Now we're talking: Tales of breakdown and recovery

Tim Lott, 51, writer

It started as depression in the mid-1980s, then I had a full-scale nervous breakdown in 1987. I'd always been given to feelings of blackness and anxiety, but didn't realise what it was. Depression was still quite taboo. I didn't really believe in it either; I thought it was the same as unhappiness. I didn't understand it as a clinical illness.

My symptoms were fairly standard: low feelings of self worth, inability to respond emotionally, and a sustained low mood. Not that anyone noticed because I always appeared quite exuberant.

I never sought treatment because I didn't want to be tainted by the stigma of a mental health issue. Eventually I took to my bed and just became a bit of a zombie. I lost the ability to speak for a while. It was very upsetting for everyone around me. The advice I got from friends, very strongly, was don't take any medication. We were living in the aftermath of the intellectual climate of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and the idea that mental illness was a form of oppression imposed by society.

I got to the stage where I became suicidal - standing on the top of high buildings and so forth. Luckily I never had the guts to do it. My mother suffered depression as a result and killed herself a few months later. By then I was taking medication, so I felt better. I was deeply unhappy about my mother's death rather than depressed. I had got better in the space of a few weeks. I felt better than I had done for years. The medication helped me a lot.

If I had to trace it all back, perhaps it was to do with when I was a baby. I was born with cancer and was very close to death for the first few months of my life. From a psychoanalytical point of view, my early life experience was one in which I was acutely aware of death. On the face of my mother I would have seen terror and fear, and that would have been very traumatic for me and could have left me damaged psychologically. These things do leave an imprint but it's an incredibly complicated issue. I can only guess. I never will really know the reason. No one does. Lena Corner

Meg Mathews, 41, designer

I thought my life was on track but then I hit 40. It wasn't a mid-life crisis but I just had a strong feeling of "is this is it?" I had very low self-esteem and was looking for approval. I became very dependent on certain people and I was really weak. I was living in fear. I put pressure on myself for all the usual things - I wasn't in a relationship, I wasn't a size zero and I'd hit 40. I wasn't at the stage where I couldn't get out of bed in the morning, but even getting dressed seemed like a massive, massive thing to do.

I went to Ibiza and ended up sitting there thinking, what's good about this? I knew I wasn't right and had to get myself better. I'd never been to therapy and I realised I'd never even discussed my divorce [from Noel Gallagher] or any of the madness that was my life. In 1997, I had gone from being a normal girl to being the most written-about girl after Lady Di and the Spice Girls. I'd go to parties, but there was always a shitty piece written about me the next day. I took it all to heart, but there was nothing I could do. I was told to pick myself up, to hold my head up. I had a rock star boyfriend and millions of pounds. All the time I was like "yes, yes everything's totally fine".

I went to see the head psychiatrist at the Capio Knightingale in London - it's a bit like the Priory, everyone's been through there. I said, "I don't feel like Meg any more," and he admitted me the next day. I was resident for a month and then on day-release for another. I went in with the attitude that I'd get out exactly what I put in. I did all sorts: stress management, dependency and cognitive therapy. It's all about starting over and being given the tools of everyday life. It's also simple. The thing I found most helpful was just sitting with other people sharing, talking and letting go of stuff.

I've become really creative. I have a wallpaper line out and am currently working on designing a tea set as well as a jewellery range. I'm also now really in touch with my emotions. I didn't realise, but I hadn't been for years. I'd have three glasses of champagne before I stepped on to a red carpet because I got so nervous. Now if I'm nervous, I just don't go. It's all about being in touch with Meg and being able to sit with Meg. I talk things over with myself before I agree to things - if I don't, I could easily slide off into my old behaviour. Now I'm no longer seeking approval, I'm much stronger and I feel at peace with myself. I believe in myself and I believe in Meg. LC

www.megmathews.co.uk

Sarah Tonin, 38, artist

I don't remember being particularly happy as a child, but it got much worse as I grew up. When I was 18, I was sectioned. A psychiatrist came and off we went for a little break in this terrifying hospital. I think I was there for about a month. After that, all I remember is complete and utter despair and confusion. I used to believe that I was infested with maggots and worms. My arms are covered in scars from trying to dig them out. I still have hallucinations but I've learned to cope with them.

I think I've probably had between 60 and 80 sessions of electro-convulsive therapy (ECT), although I can't remember exactly. It left me utterly confused. I look at psychiatry as a stinking, deluded corpse of abuse. They brutally strip-searched me and I do feel like they've damaged me.

