"I know some people don't like me"

Former Downing Street director of communications, Alastair Campbell, briefs Mark Brown on his experience of mental health difficulty

Alastair Campbell is a very busy man. Sitting in the living room of his family home in north London, Tony Blair's former press spokesman is constantly answering telephone calls. As a prominent public figure who has been open about his experience of depression, he has some strong ideas about the way that the media treats people with mental health difficulties: "Gazza I know very well, I like him, I think he's a great bloke. There was a story in a newspaper where he was in a hotel in Portugal. The story said that 'worried onlookers' realised he was in a terrible state because he was hallucinating about being on the phone to Alastair Campbell. Well he was on the phone to me! To the media it doesn't really matter if celebrities are ill or they're not ill, they're just a story."

Aside from ongoing Labour Party work, Campbell broadcasts and writes on various topics, including mental health, and is currently working with the antistigma campaign, Time to Change. He's also written All in the Mind, a novel soon to be published in paperback, the story of four days in the lives of Martin Sturrock, an NHS psychiatrist, and his patients. It weaves Sturrock's own battle to overcome a deepening depression with the gradual recovery of those he is treating. Campbell wants to show that change does happen: "Part of what the book's saying is that there is something in the human spirit that is powerful enough to get you through. The characters go through different stages of feeling like victims and what happens is that their relationships with other people pull them through."

In 1986, Campbell experienced a breakdown that profoundly shaped his life: "When I had my breakdown it was a nightmare," he says. "Apart from my Dad dying, I can't think of anything worse, except Burnley not going to Wembley. It was a horrific period, but it was also the best thing that ever happened to me. It made me a different kind of creature, and I've been able to do the stuff that I've done partly because of it."

In 2008, Campbell made a documentary with the BBC about the experience, revisiting many of the people who had known and helped him at that time and reflecting on what he'd been like: "I found when I was cracking up I just wasn't listening to anybody, nobody," he says. "My partner Fiona says it was like living with somebody from a different planet. I thought I was right about everything and nobody could tell me I was wrong. When you get into that mode it's very dangerous and corrosive. I think that some people can get so used to this sense of having this perpetual difficulty, battle and struggle that actually going into a quieter calmer space becomes a bit scary."

As a prominent public figure with a known history of mental health difficulties, Campbell has escaped negative public and media opinion about his condition. He puts this down to being open: "I've taken a lot of flack, criticism and hits down the years and this is the one area where I don't think I've taken any. I had no choice about whether to be open because when I switched from journalism to politics, everybody in journalism knew about my breakdown. When I was a journalist nobody gave two tosses. The moment I became Tony Blair's spokesman, it was 'Here, this bloke's hired somebody who's had a mental breakdown and a drink problem', so I had no choice but to be open. I was able to say 'that was then, this is now' and actually it was the best thing to ever happen to me once I'd sorted myself out."

His own experiences and the help that he received have given Campbell a firm belief in the necessity of properly funded psychological treatments. Campbell values deeply the relationships that he has had with psychiatric professionals, even dedicating his novel to his family, his GP and his two psychiatrists: "Once I'd decided I was going to see a psychiatrist, and once I'd established in my own mind that I liked this guy and that I was going to have a proper rapport, there was nothing I wouldn't answer and if he said 'look, we're going to do this, we're going to do that' I'd believe him."

"If you go in to see a psychiatrist, most people are there probably reluctantly; they don't really want to open up. You have to be open," he says. "I know somebody who has far more serious issues than I have. Part of his problem is that he doesn't trust doctors. He thinks that they're all out to get him. That's difficult for the doctor, so what they do in the end is they prescribe him drugs and he goes along with it but there's no going beyond that. I think that's difficult for both the patient and the psychiatrist."

Discussing the stigma around mental health difficulty, Campbell feels that it has many sources: "A lot of it is the media, some of it in the labour market and some of it around the streets. I'm in a very strong position and I've been very lucky. If I were not someone like me, and I was going for a job interview, particularly with the economic stuff going on now, and they asked about my state of health, would I be completely honest about saying I'd had a breakdown and used to have a drink problem? For me I've always felt better being open but I can still understand why people aren't. As you might know, I don't do God. But, 'there but for the grace of God' is a powerful way to deal with it. Every time I see someone drunk on the street, I think 'well, if things had worked out a bit differently with me, that could have been me. If I hadn't had this help, family, medical support, you just don't know. Who knows?"

Campbell is honest when he talks about how his experience of mental health difficulty has changed him: "I know there's a fair number of people out there who don't like me much, I'm very conscious of that. They'll probably find it very hard to accept that I've become much more accepting and tolerant of other people's views.

"I always think it's amazing that the world works as well as it does," he muses before taking a final call. "There are some days when I think about what's going on in my head or what it's like, and I think 'well, everybody's like this', to greater or lesser degrees and they all have this stuff going on. It doesn't mean that everybody gets depressed or that everybody's got schizophrenia or everybody's got major panic attacks but everyone in their day has just a bit of edginess going on in there."

All in the Mind is published in paperback by Arrow priced £7.99.

This feature appears in One in Four issue 4. For information about purchasing a bulk subscription for your group or organisation or buying an individual copy please see this page.

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