Also, the Ayr self-help group continues to meet on the 2nd Wednesday of the month, 7pm – 9pm, Strathyre House, 42 Prestwick Road, Ayr. The meetings are open to people who experience bipolar disorder and carers.

Bipolar Scotland will be holding their Annual General Meeting and Annual Conference on Saturday 18 September 2010, 10am – 3.45pm. The event will be held at the Menzies Hotel, 27 Washington Street, Glasgow, G3 8AZ.

The main theme of the conference will be “Celebrating Self-Help”. Will Lyons, a Journalist with the Wall Street Journal, will be one of our keynote speakers. Will wrote an article for the Scotsman and has been interviewed by Fergal Keane on BBC Radio 4, on his experience of caring for his wife who has a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. Also, Aileen Bell and Alan Douglas from Bipolar Scotland will be giving a talk on self-help groups – the story so far.

The afternoon session will include workshops on Welfare Reform – Which Way Now? Self-Help groups – do they work? and participative workshops with Universal Comedy and in Tai Chi.

Please note that Bipolar Scotland will be able to meet the cost of travel expenses for members in severe financial hardship.

Click here to download the booking form (.pdf, 98kb).

You can also get a copy of the booking form by contacting Bipolar Scotland on 0141 560 2050, e-mail: info@bipolarscotland.org.uk

I assume, from the unsympathetic tone, she has never experienced depression. If she had, then even for the generous cheque she no doubt received, she would have thought twice before setting out an opinion as misguided as it is offensive to anyone who knows the reality of depression.

Much that appears in the media really doesn’t matter. But people who suffer from mental health problems will often say the stigma attached to them is worse than the symptoms. Articles like hers reinforce that stigma and taboo, which in turn create shame and a sense that real problems cannot be addressed.

First, let me try to give her some insight into depression. I had a pretty heavy nervous breakdown in 1986, and I’ve had depression on-and-off ever since. With the help of friends and family, sympathetic bosses, a good GP, a psychiatrist, sometimes medication, I have learned to manage it better than I did once.

At its worst, it is like an invisible dark force that first approaches, then envelops, then appears to fill every waking thought. You can escape via sleep, but you wake and find your eyes won’t open, you lack the energy to brush teeth, shave, speak, think anything other than thoughts of emptiness and despair.

When it’s bad, my partner Fiona says it is like living with somebody from a different planet. When you get into that mode it’s very dangerous and corrosive. People ask, “what’s wrong?” and you don’t really know. “What triggered it?” and you can’t answer that either. One thing you do know, there is no way you would wish to have it.

Once you’ve had it, there are few worse experiences than knowing that dark cloud is coming back. The cause of Janet Street Porter’s ire – whether real or synthetic – is the fact that women like TV presenter and Mirror columnist Fiona Phillips, actress Emma Thompson and writer Marian Keyes have spoken out about their experiences. Like them, I’ve chosen to “bare my soul”, as Porter puts it, in print and on film because I feel that openness about psychosis and depression may help counteract the discrimination and stigma surrounding mental health.

When I had my breakdown, I took comfort from reading and hearing about others who had been through it and got out the other side. So when Mind, and later the Time to Change campaign asked me to speak out, I was pleased to.
Mental health problems can happen to anyone just as cancer can or a broken limb when you fall down the stairs. They don’t respect status, wealth or profession. And, hopefully, we can make it easier for others to feel they don’t have to hide that they’ve had mental health problems.

Men in particular find it tough to come forward. Big boys don’t cry, and all that. It goes some way to explaining why men are just as likely to experience depression as women, but half as likely to seek support. So when Janet Street-Porter says: “The idea of feeling sorry for a bloke with low self-esteem is, frankly, risible,” I wonder if the fact that out of every four suicides, three are men might cause her to reconsider. Probably not. But reasonable people might.

Frank Bruno, Marcus Trescothick and Ronnie O’Sullivan are all sportsmen who have reached the top of their chosen professions. They’ve also touched the depths of mental illness. And in being open about it, they are helping to change the way people think about men and mental health and undo the damage done by the likes of Janet Street-Porter. Far from jumping on a bandwagon or joining a trendy fad, people being open is essential to end a powerful and outdated taboo.

I know from my own recovery that it is possible to take strength and hope from the experience of others who’ve gone to what feels like hell and back and lived to tell the tale. My novel, All In The Mind, is based on my experiences of depression and psychosis. I also made a BBC documentary called Cracking Up. And I’ve been really grateful for the response to both. Barely a day has passed when someone hasn’t said they related to something that happened to me or one of the characters in the book.

Depression is neither new nor trendy. It just is. Street-Porter’s article is inconsistent, contradictory and very badly argued. It is the kind of journalism that merely serves to strengthen the damaging stereotypes around mental health problems that stop people with very real illnesses seeking help. Like the Daily Mirror, I’ve been supporting the Time to Change campaign, which is working hard to put this right.

But ill-informed articles like Street-Porter’s risk leaving people confused and misinformed. Depression and stress are not the same, although it is true that sometimes one can lead to the other.