In 2001, I got involved with Southwark Mind. Its philosophy is be proud of who you are and celebrate your madness. Then a group of us started an organisation called Creative Routes, run by the mad for the mad. We were pissed off with victimisation, patronisation and discrimination. Suddenly I didn't feel so cut off. I realised I was a very creative person. Last year we organised an arts event called Bonkersfest and over 2,000 people turned up.

I was in Starbucks last year and a woman was wearing a sleeveless top, and her arms were just as scarred as mine. I said "you're brave" as I always kept mine covered up. She said "try it", and I did. It was an act of freedom. I have also become a campaigner. We are in the process of taking Patricia Hewitt to court because she wants to close the only 24-hour psychiatric emergency walk-in clinic in England.

When you're under the power of the services you don't have any control over your life. Now I do. I realise now, the only way to make a change is to do it yourself. People didn't take us seriously in the beginning, but they do now. We call ourselves the mad miracles. LC

Bonkersfest, is happening on 2 June, Camberwell Green, London. For more information, go to www.bonkersfest.com

Peter Bullimore, 45, trainer

I was seven years old when I first started to hear voices. At first I thought it was like an imaginary friend - but the voice was always external. I started to get other voices too, which continued until I was 13, when they just stopped. I never spoke about it. I got married at 17 and became a father. I was working seven days a week and felt a lot of stress. So the voices returned - only this time they came back tenfold. I also became paranoid. One night Freddie Kruger [from A Nightmare on Elm Street] appeared in the back of my van, telling me he's going to kill me and cut me open. I was petrified.

The voices really started to encompass my life - they became very demonic and dominant - constantly telling me to do stuff. My wife started to notice and told me to get help. I stopped going to work and for three weeks I just curled up in a chair. I didn't wash, eat or shave. I was locked in a world of constant voices, paranoia and depression. It destroyed my life. I was checked into a psychiatric ward, where I stayed, on and off, for the next 10 years.

I was taking 25 drugs a day and I was frightened. My mother died, which I found really difficult - I couldn't cry at the funeral as my emotions had been blunted with drugs. I couldn't grieve and I felt so bad. The voices kept saying "you should slash yourself - slash yourself". If someone tells you something often enough, you have a tendency to do it. So I did.

Eventually I got a worker, Sally, who is an occupational therapist, who started to treat me and not my diagnosis. She was a godsend. When I got discharged, Sally encouraged me to set up a Hearing Voices group with her. I remembered a network I'd visited once, years before, and tracked them down. They told me to read Accepting Voices by Marius Romme and Sandra Escher. It was the most inspiring book I've ever read. It's about people's different ideas on voices - and how you can cope with them.

So I started to listen to my own voices. A lot of the time they'd say stuff like "if you go to sleep tonight we're going to murder your children". So I'd shoot up to the kids' house the next morning, and they'd be alive. It made me ask, "They've been saying this for months and they've never been able to do it - so what can they actually do?" So I started to alter the power balance in my relationship with the voices; I realised they couldn't inflict physical harm.

Once I'd removed the fear, I started to rebuild my life. If my voices say to me "why don't you kill yourself", I'll think "perhaps I'm just feeling a bit stressed". I see them more like a warning sign now. I do a lot of lectures on it now and a lot of individual work with people, usually those that the system can't recover. I've had a lot of success. Adam Jacques

For more information on Peter's Campaign to Abolish Schizophrenia Label (CASL), visit www.asylumonline.net

Trisha Goddard, 49, TV presenter

I was living in Australia, working as a government mental-health advisor and television presenter. Up until that stage, mental-health issues happened to other people. When I had my breakdown, there were lots of things that contributed: two simultaneous careers, my childhood experiences, who I was, and my marijuana use. So it didn't take a lot more to cause the breakdown. In this case, it was my then husband's infidelity.

I didn't see it coming. I'd been to the doctor, they'd put me on anti-depressants. I remember thinking "these bloody things aren't working". I took more, added a bottle of brandy and kept taking other pills, then came to in a locked ward on suicide watch. I felt terrified; I didn't move from my bed for about three days. This is someone who had interviewed the Australian prime minister several times, and Nelson Mandela, but I was too scared to look out at the leaves moving in the wind outside.

There was one nurse there called Elaine. She did everything for me. I couldn't talk to anybody. I was scared of people, scared they could see inside my head, read my mind and see what a loser I was. I had a television and I'd just sit in front of it. Elaine would come in and make remarks about what was on the television - and because it wasn't about me I could talk about the show. She was so, so clever. I had psychiatrists and all the rest, but that lady got through to me.

