication: News from the Forum, No. 27, Oct 2004

 The newsletter of the Dunkirk & Lenton Partnership forum.

 Local author Fiona Whelpton's first book, a novella entitled The Cycle Path, is being published by Jason Pegler , author of A Can of madness and CEO of Chipmunkapublishing, the world's leading publisher of books on mental health. The official publication date is set for 8 October when copies of the book will be available from the Chipmunka website, www.chipmunkapublishing.com, and all good bookshops.

Jason Pegler says “The Cycle Path is a remarkable story about Fiona Whelpton, who suffers from a rare mental health condition known as 'Conversion Syndrome Disorder'. Causing heightened emotional responses, CSD makes the brain send faulty messages to the central nervous system resulting in limb paralysis: the symptoms are identical to Multiple Sclerosis. Fiona's case was so severe that she experienced episodes of interrupted walking, unconsciousness, and loss of speech... In order to prepare for cognitive therapy treatment Fiona was asked to keep a record of her emotional experiences and try to link them to changes in her physical condition. Shocked by the scarcity of material on CSD, Fiona realise that not only would writing help her recovery, publishing her story will give other sufferers hope and strength in the face of this rare condition. More widely, Fiona hopes general readers will gain a unique insight into the experience of living with disability thus dispelling some of the myths and prejudices which surround it.”

 Jason continues “I have a great deal of admiration for Fiona; her book and the way she helps others is inspirational to all of us and proves that people with severe mental ill health can and do get better. The Cycle Path is also a reminder to us all that those who struggle through adversity and overcome it have the ability and positivity to help others who go through similar hardships. It is a must read for anyone who feels sorry for themselves. They will see how Fiona has been through so much but keeps bouncing back. The Cycle Path is also essential reading for anyone who has Conversion Syndrome Disorder or is in a position of caring for people with the condition in the NHS and further afield.”

There will be a Chipmunka book launch on 12 October at Unity House, Church Street , Lenton, where Fiona will be signing copies of the book. She will be supported by friend and fellow Chipmunka author Dolly Sen , author of a book on schizophrenia, called The World is full of Laughter. Dolly Sen is a world-famous performing poet, who has recently returned from doing a poetry reading event in Waterstones in Amsterdam . She is making a detour to attend the Nottingham Mental Health Awareness Week's Chipmunka events, especially to support Fiona, during her national poetry tour, and will be doing a special performance at the Royal Festival Hall in London on 16 October for World Mental Health day, which is on 10 October.

There will be a cheese and wine reception party in Unity House from 7pm onwards, to which all are most welcome, which will also be attended by local poet Steve Plowright. Fiona will be presenting a copy of her book to the Sheriff of Nottingham at the main Nottingham Mental Health Awareness Week's launch in Duncan Macmillon House, Mapperley, on 11 October. The Arts Council of England has awarded a grant to fund the launch and to enable Jason Pegler to attend and talk about the creative arts and mental health. Jason's own book, A Can of Madness, is an autobiography about manic depression and is being made into a mainstream Hollywood film.

Fiona has also been invited to appear on the BBC's East Midlands Today, to talk about Nottingham Mental Health Awareness Week and using the creative arts to help people with mental health difficulties. Nottingham Mental Health Awareness Week, and Chipmunkapublishing, aim to reduce the stigma and discrimination experienced by those with mental health problems by educating the public. The team from the BBC will be filming at the end of September, to go on air as near to 10 October as possible.

Article: Making Minds our Business

Publication: Nottingham Evening Post, 09/10/04

NOTTINGHAM EVENING POST .