The truth is, anything more than mild to moderate depression can be seriously debilitating. Time to Change says that one in four of us will directly experience a mental health problem. What it means is that we all know someone who is affected but, as a society, we still tend to keep these things quiet.

If we could be more open, it would of course benefit people with mental health problems, but it would also benefit society and the economy.

Many talented people are kept out of the labour market because of employers’ reluctance to hire someone who discloses they’ve had a mental health problem: only four out of 10 employers say they would employ someone with a mental health history.
That means six out of 10 wouldn’t. Some of the most important figures in history had mental health issues – Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin. What would the world be like if they had been denied opportunities because they’d had mental health problems?

When Street-Porter argued there is “virtually no stigma at all” attached to mental health problems, she clearly hadn’t done even the most basic research. Nearly nine out of 10 people with mental health problems have been affected by stigma and discrimination.
Media coverage on mental illness is incredibly powerful. At its best it can help challenge stigma and at its worst it can help reinforce it. In a way, that has a direct impact upon the way people with mental health problems feel and are perceived.

The decision that people such as Marian Keyes and newspaper columnist Allison Pearson take when they speak out about it is a difficult one. I had no choice, because when I jumped from journalism to politics, the press started writing about my past troubles anyway. I have never regretted being open. I hope that by speaking out about our experiences, anyone with a mental health problem can play a role in educating and showing others in distress that they are not alone, help is out there and recovery possible.
Mental health problems can happen to any one of us and it’s important people can speak out and seek help without fear of being criticised and ridiculed. The volume of complaints about Street-Porter’s article suggests the public realises it is indeed Time to Change.

This article first appeared in the Daily Mirror, 21 May 2010

The Register provides an opportunity for people living with mental illness, and their relatives and friends, to make a valuable contribution to important research in this area.

We are looking for the following people to join the Mental Health Research Register:

People with mental illness
Relatives of people with mental illness
People who do not have mental illness

If you would like to register as a volunteer, or would like more information, please either telephone Emma Witt on 0131 537 6673, or e-mail her on, emma.witt@ed.ac.uk

Bipolar Disorder Research Network
The Bipolar Disorder Research Network (BDRN) is a group of researchers and research participants undertaking a major study at investigating the underlying causes of bipolar disorder. The research is being conducted by Prof Nick Craddock’s Mood Disorders Research Team based at the University of Cardiff and the University of Birmingham.

If you experience bipolar disorder and would like to take part in this research project, or would like to find out more information about the project, please contact the research team on 02920 744392, or e-mail: moodresearch@ed.ac

As soon as we have put together a programme of courses they will be listed on this page.

If you are not yet a Twitterer, you can register with Twitter on www.twitter.com

Meet 3rd Tuesday of each month
7.00pm – 9.00pm

(Our Self-Help groups are open to anyone who is affected by bipolar disorder. You don’t need to be referred, just come along. Group meetings give you an opportunity to discuss any issues that you have around bipolar disorder. Also groups will sometimes have a guest speaker on relevant topics).

This policy demonstrates the Government’s continuing commitment to supporting: the promotion of good mental wellbeing; reducing the prevalence of common mental health problems, suicide and self harm; and improving the quality of life of those experiencing mental health problems or mental illness.

Improving mental health and making a step change in how we, as a society, look after our own and others’ mental health requires a combined effort at national, local and individual levels.

At national level greater emphasis will be placed on providing national leadership. Delivery organisations will continue to work in partnership to offer co-ordinated support for implementation of the action plan.

The role of local government will be to work with Community Planning Partners, Community Health Partnerships and the third sector to offer strategic leadership for mental health improvement and to develop and implement local plans for delivery. In support of this agenda, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA) have said: “Scottish local government recognises that it has a powerful role to play in protecting and promoting good mental wellbeing and preventing mental health problems.”

Key roles for the NHS in Scotland will be supporting and delivering local plans in conjunction with Community Planning Partnerships and Community Health Partnerships and embedding mental health improvement into all NHS activity.

The Third Sector also has a significant contribution to make to mental health improvement both nationally and locally, via delivering services which directly or indirectly contribute to mental health improvement and advocating change and improvement.

Finally, the actions of individuals and communities are also central to this agenda. We know individuals do not make choices in isolation from the broader social and physical environment of which they are part: there is a clear role for local partnerships to work with communities to create mentally healthy environments within which individuals and communities are empowered to promote and protect their mental health.

Scotland has done much to lead the way in mental health improvement and has already been internationally recognised for its work. This new action plan explains how we will build on this existing success from now until 2011 and beyond, by focusing on strategic priorities for action as well as on the infrastructure support and coordination which the Government will put in place to help facilitate implementation and support delivery.

Copies of the plan are available from the Scottish Government website http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2009/05/06154655/0

If you would like more information on any aspect of this support please contact Emma Hogg at Emma.hogg@scotland.gsi.gov.uk

Meet 2nd Wednesday of each month
7.00pm – 9.00pm

(Our Self-Help groups are open to anyone who is affected by bipolar disorder. You don’t need to be referred, just come along. Group meetings give you an opportunity to discuss any issues that you have around bipolar disorder. Also groups will sometimes have a guest speaker on relevant topics).