I then had a mix of weekly sessions of psychotherapy. It was the start of my road to where I am now. I had cognitive behavioural therapy to work out why I did what I did. I was eventually released from the ward and began to learn to live another way. In 1998 I was head hunted to work in the UK. Trisha was the first full-time job I'd had since my breakdown in 1994. But I now had the tools to fashion a life that wasn't exclusively based around work. I know now I am prone to depression. I have an early warning system that is my family. They know if I start working too much, sleeping too little. They'll point it out in a loving way, and I take steps to nip it in the bud. AJ

Jonathan Aitken, 64, former MP

From the moment of being caught out in the libel case to the moment of going to prison, it took just over two years. I went through - in fairly short order - defeat, disgrace, divorce, bankruptcy and jail, all in the glare of a noisy media. I'd been an extremely busy person. Then, after losing the case, I had nothing to do - apart from go on a disastrous downward spiral.

I started to sleep a lot in the afternoons and go to bed early at night. In the morning I wouldn't want to get up. Everything was disintegrating. There were very bad days - I was never seriously suicidal, but it did cross my mind that maybe this would be a good course of action. I felt utter hopelessness - that I had no future and no life ahead of me I could see. I remember thinking, "How am I going to earn my living?"

I did talk it over with my GP, who asked if I was depressed. I said, "Yes, but not heavily." He gave me some antidepressants. I did take them for all of two doses, and started to feel giddy. I threw them away.

Prison was better than I expected; I found my feet in an extraordinary community. It was a survival test but it wasn't an impossible one. One or two inmates were quite hostile on my first night. They started a tremendous chant along the lines of "let's get Aitken", which was terrifying. Probably about halfway through my time in prison I think I'd overcome the worst of my depression.

I sometimes say I coped thanks to my three Fs: family, friends and faith. My family were wonderful and came to see me regularly. People sometimes say in these situations you find out who your friends are, and that is true: my close friends were wonderful in all kinds of ways. And I think adversity can sometimes be the gateway to a deeper faith - which was certainly true in my life. I started visiting a nearby chapel after the collapse of the libel, and ended up going every day. And in prison, it was a source of great strength for me. AJ

Odi Oquosa, 37, artist and shaman

I am from Nigeria, I'm a textile designer and a craftsman, but I am also caught up in two worlds. Elements talk to me and teach me to work with the forces of nature. That's what becoming a shaman is about. I was working in Switzerland when my voices started telling me I have to go home to Nigeria and become a shaman. So I went back in 2000.

At the time a vigilante group - called the Bakassi Boys - organised by the Nigerian government - were killing people, burning down houses and bringing fear. I decided to confront them, by going on television and speaking out. I even went to meet with them. On my third meeting they abducted me, telling me they wanted to kill me.

They tortured me - my body is full of marks. I was strapped down, beaten with machetes and cut all over. My mother called my cousin, who was a representative in the House of Assembly, who in turn called up the Governor and, after a long dialogue, they released me. After that I started having panic attacks. I couldn't sleep. I'd see people chasing me with machetes, even in my dreams. But my voices told me I needed to go through this to understand Shamanism; I had to be wounded to understand about pain. I started painting and writing stuff down about my abduction experience. But then the Bakasi boys came to my office and burned down the whole place. I lost all my pieces - all that energy that it had taken to make all these things and understand stuff, and it was gone. It was hell.

In 2001, I came to the UK and brought a lot of evidence and videos of what these vigilantes had been doing to people. But staying in London made my panic attacks worse. It was a hard time. I'd have panic attacks everywhere. I'd start sweating and all I could hear was negative voices. I'd think the people around me were following me and wanted to kill me. I realised I had to move away from London to the sea, where I would be able to communicate with the elements and get myself better. So five years ago, I moved down to Brighton.

Because of the problems I was having, I had to talk to the doctors, who sent me to a psychiatric ward. They saw me as a mad person, who was delusional, as I was still talking with my voices. My social worker was the only person who trusted me.

As my panic attacks continued, I started getting angry at my voices and myself, then one day they told me, "You have to fight." So I brought an old Egyptian sword and hung it in my flat. It was my tribal sword. Next time I had a panic attack, I saw the machete men, but this time they ran away. I thought, "I've got the key now. There's no need for me to be afraid." It was a symbolic event, and now I am fearless again. I haven't had any panic attacks since.

Now I help others who have had similar problems. I see myself as an African psychologist. The modern, European approach is only geared to the body and mind - not the spirit. These things are not clinical - psychiatrists can not cover it; I think us shamans can. AJ

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