Hansard

I congratulate Jackie Baillie on beating me to it and securing this debate. I will speak very quickly, because I thought I had six minutes.

When I was elected last year, I said that one of the things I really wanted to work on was mental health, particularly reducing the stigma around mental health issues. I like to think that I would have done so regardless of my background, but coming as I do from a family of psychiatric nurses and a family with its own experiences of the other side of mental health problems, I have a keen interest in and, I hope, a good understanding of mental health issues.

When I was thinking about what to say today, I hesitated to say that I have family members who have experienced mental illness. I hesitated for the very reason we are here debating this motion: there is still a huge stigma, and anyone who admits to having mental health problems takes a risk.

Reading through the report from see me, it seems to me that the stigma is reducing and there is lots of good news. People feel more able to be open about having mental health problems. In 2002, 51 per cent of people said that they would not want people to know, but a recent survey showed that that figure has reduced to 41 per cent. So, nearly two thirds of people would be willing to tell others that they had been diagnosed with a mental health problem, which is good news and testament to the work of see me.

However, we are not there yet. See me is right when it says that it will take a generation to shift attitudes. We are not there yet, because although I will willingly say that some of my family members have had mental problems and I will even say what those problems were, I will not say who those family members are, because I feel the need to protect them from those who would discriminate and those who would stigmatise. We are not there yet, because I will not say whether I was one of them. For all that anyone listening to this debate knows, I might have suffered from depression in the past. I might have been suicidal. I might even be standing here today as someone who has a diagnosis of schizophrenia. So might any of us. That is the problem. Until more ordinary people from all walks of life are willing to stand up and say, “I’m the guy who delivers your post”—or “I’m the guy who advises you on your health”—“and I have or have had a mental health problem, but I’m still me”, the stigma will not go away.

Until the stigma goes away, people will not be willing to put their head above the parapet. That is the crucial thing about the see me campaign. It gets across probably the best-known facts about mental health problems but also the least-believed fact: that one in four of us can have them and they can still happen to anybody.

I might not have been diagnosed with an enduring mental illness such as schizophrenia—I say “might not” because it would really defeat the purpose of what we are debating today if I chickened out and felt the need to reassure everyone that I had not—but that does not mean that I will not be. I have no way of knowing; none of us here does.

My parents were both psychiatric nurses and they cleverly ensured that if I had ever been tempted as a teenager to accept an offer of illegal drugs, I would have been too terrified to give into that temptation. They told me the story of Fiona, a stunningly beautiful girl who had the world at her feet and was set to realise her dream of going to medical school. I am making her sound like a fictional character, but she was not, because I knew her—although I have changed her name. The world was her oyster until she took a hallucinogenic substance that sparked off a latent psychosis. Fast forward 30 years and she has just managed to get out of a locked ward and is being assisted to live in a supported tenancy. No medical school for her; no nights out with her friends; no graduation ceremony; no peace of mind; no glittering career; and no life until now. She has had 30 years of a particularly aggressive form of paranoid schizophrenia that could have lain dormant all her life. It could be lying dormant in any of us right now and we would not have to take illegal substances to spark it off—many things can spark it off. That makes us no different from Fiona. It makes us just as susceptible to the terrible stigma that has plagued her life.

We can all suffer from depression. I am quite sure that we have all suffered at least a temporary depression, such as when somebody has died. The problem occurs when that depression is not short term and will not go away, no matter how hard someone tries.

A number of years ago, I spoke at a conference and told the tale of two princesses who had lost their hair—the princesses of pop, Kylie Minogue and Britney Spears. The press, and therefore we, were sympathetic to Kylie because, after all, it was not her fault—the chemo for the breast cancer caused her hair loss. But it was not Britney’s fault that she became ill, either. I do not know what her condition was, but it was clear that she had a mental health problem, which was somehow considered to make the situation her fault. I know that the press, and therefore we, were singularly unsympathetic to her, so I am glad that the see me campaign works with journalists on the reporting of mental ill health. The newspapers that reported, ridiculed and attacked Britney’s every move as she struggled to cope with her mental illness will no doubt have carried worthy articles about how we need to reduce the stigma of mental ill health. When the press and the media put those fine words into practice in all their reporting, the shift that we need badly will have taken place.

17:15