Category: “Mental Health”

While the press revels in the judgement that allows them to carry on with kiss and tell stories about footballers (provided they are England captain it would seem) I would like to focus not on Rio Ferdinand but on Robert Enke. He was the German goalkeeper who killed himself after a long battle with depression, [...]

One of the downsides (or should that be upsides?) of being moderately well known, and very accessible via social media, is that you get bombarded with people asking for time, money, contacts, ideas and expertise for their (invariably) good causes. On twitter, there is rarely a day, and some days rarely an hour, that there’s [...]

After yesterday’s guest blog on happiness, today I turn to the subject of madness, more specifically my own. I was approached a few months ago and asked to write a poem for a book being prepared by Bovington Middle School in Dorset, to raise money both for the school’s English deparment and for Help for [...]

A couple of weeks ago, I gave a Lecture on Happiness at Birmingham University. Today I give the blog over to KIRSTY MACK, the university’s head of stakeholder relations, so that she can ruminate on the theme, and also ask for your ideas on who might be a suitable (female) speaker on this theme next [...]

A break from politics and the press today, and instead three of my other interests – football, mental illness and plugging books. No, not my own books, though these are available here here here here here and the latest one, Power and Responsibility, here. Oh, and you can pre-order the next one, The Burden of [...]

Time for the blog to take a little breather from phonehacking, with three little scenes from yesterday which combined to lift my mood from the general media putrescence in which we have been swimming. First, I spent the morning at Eastbury comprehensive school in Barking, speaking to the sixth form induction group. Forty per cent [...]

Back from a flying visit to Dublin, and in the two interviews I did (one TV, one radio) there was more interest in my admission of occasional falls from the wagon than in the matters Prince Charles/TB  which led The Guardian on Saturday. As it happens, the only other business I did whilst there was [...]

As someone who campaigns against stigma and discrimination regarding mental illness, I would like to share with you a letter I received recently from Eileen O’Hara in Manchester. It is self-explanatory. Like many people, Eileen has been reluctant to talk about her own experience of mental illness, but feels she has to speak out against [...]

Like many mental health campaigners, I gave Nick Clegg the benefit of the doubt when he outlined the government’s strategy for mental health in February. To save you reading the whole thing, here is the last sentence of the piece I posted then … ‘This has never been the sexiest or easiest issue in the [...]

Back in March, more in sorrow than in anger, I wrote a blogpost critical of my childhood hero Geoffrey Boycott, who had some some rather insensitive things about Michael Yardy, who had come home from the World Cup. The piece I wrote then is here. It seems Yardy is still having real problems, and having [...]