MY WEEK

Fiona Whelpton of Lenton is the author of The Cycle Path, which tells of her struggle With Conversion Syndrome Disorder, a rare Condition which can cause periods of paralysis, LIKES: Music. I’m from a musical Family, and I have always loved it . And I’m interested In literature and media. My degree is in English and Media studies. DISLIKES: I’m fairly easygoing , but if there is one thing I cannot stand it is loud noise. I don’t find it easy To manage stress and loud noises cause stress. Sunday is a family day , which I spend with my Mother and my son, who is 13. I have taken three months Off a journalism course in London so that I could work on Editing and launching the book and promotional work, including A signing at WHSmith in Lister Gate last weekend. Writing the book has been both a physical and mental therapy, and my Publisher thinks I will benefit for having more responsibility. I have started work on a novel, which I need to give some time to next week. I’m still at the stage of working on the basic idea and developing some of the Characters. I tend to hand write my first drafts, because I find it frees my imagination. However, I work on screen once the actual writing process is under way. The novel will be about mental health , but will be more fictional than The Cycle Path. THE CYCLE PATH is published by Chipmunka at £10 £12 mail order from www.chipmunkapublishing.com.

NOSWEAT NEWS,

Conversion Course: Valiant Fiona adds book to successes

To talk to Fiona Whelpton is to be taught a lesson in how to convert difficulties into success. The ex-noSWeater, who scooped a Snowdon Award which enabled her to come on the noSWeat course, commuted from her native Nottingham twice a week for the duration of her course.

But a tough journey was not the only difficulty with which Fiona has had to contend. For thirteen years she has suffered with conversion syndrome disorder, a psychological condition brought on by anxiety, the cause of which is little understood. But the symptoms are all too real for sufferers.

Now Fiona has written a book about learning to live with the condition, and her interest in journalism has come full-circle, as she was approached by East Midlands Today, on the lookout for a story about Nottingham Mental Health Awareness Week.

Fiona’s book, entitled “The Cycle Path” was launched on October 12th. Fiona is in the driving seat for the promotion work and has been on local radio (Jason , information has been got wrong here ) She hopes the book will promote a more positive attitude to disability, and raise awareness about the things people with disabilities have to put up with. She says “The message of my book is to help others. If I can help one person cope better my mission will have been completed. No-one takes any notice of you normally, but put a few words down on a piece of paper, and everybody goes berserk.”

Her advice to fellow students: ”Be determined and reliable, and people will notice you and opportunities will come your way.”

The Cycle Path is a remarkable story about Fiona Whelpton, who suffers from a rare mental health condition known as ‘Conversion Syndrome Disorder’. Causing heightened emotional responses, CSD makes the brain send faulty messages to the central nervous system resulting in limb paralysis. The symptoms are identical to Multiple Sclerosis. Fiona’s case was so severe that she experienced episodes of interrupted walking, unconsciousness, and loss of speech.

Not knowing the diagnosis of her condition for four years led Fiona to try to find out as much as she could about what might be causing her symptoms. Switching on Radio 4 quite by chance she heard a discussion about psychosomatic illnesses describing her symptoms exactly, their subject was Conversion Syndrome Disorder. At last, after four years of tests proving negative (one of the main symptoms of the condition), Fiona was able get the correct medication and started to improve immediately.

In order to prepare for cognitive therapy treatment Fiona was asked to keep a record of her emotional experiences and try to link them to changes in her physical condition. Shocked by the scarcity of material on CSD Fiona realise that not only would writing help her recovery, publishing her story will give other sufferers hope and strength in the face of this rare condition. More widely Fiona hopes general readers will gain a unique insight into the experience of living with disability thus dispelling some of the myths and prejudices which surround it.

During the Cycle Path Fiona experiences great forms of anguish including difficult pregnancy, abortion, being a single mother, domestic violence and describes the pain of her condition with much pathos. What makes the reader want to read on is Fiona’s forgiving nature and the positive way that Fiona is able to keep moving forward and battle successfully with the condition. I have a great deal of admiration for Fiona. Fiona’s book and the way she helps others is inspirational to all of us and proves that people with severe mental ill health can and do get better. The Cycle Path is also a reminder to us all that those who struggle through adversity and overcome it have the ability and positivity to help others who go through similar hardships. It is a must read for anyone who feels sorry for themselves. They will see how Fiona has been through so much but keeps bouncing back. The Cycle Path is also essential reading for anyone who has Conversion Syndrome Disorder or is in a position of caring for people with the condition in the NHS and further a field. Fiona’s book will be available to order from the Chipmunkapublishing website at http://www.chipmunkapublishing.com/ and from all good book shops world-wide from the 8th of October.

