Eric Joyce MP has been charged with assault after losing it in the Strangers Bar of the Commons. Like bankers, traders, doctors, sales reps and lawyers there’s very little mental health or pastoral support for MP’s – the Chaplaincy role in Parliament seems more ceremonial than anything else – and it would seem that Joyce was left to get on with it after his previous arrest, driving ban and loss of his Shadow Cabinet job in 2010.

Many people thrive in high-pressure jobs, it looks as if Joyce did too until the day that he didn’t. Like Joyce, Nick Leeson and Kweku Adoboli were left to get on with things after a number of actions that suggested they might not be managing.   Part of the reward for this kind of lifestyle is high wages, high status, tolerance of illegal behaviours like drug use and driving convictions, and lots of perks to offset the ludicrous hours, non-negotiable deadlines, high workloads, often tedious processes and sustained adrenalin drenching. Of course, all the research shows that high pressure jobs can double the risk of anxiety and depression, as well amplifying any vulnerability to eating disorders, drug and alcohol dependence. Perhaps counter-intuitively, people who’re attracted to this kind of work can have real problems with self-esteem, shame and self-loathing.

Psychopathic personalities thrive in this toxic arena. A great many of us have some psychopathic traits but an environment that rewards pure greed or encourages you to ignore the human consequences of a deal or an ideological policy positively nurtures madness.

Alastair Campbell is not known for his lack of robustness and he remains open about his own mental health problems.

One in 4 of us will experience it. Clients who come to me from prestigious backgrounds experience it and leave feeling less like a miserable failure on the verge of collapse. They don’t make videos about it but neither are they ashamed or afraid of asking for confidential, professional help.

For Christians today is Ash Wednesday, for some people a day of remembering how sinful they are, for others a remembrance that ‘Thou art dust and to dust thou shalt return.” Whilst feeling sinful seems unhelpful remembering that we will die is no bad thing. It can make us question our relationships with each other and with concepts, things like ‘work’ or ‘pleasure’ or ‘change’ . Here’s an interesting piece from the Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/feb/21/ash-wednesday-lost-art-of-dying-editorial

You don’t have to be a scientist to realize that the weather has an effect on mental health. Although it’s a good 4 weeks until the Spring Equinox the return of light is very obvious here in London: night falls around 5.30, dawn is around 6.30, the dawn chorus has begun, the green fuse has been lit and is slowly burning ready to explode in 4 weeks or so.

Seasonal Affective Disorder is a recognized ailment and I think more people experience it than the statistics suggest. Winter brings withdrawal from the world, difficulty getting up in the morning, putting on weight, craving fats and carbohydrates . . . that sounds like standard hibernation behaviour to me. Conversely, the return of light results in the behavioural and ecological changes we can already see and hear around us. We are mammals and, like every other living thing, plant or animal, we respond to and are part of our environment.

I keep banging on about the profound economic changes going on around us because whether or not we are directly effected by them we are all part of it. Those children who used to be in your child’s class who disappeared because of housing benefit changes, the increase in street homelessness and street mental illness, endless media stories about global disturbance and uncertainty are part of our collective awareness. Whilst we can all certainly do more in and for our own communities there also comes a point when we have to stop and take stock. Monday mornings might not be a bad time to do that.

Despite the cold Spring is here. If we make time to stand in the sun, to listen to the dawn chorus, to let our eyes wander over the earth where green shoots have been sprouting for 3 weeks or so and to search out snowdrops and hellebore flowering in city parks across the country, then the scientific evidence suggests we will feel consciously better as well as metabolically restarted.

You can find the science here

http://www.mind.org.uk/campaigns_and_issues/report_and_resources/835_ecotherapy 

There will always be urgent tasks screaming for your attention. Even if the screaming task is a child, if you’re indoors stop and breathe deeply. Take your child, go outdoors and rejuvenate a little. It will reconnect you to your world, to the people around you and to yourself.

51% of women under 50 years old have never been married and only one third are living with a partner. More than half of cohabiting couples break up within three years and only a quarter maintain their relationships for more than five years. Around half the London population between 20 and 59 are single, with the widest difference between London and elsewhere among 45- to 60-year-olds. There are twice as many single people in this age group in London than in the rest of the UK. Housing is so expensive that overcrowding is having an effect on relationships and people are waiting longer to have children together.

There are a huge number of single people in London and yet it seems impossible to find a serious partner. Are there too many people to chose from? Are we looking for The One, our soul mate, perfection? Infidelity is very common and the choice to remain with a partner can be removed from our power. Work is so consuming that it can leave little time or energy for a relationship.

Valentines Day can really rub your nose in this miserable state of affairs. Self esteem and confidence can plummet which makes you vulnerable to an abusive relationship and believe me, being single is infinitely, immeasurably better than one of those.

