The SANE Blog

In June 2008 I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder Type I and the world as I knew it changed forever.

The prognosis wasn’t good. I was advised I would have to spend the rest of my life on medication, would require regular visits to psychiatrists and psychologists, and my chance of being employed full time was slim to none.

Looking back I had all the classic signs – highly emotional, dysfunctional relationships, excessive spending, promiscuous and drug abuse – but I managed, although I did self medicate.

People with severe mental illness are likely to die up to 25 years earlier than the general population from conditions such as respiratory or cardiovascular diseases caused by obesity, smoking, and a lack of exercise.

SANE spoke to Nick and Kathy regarding their experience of Peer Health Coaching and how it helps people living with a mental illness to improve their mind and body.

I was a young twenty-three year old graduate when I was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1976. I was told by clinicians that with every psychotic episode I had, I would go further into unreachable madness from which I would never recover.

The diagnosis was a death-sentence. Any thoughts of a future and a career were crushed by this awful mental illness and an equally awful assumption that my life would amount to nothing.

There was no presumption of capacity, no expectation that I would blossom like my friends around me who were getting on with their lives and forging successful careers. I felt irrelavant, and worse, invisible in the world. I describe it as walking in the shadows of others and casting none of my own. I was left with no identity, no sense of self and no hope. They were dark days.

Silence is the absence of noise, as peace is just the absence of war. Silence defined me for so long. It was a strategy and a symptom all rolled into one.

I do not want to be silent any more. I want to say all those things I could not in my youth.

When people think of recovery from an episode of illness – whether physical or mental – they often think solely in terms of hospitals, doctors and nurses.

Clinical care is essential of course, but it’s not the whole story, as David, explains . . .

My brother lives with schizophrenia. Now before you judge and run away, allow me to introduce him.

This is my big brother John, or 'Jock', he does not have a split personality, just one, and it's loving and kind.