JASON PEGLER -  CEO of Chipmunkapublishing

Delusions of Grandeur | top

Introduction This is a book of the thoughts going through a patient who is suffering from a psychosis. To my mind there is absolutely no other book that demonstrates this in view of 25 years of research. It is a gripping novel of the fantasies of a mind that has lost control of reality. Frederick walks into a psychiatrist office and begins to tell his ordeal of what has happened to him at the hands of the Ministry of Defence when they extract information from him in order to save the world from nuclear devastation. Apollyon, an archangel, comes to mankind's rescue and uses Frederick to carry out his master plan. The book goes into the depths of despair and then into pure euphoria. Is this really a story of a mind out of control, or is this book prophetic of our future? This book is inspiring and no other has been written to parallel it.

Don't Look Back In Anger by Phillip Pettican | top

“An amazing and heart rending story.”– On the Grapevine

Name of Article: My Experience on the Radio, by Philip Pettican

Publication: National Voices Forum

On the morning of world Mental Health Day 2003 I was nervous. I have never had much confidence – thanks to my serious ‘mental health’ problem and waiting to be led into the studios of BBC Radio Norfolk didn't help much. Two weeks previously I had taken a copy of my book ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’ into the studios in the hope of getting publicity for it’s forthcoming release on October 10th. Now, here I was sitting opposite Louise Priest waiting to be interviewed about my autobiography. Louise is very well known locally because she used to present the local news show on T.V. She is a very nice lady and she did her best to put me at ease.

Despite the nerves I think I answered the questions quite well. She was mainly interested in my illness and it’s history. As fellow sufferers will confirm, schizophrenia is a very difficult illness to explain but I soldiered on and hoped I was giving an interesting account of my story as related in my book. At the end Louise gave me a hug and said I did very well and wished me well for the future. When out if the building I lit a cigarette and gave a sigh of relief – glad it was over!

“A chilling story on the realities that a diagnosis of schizophrenia brings. The more people that are brave enough to step forward the more we can promote a positive image on mental health. Only then will the promise of the mental health genre of literature be fulfilled.” – Jason Pegler, founder of Chipmunkapublishing

“Phil’s story is touching and poignant. He was an ordinary guy, serving in the Navy and working as a builder, before mental distress turned his world upside down.” – Dolly Sen, author and mental health activist

Name of Article: ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’ by Phillip Pettican

Publication: On the Grapevine, Volume 2, Issue 1

 So find below a review of "Don't Look Back In Anger" By Phillip Pettican. This autobiography tells the amazing and heart rending story of what it's like to be diagnosed in reality with Schizophrenia.

He talks about the first emotional upheaval in his life was his Father leaving home and eventually divorcing his mother. During his time growing up he talks about the terrible isolation, low self-esteem he suffered In his formative years. He talks about his time in the Navy and becoming a builder.

Phillip goes in great detail and insight about the terrible bouts of depression he suffered, plus panic and anxiety attacks. He recalls about the times he struggled with the thoughts of about harming himself and others. He talks about the obsession of finding the lady of his dreams and the various holidays he took to find her. Another occasion he talks at great length about being told he was possessed by the spirit of his grandmother and the strange behaviour that occurred.

Phillip recalls the very moment in his life he actually needed help from mental health services. He talks about the many friends he has made and lost throughout life’s journey. He mentions the great debt he owes to his family for always being there when he needed them most.

