In a recent Guardian Society profile, Ian McPherson, the new Head of the National Mental Health Development Unit (NMHDU) spoke of his experiences of depression as a child and into adulthood, and how he had hoped to bring that experience into his working life. In fact, he recalls: ‘I quickly got the message – subtly and less subtly– that even in what is a fairly liberal profession, there was an implicit distinction between people who are patients and people who are professionals’ (O’Hara, 2009). 

McPherson now feels that there has been something of a sea change in attitudes, and that he can now bring his experience into the work sphere, because although his own illness ‘gives no unique insights’ into mental health conditions in general, McPherson insists, what it has done is ‘allow me to understand what it feels like’to be seen as separate or ‘that person over there with a mental illness’.

Increasingly people in public life are ‘coming out’ to talk about their experiences, in helpful and often moving terms. A number of scientists, like the embryologist Dr Lewis Wolpert, and medical practitioners have spoken of their experiences of mental ill-health (see e.g. Gilbert, 2009). Work is going on towards producing a major publication on this issue at the moment (see Stickley and Basset, 2009, forthcoming).

Illness, either physical or mental, can have the effect of excluding us, separating us out from others. And yet we know that the major health challenges; cancer, mental health, heart disease, affect so many. It is commonly stated that one in four people suffers mental ill-health; but in fact nearly everybody one speaks to, when they are being honest, admits to having had a period where sadness has tipped into what Wolpert calls so powerfully: malignant sadness (Wolpert, 2006).

I am reassured that the Royal College of Psychiatrists has recently published a book on spirituality and psychiatry (Cook et al., 2009) which considers a whole person, whole systems approach to mental ill-health. I found that my own experience of depression (see Coyte et al, 2007) touched on issues around the biomedical, psychological, social and spiritual. I was fortunate to have a general practitioner,who not only prescribed the right medication at the right time, but was willing to build on my innate systems of support, which were partly spiritual in a religious sense, and also secular ones of networks of support through my running club.

Now I found myself engaged in two aspects of what one might call ’strategic permission’. The first element of ‘permission’ concerns the issue of talking about spirituality and religion. The second is around speaking in a public place about the experience of mental ill-health. It is amazing how ‘liberating’ for people this disclosure seems to be, and how again, it gives ‘strategic permission’ for people to own and speak to their own experiences.

To return to Ian McPherson’s interview, it is a challenge for all of us to see if we can step on to what one of my students called ‘the common ground’ of our humanity so that he distancing of ‘us’ and ‘them’ becomes the partnership of ‘us’ and ‘us’, ‘I ‘and ‘thou’.

Peter Gilbert is Professor of Social Work and Spirituality at Staffordshire University;visiting Professor at Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health Foundation Trustand the University of Worcester; and Chair of the National Development Team for Inclusion.

References

Cook, C. Powell, A and Sims, A. (2009) Spirituality and Psychiatry London:RCPsych 

Coyte, M.E., Gilbert, P. and Nicholls, V. (2007) ySpirituality, Values and MentalHealth: Jewels for the Journey, London: Jessica Kingsley

Gilbert, P. (2009) ‘Words of healing: spirituality and mental health’, Words in Action in 10,000 Places, London University/The Heythrop Institute for Religion, Ethics and Public Life, Institute Series

O’Hara, M. (2009) ‘Voice of experience’, Society Guardian, 24th June, 2009 p. 5.

Stickley, T. and Basset, T. (2009) Voices of Experience, Wiley/Blackwell

Wolpert, L. (2006) Malignant Sadness: The Anatomy of Depression, 3rd edn,London: Faber and Faber

First published in Well-being 3.4. September 2009 

This article is copyright Avenue Consulting Ltd. It may be reproduced in full provided that this copyright notice and information about its source (www.well-beingzone.com) are also reproduced. © 2009

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