The Survivor Devil I started seeing the symptoms, but I was convinced the symptoms were merely side-effects of old age. I thought the time had come for me to retire my body, and take up residence in my mind. But then I heard of a study that showed that people with mental health problems such as anxiety and depression have a higher risk of dying from heart disease. I realized that whatever we have got wrong in the way we’ve been treating and thinking about mental health has now become more urgent, more important. This is a book about the origins of mental illness. We all know that suicide rates are higher among men, that we are more likely to die by violent means, but as a society we know little about why men are more likely to die by suicide than women. This book answers a question that many people might not even know they have had, because if it was an issue for you, you might have felt ashamed, or guilty, and buried your grief. The question is, why aren’t we just getting on with living, not talking about it, not facing it? How many of us would feel comfortable talking about what’s happened to us, and what we’ve seen? But what happens when we ask the question “How can we talk about mental health without becoming victims of our own mental health?” Some years ago, I made a documentary for BBC2 in which I spent several hours a day for a month pretending to be in a mental health clinic, while I explored the experience from within. The show became controversial; I was accused of doing a very clever job of deceiving an audience. I now wonder if it was part of a bigger deception. The “reality” is that mental health is still a deeply difficult subject to talk about and I wonder if for some people I was part of the “cover up” by pretending to be in denial. But I did not do it because I was avoiding the question, because I don’t think it is possible to escape the reality of mental illness. Mental illness needs to be shared, as important as cancer or TB. For me, the question is not what we can do about it; the question is how do we live with it? Because we all live with it. And because those of us who aren’t “mad” (whatever that means) don’t talk about it, we have a distorted view of how bad it is. And the danger in having an exaggerated view of the problem is that it stops us being able to come to terms with our own mental health. There are moments in this book where my son, then a toddler, is sitting in his pushchair and looks up, as if waiting for the question. The question is simply “How did I get here?” And his reply is: “I don’t know, but I did what I could, just the same as you always did.” It’s the only time in the book when I’ve been overtaken by a sense of loss. That his own father can no longer answer his question. I had a long conversation with some friends about this. One said that she had always been angry at my son, and I don’t believe her, because the answer is the same – “I don’t know but I did what I could, just the same as you always did.” I have to ask myself “Why don’t we know, if everybody is so alike? Why don’t we see the same events and learn from them?” Perhaps we’re all too familiar with the signs. Perhaps the answer is inside, and has nothing to do with experience or knowledge or even character. Perhaps the only honest answer to what is wrong is something as simple as, I don’t know. And yet it seems there is something that distinguishes the man who is born, I don’t know from the man who knows why. We make a start because we don’t know. I can see I’m making excuses and trying to justify the fact that I know the answer, that I have answers to give, to help others. In all the conversations I’ve had about what happened to me, this is what I’ve asked. “What makes us different, what makes me different, and others different, to those who didn’t make it, and didn’t know why?” I want to understand because I don’t want anyone else to be the same. The alternative is to sit back and watch as those who will never know get hit by the bus, or watch as the bodies are lifted off the ground and removed, and I can do nothing. This book is for everyone, but it doesn’t have to end there. We need to understand our place within the community. Not by being part of a majority, but by understanding the problems we all have and what is right for each of us, knowing that that is more important than knowing what is wrong with us. The real problem is not how many people do not know, but how many of us don’t want to talk about it, and how many of us are making money from that, for example, by exploiting the fear we feel by offering solutions, giving you a pill, a drug, a lifestyle change, an exercise, a diet, a philosophy of good and evil, or a set of principles to help you live by. I want to end this book by expressing the hope that in the future the only good explanation will be “Because”. There should be no more explanations – and that will be a step forward. There are three other main strands to the book. One is history. We were able to talk about TB or cancer because there was no conspiracy against us, because we had come to terms with it and understood it. That has not happened with mental illness. The second strand is economics. This is a book that argues that the problem isn’t our character, but the kind of things we have decided to do about it. If our characters had been fixed at the start, but the choices we had to make were too difficult, the question is, “Which things matter?” The last strand is politics. We need to find a way to give people the respect they deserve, and get people talking about mental illness without being seen as mad, or different, or weak. There has to be a way of dealing with this in a way that does not mean the question becomes a moral one: “Do you have it?” or “Do you have the strength to do something about it?” and not “Do you know?” How would the world be different if we were all equipped with a level of understanding that can only come from experience? I want people to understand that there is nothing wrong with our brains and that there is nothing wrong with our minds, only the way we use them, and what we use them for. These answers lie at the heart of every issue, whether we have cancer, or a mental illness, or a family or a business, or just want to live a life free from the fear of violence or loss. What is true of one group is true of all of us, so it’s important to be part of a group. That’s why I’m so grateful that The Survivor Devil is not a self-help book. I don’t want to be seen as an expert or a guru. I want to give a different answer, and the reason is I don’t know any other way to live.