Much is talked and written today about mental health; it’s all over the TV as high (and not so high) profile names tell us about their mental health problems. It’s on the agenda in corporate board rooms; it’s big in social media. Hardly a day goes by when I’m encouraged to “share” something on social media telling others how much I understand and empathise with their mental and emotional turmoil. It’s yet another ribbon or wristband to wear, virtue-signalling, telling you how much I care.

I have been through a long period of admittedly slight, but nevertheless significant, mental ill-health. But I never so much as took a day off work. It is possible to continue leading a normal life whilst ill. Every day, people continue to go to work suffering from heavy colds, or in chronic and severe pains, or with serious disabilities, and they get by. There are others who do not bother; they don’t even try. I have worked with able-bodied, fit and healthy people a good deal younger than I, who were in the habit of taking 15-20 days a year off “sick”. I confess I have no patience with such people.

I did consider seeing the doctor, and in fact I would have done so much earlier. What prevented me from doing so was the fact that in modern England it takes three weeks to get an appointment to see a GP, unless you face a life-threatening emergency. For some, mental ill-health is of course a life-threatening emergency, but for me, it was merely life-changing. Eventually I did see the GP for anxiety. More of that later.

I don’t really know where it all started. At one point during 2016 my wife turned to me and said “it’s been a couple of years now” meaning the length of time I had seemed “down in the dumps” and not myself. I guess that sometime in 2015, things started to take a dive. What was the cause? Who knows? As engineers, as safety professionals, we are taught to look for causation: What happened? Why did it happen? What went wrong? And most importantly, how do we stop it from happening again?

Sometimes, in the complexity of the real world, these questions are unanswerable. It is fair to say that changes at work may have causal factors. A man might catch pneumonia and become gravely ill: the immediate cause, of course, is infection by bacteria or virus. But working too hard, or giving a long speech outside on a rainy November day, could easily act as the starting point or “causal factor” as the safety professionals say. Of such work-related causal factors we will write no more, as these matters have still to run their full course.

Certainly though, looking back, I wonder how I kept my job. I know, of course, full well. I kept it by the grace of God. Both through my prayers and through the skills he has given me. The worst time was from November 2016 through to June 2018. Changes in the workplace in the early summer of last year heralded a time of recovery. At the present time I consider myself convalescent, and would guard carefully against the risk of relapse.

These years have been studded with bereavement. In November 2015, after years of decline, my wife’s mother passed away. We were not close – but this was my wife’s mother, not just anyone, and obviously my wife was deeply affected. In March 2016, one of my Scouters died of cancer after years of heroic struggle – just a young man of only 27. The following winter, my wife’s beloved Aunt Josie went into hospital in early January, and we buried her in early April 2017. Last summer, my son’s girlfriend took her own life in the days before his graduation. That summer, on the day of the funeral, I learnt of the suicide on her 18th birthday of the only daughter of one of my former Scouters.

These years have been a time of growth and spreading of wings for our kids, as they all have “flown the coop” and found their way in the wide world. At least their welfare has not been a grave concern to us; all three of them proving to be healthy, upright citizens well able and willing to earn a living.

In this very difficult time, I have found strength in three very different activities. One of them, has been running. I’d started running earlier, back in 2012, and running continues to be a source of strength and comfort to me. In the very worst times at work, I sought for activity that did not involve deep thinking, activity which some might refer to as “right-brain”. Like running, neither were innovation: I’ve always been a writer, and I’ve played guitar off and on (perhaps mostly off) since childhood. I found great refreshment and renewal in playing guitar, and my journal-keeping or writing has taken what I would very much consider a high priority in my life. I have beside me as I write, paper diaries back to the end of 2016 with upwards of 160,000 words written: I could have written a novel in a six-month if I chose to do that rather than to journal. But, that journalism, if not saving my life (that would be inappropriate hyperbole and crass exaggeration, both of which I find deplorable), has certainly contributed to recovery of my mental health, and in any case – writing is never wasted.

In those dark years I sought the face of God – most often in one or two places in London – and I have been found by Him. I sought the face of God through prayer and fasting , and enjoyed a period of tremendous personal renewal and spiritual growth, at perhaps the lowest point on my journey.

I have become a District Commissioner for Scouts and at the same time, have largely lost interest in Scouting. What took up 20-25 hours a week of my time before October 2016, I will not permit to take half that time now. I continue as DC out of a sense of duty, an awareness that there is no-one to replace me, and an unwillingness to be known as a quitter.

What were the symptoms?

• A sense of feeling “What’s the point?“
• A lack of interest, ambition and motivation – as the other ranks say in the Navy – “NAAFI – no ambition and fuck-all interest”
• A lack of concern for my long-term welfare in my work and home life;
• Easily irritated and angered – irrascible at times;
• At times tired to the point of tears – not metaphorically, but literally;
• An inability to concentrate or focus;
• An inability to see things through to completion;
• Anxiety attacks at all times of day but especially in the small hours
• Insomnia – lying awake transfixed by fear and worry, at random times
• Panic attacks and dread at what should be undaunting and straightforward tasks or decisions e.g. what shall we have for supper, what shall I buy my wife for her birthday?
• Weight loss: this symptom alone has been to my advantage. The reasons for it are complex and not just related to mental health. In 2015 I was 17st 11lb; today (May 2019) I am 16st.