What's Normal Anyway? Celebrities' Own Stories of Mental Illness

by Anna Gekoski

  KEVAN JONES

  Member of Parliament, Labour

  ‘The worst thing possible that you can ever say to anybody suffering from depression is: “Pull yourself together.” Cos it is the most irritating thing. You know, my line is, if somebody says that to me, I say: “I’m not a pair of curtains.” It just doesn’t help people.’

  Kevan Jones was born in Nottinghamshire in 1964, into a mining family. He went to school in Worksop and later went to Newcastle Polytechnic, where he studied government and public policy. He has a background as a trade union official and served as a councillor on Newcastle City Council for over ten years. In 2001 Kevan was elected Labour Member of Parliament for North Durham. Since then he has served on the Labour Party Parliamentary Committee, as a member of the Defence Select Committee, sat on the Armed Forces Bill Select Committee, served as Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Defence, Minister for Veterans, and is currently Shadow Minister for the Armed Forces. Kevan has also campaigned on mental health issues as an MP, is a patron of Chester-le-Street Mind, and publicly spoke about suffering from depression for the first time in the House of Commons debate on mental health in June 2012. The interview for this chapter took place at the House of Commons.

  ***

  Depression isn’t like turning the light switch off. It’s not like one day you’re feeling great and one day you’re suffering from depression: there are ups and downs. It slowly, slowly, gets into you. D’you know what I mean? That’s the nature of it, it claws in slowly, it creeps up on you in small bits and pieces until you start getting to the point where you think: ‘Hang on a minute, there is something seriously wrong here.’ For me, I think it started to be a real problem back in 1996 but, if I look back, I think I’d actually suffered from similar bouts for quite a while. If I’m really honest with myself, this is perhaps going back to my late teens, early twenties, but in the mid-’90s it all came to a head as I was under quite a lot of pressure.

  I was a city councillor and a full-time trade union official, and there were issues at work in terms of the management. I think another thing – because then I’d be . . . what? In my early thirties – I think most people in their early thirties think: ‘Where are you going career-wise?’ So there was that to it as well. And also, although not a Member of Parliament, I was in the public eye in terms of being a councillor. You know, you think you’ve got to perform and be on call for everyone, perhaps not taking enough recognition that you should take some time out for yourself. You see, what you do – and I think a lot of people do this who get depression – they actually work very hard and I think that slowly catches up on you as well. I just kept going – you just keep doing it over and over. You think if you keep at it and at it, if you do it enough . . . but you just come to a point where that’s it. That’s what happened to me and what happens to a lot of people.

  I think the first signs for me were, one, feeling that you were tired, because sleep is something you just don’t do. I don’t sleep long anyway, I never have done, but it was that thing of going to bed at 12 o’clock, then still being awake at 2 o’clock, then going to sleep for an hour, then waking up again. That type of intermittent sleep. And when you’ve had that broken sleep you can’t think, you know? What you also do, when you’re alone in those wee small hours, is your mind keeps chewing over things that you’ve done, so that’s the other thing that makes you not sleep. And I mean, I had quite a lot of responsibilities at the time with a lot of meetings to go to, often in the evenings, so you just get to a point where you actually feel very tired. So you’re anxious, you’re up early, you don’t sleep, you’re always tired.

  And, two, simple tasks that you would not normally think about, or work situations that you do every day of the week, you would start worrying about and thinking they were huge hurdles. I used to run a trade union, do industrial tribunals, and you know, some days you’d get case papers when you walk into the court and you get an hour to read them. And to me I could do them no problem: quick read, just do them. And then I started worrying that I couldn’t actually face doing things like that, when normally it would have been completely fine. Then there was also that sense that you’re not in control, which I think if you’ve never had depression, is difficult to describe to people. And the smallest things then get blown out of all proportion – and it’s not paranoia, it’s thinking that somehow you can’t control what events are going on.

  Another thing, which is really strange, is that things that you actually take a lot of pleasure out of, you just don’t take pleasure out of anymore. When you’re in the depths of depression, you actually don’t give a complete . . . about anything. Which in one respect, is actually quite a liberating feeling. But it’s actually quite worrying as well, cos you’ve got no interest in things, you just feel that you don’t want to do anything. And anyone who knows me, knows that’s not me: I’m quite active and I like doing things. So I think that’s hard to adjust to, if you’ve suddenly got no interest in something and you think: ‘Why?’ So that was an issue as well.

  I think when you really are depressed, you think there’s no light at the end of the tunnel and that is . . . that is a really dark place to be in, when you’re like that, and you think: ‘Well, I’m never going to get through it.’ I think I was never, in actual terms, suicidal, but I think you get to this point where you think: ‘Well what’s the point of being here?’ Or, the point is: ‘If it ended tomorrow would it make a difference?’ And I do understand why people take it one step further. I don’t think I was ever there but I was into that thought: ‘Actually, what happens if I don’t wake up tomorrow morning, does it really matter?’ Well that’s the wrong way of thinking about it really. But that, I think, that’s one of the lowest points, you know?

