Bravery in the face of mental illness
- 22 Jan 08, 06:29 PM
I know we're supposed not to be partisan, or to pass judgement on those we interview.
But I have to say that of all the many politicians it has been my (occasionally painful) duty to interview over the years, Mr Bondevik comes pretty near the top.
It's so rare to find man talking with such frankness and courage about such a charged and sensitive subject.
For some reason, mental ill-health retains an aura, which seems at times to make it almost impossible to talk about it sensibly. Quite why this should be, when so many of us are going to suffer from depression or other illnesses, I don't know.
Enlightened voters
I suspect it's because we're frightened of it ourselves. How much better it would be if we could all treat it as we treat physical conditions, like 'flu or cancer or a broken arm.
Mr Bondevik's honesty in putting his cards on the table and telling the people of Norway what was going on in his mind and in his life is admirable. But the reaction of Norwegian voters is just as impressive.
They voted him back into office. If I was being glum, I'd say that it would never happen here because the party leader would find himself the victim of lots of headlines about “Voting for a Loony”.
But don't tell me there's any reason we should be less enlightened than the Norwegians.
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There are many organisations that provide help to those that suffer from mental illness. The following is a seleciton of some of them.
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REASON
I think it is highly probable that we ARE less enlightnened than Norway.
I can only guess that our society is stale as its vested interest have not been overturned by conquest for a very long time. A glance at the degree to which government is in bed with money, booze and power tells you Westminster turkeys will never vote for radical Christmas.
We need conquering.
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Jeremy, I absolutely agree with you. It was nice to hear a politician of a high status talking frankly. We get the odd maverick straight talking MP over here, but it is rare to get a frank and open senior politician. Credit to the Norweigan voters for voting with their heads, not the influence of hysterical media, some forms of which have far too much influence over here. You don't have to be pessimistic to think that this wouldn't happen in Britain; if you were feeling the most optimistic you have ever felt, you still couldn't predict that a PM who has to leave office to recover from mental health problems would be voted back, he almost certainly wouldn't. That is a very sad fact.
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I found last night's interview incredibly moving. If a person breaks their bones, they go to an orthopaedic surgeon, if they have something wrong with their eyes, they go to an opthalmic surgeon, yet if there's anything wrong with their mind, people still recoil in horror in the UK at the thought of a psychiatrist trying to fix their mind. By putting the former Norwegian PM on Newsnight, many people who had or do suffer from depression will be given hope, and maybe those who are scared of anyone with mental illness, will be shown that it is curable and not a hindrance to life. Perhaps it was because of Bondevik's honesty that it struck a chord with so many people which made the Norwegians vote him back in. I also wonder if there is a politician in the UK who would be as open and honest if he/she did suffer from any form of mental illness. Perhaps not.
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Let's not forget, Norway like Finland, has a small, homogeneous population (regardless of what they make out, like Sweden, they only have a small, non-EU, immigration influx. We often hear people refer to these cold, Scandinavian, countries as examples of social and economic stability (which is why the recent Finnish school event was such a shock), but they are climatically inhospitable to many lower ability groups because of the latitude/light, language barrier, high standard of living etc. If one looks at diversity in the UK and USA, the crime, mental illness, education problems and disease rates generally are not really in the same league. Think of the population of London, it's larger than Norway!, and it's 40%+ BME and growing whilst the indigenous population is falling. By mid century, we may be comparing London with some other 'multicultural' cities as far afield as Africa and S Asia if current trends continue, (heaven forbid, it might even go the way of NYC where they love their shrinks even though they have dubious efficiacy ;-).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Norway
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As man who's suffered a mental breakdown and suffered the real life stigma associated with mental illness, I can only applaud the Norwegian voters who voted thier prime minister back into office after his depressive episode.
I've lost my career due to my breakdown and the fearful refusal of most employers to hire anyone who's suffered mental troubles. The mentally ill somehow doesn't fit into most peoples perception of society, we are the nutters, the walking nightmares, and wholly unpredictable and unreliable.
More power to the Norwegians.
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Similar to Mike Snow @ 9:36pm I have also lost my career because of mental illness. At twenty-seven I was a top 10% earner with a good career ahead of me when circumstances forced my depression to catch up on me. Being a part of the 20% of people with depression who cannot be successfully medicated I was told by my employers (whom I would just love to name and shame) that they have a policy of not taking back staff who were still unwell. I lost my career, my home and everyone I knew. Now I'm thirty-one on the scrapheap of life, a burden to the state, with no future and no hope, stigmatised by both politicians and society. There are many hidden injustices in this country we simply don't wish to discuss. Thankfully I'm past the "chip on my shoulder" but it never gets any less upsetting to talk about. I wont stop though because someone needs to.
Thank you though Jeremy for a great interview.
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To the executive from the mental health charity thinking twice about hiring someone with 'gaps in their CV', what exactly are employers afraid of? The worst that could happen is that you've been in gaol, and there are easy ways of cross-referencing that. That you won the lottery and didn't need to work? That you've taken time out to raise children? Or that you have suffered depression? The last must be the reason having discounted the alternatives.
So what is so scary about mental illness? Given that mental health problems affect 1 in 4 people over their lifetime, employers need to get real. There are thousands of people in this country who are being paid not to work by the State because employers are too ignorant to show some leadership and break the taboos surrounding mental illness. Who knows what talent is going to waste because of some myth that mental illness is incurable and that people who have had periods of mental illness are somehow beyond the pale? In some ways it would have been better to have committed a crime, because at least there are schemes to get jail-birds back into jobs.
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