Finally he is now using his experience of mental distress to improve mental health services and the lot of service users. I salute him for donating the profits from the sale of his book to the Voices Forum, user voice of Rethink.

By Magpie Marx.

Full Circle | top

Chapter 3. The "crime" for which I was incarcerated was for acquiring a then (in the early 70's) unrecognised neurological condition called dystonia - a movement disorder similar to Parkinson or M.S. It is possibly genetically linked and affects an area of the brain called the basal ganglia. This misfires and sends out incorrect messages to muscles in the body inducing unbidden movement and tremor.

It can be focal and affect only one part of the body. In my case the area around my neck, vocal chords and head or it can affect the body as a whole. The sufferer is contorted in to many grotesque and painful positions. The brain, the intellect, the sufferer's capabilities remain intact but the outward appearance of (a cruel word used by many in my youth) a spastic, is an outward symptom, over which the individual has no control.

It has, in the last decade, been recognised by leading neurologists, as a physical disability. In years before, a presentation of such inexplicable symptoms was regarded by physicians, as a psychosomatic disorder. Hence, the patient was extricated from the realms of medical diagnosis into the vacuity of psychiatry. It was "all in the mind". Sufferers cannot perish from dystonia - not in the physical sense, but many having been convinced by eminent psychiatrists or psychologists that they , have the power within to put an end to this attention seeking behaviour.

Hence, many afflicted with Dystonia, can suffer a cruel and torturous psychological "death". Many sufferers, having received such messages, have indeed proceeded to commit suicide - rather than live, stigmatised and shamed by physicians and family. I felt this shame. I felt the contempt of those who attended me. I was 16, I was a child - a frightened lonely child in a world of adult condemnation. These physicians/psychiatrists were the experts - what did I know? I didn't want attention - not attention of this kind. I wanted unconditional love and reassurance. I wanted to be like my peers - to take my "A" levels, to go to university.

That had been my life-plan. Yet, this assumed need for attention was the diagnostic conclusion from the medical fraternity. Yet, why couldn't I bring cessation to these physical symptoms that made me feel so "different", so "grotesque"? I wanted to blend into life - into life as I had known it in my early teens. I think when I felt most ashamed, most humiliated, was when I was on the receiving end of the dreaded ward round. I had to present myself at this, in person. I can remember my heart beating wildly within my chest, in fear, as my "turn" grew nearer. I'd knock and enter a soulless clinical room and immediately, all eyes were on me. It felt like a judge and jury court appearance with me as defendant on charge.

The psychiatrist, ancient yet revered by his juniors, sat in judgement dressed in long white coat and half-moon spectacles. They (my jury) sat around in a circle. They only spoke if bidden by the "judge". I sat on a hard wooden backed chair in the centre of the room. The discomfort of the chair and the fear of my condemners - psychologist, ward sister, occupational therapists, students increased my physical symptoms.

My head would tremor; my spasms increase; my voice shake and falter, but this was seen as evidence, to my jurors, that my symptoms were psychosomatic and attention seeking. Why, when the occupational therapist was invited to give "evidence", why when I was more relaxed and less aware of being observed weaving those endless baskets or wicker stools, which filled the tedious days of "captivity", why were my symptoms less pronounced?

Little Steps| top

Forward for Little Steps - Surviving Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa by Katharine Wealthall I considered it a privilege to be asked to read this very informative, powerful and erudite journey from anorexia nervosa to the point of almost suicide and through, as Katharine put it, to recovery. There are too many issues that this book raises that I can refer to in a forward. Nonetheless, there are a whole host of lessons to be learnt by those people who consider themselves to be the professionals, not the least as it was put by Katharine when given a questionnaire by a psychologist and that is, 'do they not realise that anorexics lie?'

Very soberingly, of course, she makes the point that 1 in 20 people who suffer with anorexia nervosa will die as a result of their illness and without appropriate treatment. As far as hospitalisation is concerned, the reflection on her time in hospital when she was watching One Flew