  ***

  When it comes to getting help I think one of the biggest issues, especially for men, is thinking: ‘Hang on, if I had a broken leg or a disease, I could understand it and tackle it’, but because it’s in the mind you think: ‘Well, what’s going on here?’ As a man, certainly in politics, if you admit to some kind of weakness it’s seen as a failure, and I also think that, unlike women, men are conditioned to not show their emotions. You know, I come from a very traditional mining background, which is a very macho type community, then I was a trade union official, and politics is always seen as a rough old game. So it’s not a world in which you talk about what could be perceived as a frailty. So did I keep it quiet? Yeah, I did. I didn’t tell anybody about it really, because there’s a stigma-type thing in the world I was in, that you shouldn’t admit to it. And if you actually ask for help it’s, like, seen as a sign of weakness. But it’s not; it’s a hard thing for a lot of people to do and a very courageous thing to do as well.

  I went to the GP actually, with pains in my chest. I brought my physical symptoms, when actually a lot of the things were to do with stress: symptoms of a depressive illness. And he was very good so I was lucky, but the problem is that you get some very good GPs and you also get some GPs who don’t quite understand. Anyway, it was him who spotted it, who said: ‘You’re perfectly fit, there’s nothing wrong with you in that respect . . . but.’ And then we started talking. So I think, again, what a lot of people don’t realise if they’re suffering from depression or mental illness, is that it manifests itself in a lot of other ways, in terms of thinking that you’re having a heart attack and things like that, when actually, you’re definitely fit. But when you’re depressed you tend to think: ‘No, no, people are telling me lies.’ So I still thought I was going to have a heart attack even though my GP’s saying: ‘Your cardiac tests are perfectly fine, you’re perfectly fit and well.’ But your mind plays tricks with you so you’re still convinced that the doctor must’ve missed something. And that’s not uncommon with people who suffer from depression.

  Did he prescribe me any medication? Yes. And I’ve got to say I think it did help me in the early days. I had SSRIs – it was quite a while ago so I can’t remember which diffe
rent ones I had and what doses – but they are quite good. It’s not the answer for everybody but I think for me it really helped to get me back down to a kind of level playing field, which is what you need really: it gives you a foundation to work from. Although I would say that the thing not to do with them – which I tried to do once and it didn’t work – is think you can just stop taking them. You’ve got to start cutting them down, because they’re not like, you know, antibiotics, so it took a few years to taper down the SSRIs. But would I, if I needed them again now, would I shy away from it? No, I wouldn’t.

  I’ve spoken to quite a lot of people over the years who suffer from depression who think that if you take medication then that’s a sign of failure. I’ve actually met some people who’ve said: ‘Oh no, you don’t want to go anywhere near that.’ But I don’t think it is a sign of failure – definitely not – so I say to them: ‘No, sorry, that’s the first step to actually get you to a level from which you can then move on.’ Having said that, I also know people who take them for life and actually, so what? Is that such a bad thing? If it makes them function as a normal human being and have a good quality of life, then get on with it, you know? People take blood pressure tablets for life, don’t they, and you don’t think anything about it. I know that’s not seen as the same thing, but it certainly is in my opinion. I can’t see why, if someone needs to take a drug for depression or for a mental illness issue, it shouldn’t be treated just like blood pressure or diabetes medicine that you have to take.

  But although I think these sort of foundations are important – and this might sound cruel but it’s not – it’s also down to the individual. They’ve got to actually want to try, and to believe that this is something that you can live with, and recover from, and that you can have a positive life. Which is easy to say when you’re here, rather than down, and okay, I know it’s hard, but it’s about not just accepting that this will be done for you. You’ve got to take some responsibility yourself. For me, aside from the medication, the best thing was the talking therapy, which I got into through the GP quite early on in the process. And that helped, because actually it was just about making you think. Also, I read quite a few books. I know some of these self-help books are pretty naff, but others . . . I read one last year actually which was by a bloke called David Burns in the States. Have you read that one? Very good. It’s a bit Americanised but it’s actually a good read for anyone who’s depressed. So that helped as well because there’s some really simple techniques you can do.

  What I fundamentally learned is: it’s actually about taking stock and changing the way you think, and questioning and training your thought patterns. I realised that how you perceive the world isn’t external; how you perceive the world is actually in your own head. So if I walk in a room and you’re there and I’ve not met you, when I was depressed I’d be thinking: ‘Oh God, he’s judging me’ or: ‘He’s saying things about me’, and that gets you into a very negative frame of mind. And that’s one of the things that I do all the time – I get quite anxious about meeting people, even people I’ve known for a long time, strangely enough. You just think they’re judging you all the time, which is weird.

  Well, two things. One, you can’t do that, you can’t mind-read: actually I haven’t got a bloody clue what you’re thinking about me, I’ve never met you before. So that negative thought is in here, in me, it’s not in your head. So you’ve got to take a step back and think: ‘Wait a minute.’ You know? And secondly: ‘Does it really matter?’ At the end of the day, what one person’s perception is of you will be completely different from someone else’s who walks in the room. If people think you’re a complete waste of space then they’re going to think that. Someone said to me the other day: ‘Has your depression changed your perception of you?’ and I said: ‘No, I think I’m still me, someone once described me as like Marmite: you either love me or hate me.’ So how people judge you? Well, I’ve come to the conclusion: that’s down to them.

