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When bad planets align

Author: Stuart MacDonald
Published: 13 December 2006

Stuart MacDonald’s recovery story encompasses his journey from the world of work, through illness, treatment at Leverndale Hospital and his subsequent recovery. Stuart pays particular emphasis on the importance of relationships and the continuing support he received from nursing staff as an outpatient.

I know from my time in hospital that many men find it difficult to talk about their mental health problems. I can fully understand that. Fortunately I am different. I am glad that I feel able to talk about what happened to me. The fact that I made such a good recovery from a terrible illness is in fact one of my proudest achievements. Everything else I have achieved was done with the brainpower I was born with and some hard work to put it into use. Getting out of Leverndale was the biggest challenge of my life because I did it with my brain tied behind my back. I will discuss my recovery process, but first a little about my story to put it into context.

I have worked for twenty three years as an accountant for large firms. I am an accountant who actually enjoys his work. However, what happened to me proves my granny’s old saying of “You can get too much of a good thing.”

We had been extra busy at work with a major change in accounting rules. The work was right up my street and I, and a number of others in the team, worked long and hard on the project. Unfortunately, while I was intellectually able to do the work, the physical and emotional toll were gradually affecting my well being, so stealthily that I did not even notice it until it was too late.

A number of factors came into play that contributed to my depression. It was a bit like all your bad planets lining up in the sky; the company announced a reorganisation, which meant that half of the team were going to be made redundant – I might have been one of that number. The company was also conducting some major transactions that meant longer hours and so I would see even less of my family; my own father died when I was two years old and I was very conscious about spending enough time with my son. I was promoted – meaning more pressure just when I was knackered. It was autumn and the good summer weather had ended. Financial investments were going in the wrong direction. Even the football team I supported had been knocked out of the Scottish Cup by our biggest rivals.

I increasingly felt down. I felt I had lost my joie de vivre. Little did I know that I was in danger of losing my vivre altogether.

I had increasingly suicidal thoughts. I was diagnosed by my doctor as depressed. I couldn’t even do my own bank statement reconciliations. This loss of brainpower was devastating. I felt like a vegetable. My system was simply shutting down. I thought my world was coming to an end.

I was admitted to Leverndale on 13 October 2005.- I thought I would be in overnight but it was to be 7 weeks. I did feel that I had gone there to get better, and I would, but it was going to be tough. The next day looking around at the other patients in the ward, I didn’t think I could get through the day. It was the biggest culture shock of my life. I thought that the doctor would lay me on a couch and ask me to talk about my problems for a couple of hours or so but I was lucky to get 15 minutes of general chat. She explained I had to get balanced before we could do any talk, and she was right.

My recovery started the day I entered the hospital. It was the worst place to be in the world but at the same time it was the best place to be in the world. As one of my visitors said to me, it was the only show in town.

We all die in the end; there are thousands of illnesses and diseases. Depression is different because it makes you want to kill yourself. I don’t know if there is a god but I do know there is a devil, because whoever thought up the illness that is depression surely has their home in Hell.

What helped me recover? The medication I am sure helped, although that was only a relatively small part of the recovery. The nursing staff were fantastic – well some of them were and some were distant (talking to you but looking over your shoulder). Even in my damaged state, I could quickly identify which was which. I had three saints in amongst the nurses who helped me in their different ways.

These people are lifesavers working in dreadful conditions for little pay. What they do is astonishing, working daily amongst depressed people. It still amazes me how they keep their spirits up when all around is blackness. If I could bottle their spirits and sell it I would be richer than Bill Gates.

Physical exercise helped. Walking around the grounds at Leverndale in the beautiful autumn weather, or even the rain, was vital. I walked nearly every day when I got out of hospital and loved it. It’s so hard to combine it with a full week’s work but I have tried to keep it up by going swimming with my son.

As I walked around the Leverndale grounds I finally understood the meaning of the words “asylum” and “sanctuary”. Being isolated from the world that had caused me so much pain was essential. I heard that there is a plan to merge Leverndale with the new super hospital at Southern General. Whoever thought up that idea clearly hasn’t been a patient in Leverndale.

Walking half a mile to Paisley Road West was an achievement. My wife praised me as if I had walked to the North Pole. Since being back at work I have twice travelled to the West coast of America to work for a week. What a change!

Some of the other patients were inspirational. They could tell you what it was really like from the inside, which even the doctors and nurses can’t. I found some wonderful people. Not all of them are around today.but that doesn’t depress me; it motivates me to stay well. Joining the recovery group and the solutions group seemed anathema to me at first. In the beginning, I could hardly string a sentence together.but they helped me get my confidence to speak again.

I have told my family, friends and colleagues of some of the people I met. At one point I slept in a bed between a murderer and a drug dealer on a firearms charge. People say it must have been awful…for those men to have to admit to their families they were sleeping beside an accountant!

When I was discharged I had more time to walk and go for coffee at the local shopping centre. I met up with friends for coffee, mainly female friends of my wife. While I was ill I thought from a macho perspective that they would not even want to talk to me because I had suffered mental illness. I didn’t feel like a ’real’ strong man. The strange thing was that they loved taking to me.- they had found a man in the West of Scotland who actually talked about his feelings. In one week, I had four coffee dates with females on two consecutive days; I was getting stressed dashing from one to the next. I don’t think stress caused by coffee dates with housewives has made the Lancet yet so this might be the first reported case.

When I was discharged from Leverndale I made only one condition - that I could continue the counselling work I had already started This was agreed to and I visited for one hour each week for the next couple of months. After building up a trust and understanding with the hospital nurse it would have been awful to start again with someone new.

Unlike many other illnesses, recovery from depression is really all about relationships; relationship with your consultant, relationships with the nursing staff, relationships with fellow patients, relationships with family and friends, with new friends that you meet along the way. I decided when I left hospital that I would spend more time with positive, inspirational people.

Never say never. I fully understand that my bad planets may align once again some day in the future. But, if I do become unwell again, I hope to receive support equal to that I found at Leverndale.

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Story disclaimer

The stories presented here are for information only. They are meant to inspire hope and show that recovery can and does happen. The stories highlight various examples of recovery and we do not advocate any of these experiences as the ‘right’ way to recover. Recovery is an individual and unique process, each person must decide for himself or herself what will work for them. Please carefully consider any decisions you make about your own recovery and consult with someone you trust if you feel unsure.

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