The media can’t decide whether being single is a wonderful freedom or a terrible burden, whether Coco Chanel or Bridget Jones, George Cluny or Johnny Vegas are role models, but it’s quite clear that there’s a difference between being alone and being isolated.  There's wisdom in Pascal's assertion that, "All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone." 

Take a browse through Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone by Eric Klinenberg

Klinenberg proposes that many people who are single are absolutely not unhappy old maids or slobs but living enthusiastically, creating a new paradigm for relating intimately and in wider social groups. He doesn’t avoid the misery that attends loneliness but neither does he stress it, instead celebrating the many ways in which single people are living contented, creative, fulfilled and significant lives with and without children.

Whatever you’re doing today, whether you’re with people who love you or on your own, I hope it’s satisfying and meaningful for you. Happy Valentine’s Day.

 

http://chloebayfield.com/2012/02/10/the-long-tunnel-before-the-light/

A wise and straightforward description of Post-Natal Depression.

"It all boils down to the same thing, the same thing that birth, pregnancy and parenting boil down to. Knowledge. If I had known others felt the same? If I had known there was help out there? We don’t talk any more, we don’t trust ourselves and we don’t listen to our intuition. We’re all too busy getting were we’re going as quickly and effortlessly as we can. If my body wants me to spend longer in bed with my new baby then maybe it has a point? If I yearn for company and comfort and don’t thrive well when alone and vulnerable then maybe there’s a good reason for that?"

http://www.counsellingconnections.ie/cc/mothersandbabies/dealing-with-traumatic-birth-experiences/


Although written from an Irish perspective the experience remains the same: giving birth can be a harrowing experience that leaves many mothers in unrecognised shock. A cascade of intervention, maternal, midwife or obstetrician fear, an unhelpful partner or giving birth alone, not going to C section soon enough or going too quickly can all lead to PTSD, which sounds OTT but is becoming more recognised.

This is not to pathologise childbirth or the post-partum but to recognise that some women can suffer terribly in silence while appearing to be getting on with being a new mother. We've lost all the rituals, the stories and routines around childbirth and left a void in their place. Telling your story, having it heard, hearing it yourself goes an awful long way to bring you back into the world that a painful and frightening event can shock you out of.

Roger Boisjoly, one of the engineers of the fatal Challenger explosion, died last month at the age of 73. Before lift-off Boisjoly and his peers argued with NASA who wanted Challenger up in the air for PR and economic purposes and because individuals within NASA were under pressure from the media and central government. After the entirely avoidable catastrophe Boisjoly was shunned by former employers and his peers because he spoke out.

He had paid the stiff price often exacted of whistle-blowers. Thiokol cut him off from space work, and he was shunned by colleagues and managers. A former friend warned him, “If you wreck this company, I’m going to put my kids on your doorstep,” Mr. Boisjoly told The Los Angeles Times in 1987. He had headaches, double-vision and depression, he said. He yelled at his dog and his daughters and skipped church to avoid people. He filed two suits against [his employer]; both were dismissed. He later said he was sustained by a single gesture of support. Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, hugged him after his appearance before the commission. “She was the only one,” he said in a whisper to a Newsday reporter in 1988. “The only one.”


It’s a useful time to look at the concept of Groupthink. Here are a couple of definitions:

A mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive ingroup, when the members' strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action” 

This weekend a friend and I went to the South Bank Festival For the Living, a 3 day event for ordinary people to explore more about death and dying. It was incredibly refreshing, and sold out. The queues for presentations went round the block and people were turned away; special events were crammed beyond capacity; people of all ages and many backgrounds attended- Atheists, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Pagans, Spiritualists, lawyers, funeral directors, artists, veterans, charities and Jon Snow all rubbed along very well in a manner that, it seemed, surprised the organizers: this was far more popular than they had expected and the debates were passionate.

If there was one theme that developed from all the events I attended it was that death has become ignored in a mechanistic world. One woman spoke of her feelings of dislocation when her father’s death and beginning a new job coincided. She told no one at work about her bereavement because she felt her new colleagues would resent her. Many people spoke about having to ‘do’ bereavement in 2 weeks, done and dusted. And of course, we’ll all have heard of very seriously ill people being found fit for work who die a fortnight later. Not even being terminally ill must get in the way of productivity.

Dying and bereavement are two of the big taboos, much greater than sex. We live in a secular society from which ritual has been removed, even the religious amongst us must keep brief the careful, communal ceremonies that help move us out of society and everyday life, through dying, death, bereavement and support the living in the move back into everyday life. Death ritual, like all other ritual, exists to move people from on way of life to another but today it seems to be limited to one day with one half hour funeral, everything else being administrative or legal. This in the face of the most distressing event we’re ever likely to experience.

There’s no one way to grieve, everyone finds their own way in their own time, if they’re given the time. The increase of complicated bereavements my colleagues and I have been seeing in the last five years suggests that people just don’t seem to be getting the time they need. If this weekend is anything to go by the pressure to change that for the better is well under way.