  So the most helpful thing for me was changing the way I think about things, although I’m not suggesting that one approach will cure every depression, I don’t think it will. I think there are different methods for different people, so we’ve got to realise that recovery is very personalised and that treatment is too. I think part of the problem with mental illness is that we’re looking for silver bullets all the time, but actually people have perhaps got to experiment a bit. I’m one of those impatient people who expect things to work out straightaway and, unfortunately, I’ve found that you’ve got to take a bit of time, cos things aren’t always easy in that respect. So don’t look for instant solutions because there aren’t any. I was off work for . . . what? Four or five months? I think I needed to take time out, to step back, especially as I was in such a busy job. And you know, I think if it takes people longer than it took me then fine. If it takes you six months or a year . . . so what? A year is quite a short period in the average person’s life really.

  ***

  I thought long and hard about speaking out in that parliamentary debate about my personal experience. I was planning to speak anyway to raise some issues about how people with mental health problems are treated by the welfare system, but then I thought: ‘Well, if I don’t say anything about my own situation then actually I will feel a bit of a fraud.’ And no one would have known, but I would have known. And people say: ‘It’s easy for people in the public eye to do it.’ Well, I think it’s pretty hard actually, to be honest. But I think people talking about it does help and, I mean, if we could get to a situation like with the prime minister of Norway who talked publicly about his depression, can you imagine that? But why not, you know?

  I said in the debate that I didn’t decide until I was sat there and no, I don’t think I did. But do I feel better for doing it? Yes, I do actually. I think the real cost is to the individual when they don’t tell people because I think it chews people up on the inside, because there’s always a fear that somebody might find out about their mental health problems. Charles Walker and I both said the other day that, actually, it’s quite a relief to just say: ‘Fair enough, that’s it.’ It actually makes you feel better in one respect. But I do think it’s a personal decision, I’m not going to start preaching to people, saying: ‘You should do this.’ It has got to be down to the individual; if people feel comfortable about it then that’s entirely up to them.

  All I can say is that after the debate I was very surprised about people’s reactions. I can’t remember how many emails and letters I got – must be over 500 – but all very positive. The reaction has been overwhelmingly positive. So I do think attitudes are changing in this country for the better. And I think part of the reason for that is that there are a hell of a lot of people out there who either have personal experience themselves, or they’ve got family members, or people they work with, who have. And that’s the issue. And the other thing, which I think Charles said as well, is that we’re not – I’m not – looking for sympathy, I don’t think anyone is. I’m not suggesting that we all get into group hugs and all this nonsense. But I do think it is more common than the statistics tell you it is, and that realisation that you’re not the only one helps. You know, if you walk down the street, there’s a lot of people suffering from the same thing but you just don’t know it.

  It’s strange actually, on Saturday I was walking down the street in my constituency and a woman came up to me and she said: ‘Can I just thank you.’ A woman perhaps in her late fifties, middle-class, and she says: ‘Oh, I had depression and I’m a recovering alcoholic; I still take medication but I’m fine.’ And the key point is: if you looked at her in passing on the street you’d just think she was a normal housewife. But there she was explaining how she hadn’t had a drink in about seven years now and how that was part of her depression, in terms of self-medication. But if I’d normally just walked past her, would you have had a clue? No. And there’s other people you’re walking past every day who have the same types of things.


  Another odd thing for me was that some people I’ve known for many years have come and said: ‘Oh by the way, I’ve suffered from depression or this, that, and the other.’ And some of them have been individuals who you’d think would be the last people who’d suffer from something like that – you know, like a major-general, a PLC chair, a chief executive – but they do. There was a good friend of mine, a member of my constituency, who wrote to me and said she’s been on medication the last ten years. But if you met her you’d think she’d be the last person to be suffering from depression, as she is the most lively, bubbly character, a very confident individual, and holds down a key job.

  So people who suffer from depression are all around us, and does it always stop you doing your job? No, it doesn’t actually. It actually helps, I think, in some respects; in some respects it can be a positive. But that’s the thing about stigma: that people often view mental illness and depression as a sign of weakness, they think the two are linked. Well, they’re not; it’s the opposite actually in some ways. I think if you look back into the history of politics – in this country and other countries – there’s a lot of people who have had mental health issues who were very capable of doing their jobs.

  For me, one of the positive things it’s done is make me more productive, because I’ve learned through having depression – and I think this is in that Burns book – that motivation is actually about action. People think motivation is a thing in itself. Well it’s not, it’s actually about the action of doing things. It’s no good thinking about a thing, you need to do it. An example? Well, take today. I’ve got to do a speech this afternoon to open this debate and I had the first draft on my desk last night, when I got in the office after about half past ten, so I took it home, read it, came in this morning and made some changes. Whereas before, I’d have been saying: ‘Oh I’ll put it off until tomorrow morning.’ In the past, I’d say: ‘I’ve got to cancel you this morning to . . .’. But you don’t need to, you just get on with it, you know?