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| TV presenter in ‘I’m
not the free cabaret’ outburst |
Birdwatcher stuns medics before
revealing how he beat depression
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Bill Oddie
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A FURIOUS Bill Oddie lashed out at the organisers of a public
meeting in Hampstead on Monday night before delivering a passionate
message of hope to fellow sufferers from depression.
Mr Oddie, formerly one of television’s Goodies and now an acclaimed
ornithologist, conservationist and natural history presenter on
television, agreed to speak about mental health at the annual public
meeting of Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust.
He has suffered from bouts of serious depression over the last five
years, and last year appeared in a television programme where he
revealed his mother had suffered from mental illness, possibly brought
on by the deaths of two of her three children.
But on Monday Mr Oddie was incensed when he found he had to sit
through an hour-long annual report and a questions session, which
covered the issue of whether the trust should apply for Foundation
status.
When he finally got onto the platform at the Tavistock Centre in
Belsize Lane, Hampstead, he raged: “This is not a proper public
meeting. There are only a handful of ordinary members of the public
here who have just come along.
“If this was a genuine public meeting meant for ordinary people,
why the hell did you have one hour of dreadful dry stuff that was
so boring that if you weren’t depressed when you came in, you
certainly would be by the end?”
Trust board members tried to explain that attempts had been made
to publicise the meeting.
But Mr Oddie stormed: “I haven’t come here for you to
listen to yet another depressive. I’m not a professional depressive.
I am not interested in working in mental health.
“I am not interested in providing gossip for you, and I am
not interested in providing you with a free cabaret.
“I had hoped there would be ordinary people in the audience
to whom I could talk about my experiences and maybe offer some advice,
but you’re all mental health professionals.
“This is not the right audience. The only contact I have ever
had with the Tavistock before is that, in Hampstead, in every road
I have ever lived in, half the people worked at the Tavistock and
the other half were patients.”
But, assured that there were some ordinary people present and that
everyone would be interested in his views, Mr Oddie calmed down
enough to speak movingly about his experiences.
He became clinically depressed about five years ago when the illness
came “out of the blue”.
He said: “I don’t know where it came from, but it was
unbelievable. The overwhelming blackness of it was shocking, and
I had never experienced anything like it before.”
He knew he needed to go into hospital, but was told by a doctor
to avoid the psychiatric ward of the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead.
He said: “I was told that if you are not mad when you go in,
you soon will be.”
But the first private hospital he tried was just as bad. He said:
“I was just left in a room on my own and I cowered in the corner.
I could have been a dog just being left in a kennel.”
He was eventually successfully treated at Charter Nightingale Hospital
in Marylebone. He was given medication and attended group therapy
sessions, and eventually went back to work. But 18 months ago, he
had a relapse, and this time it was much worse.
He said: “I was in a black hell-hole and seriously suicidal,
and I was admitted to the Charter Nightingale again in an almost
catatonic state. Why did I have a relapse? It’s because I didn’t
get therapy.”
He went on to explain that during the last three years he has received
therapy from a mainstream psychoanalyst, initially three or four
times a week and now twice a week. Mr Oddie said: “It has really
changed my life, and definitely for the better. I hope this will
give hope to anyone else who suffers from depression, so they will
understand that their illness is not going to be the end of everything.
“I can say that I am not only back to where I was before, but
I am actually a lot better than that. My capacity to work, and my
enjoyment of other people is very much better, and I am better now
than I have been for the whole of my life. I don’t get depressed
now.
“It costs me a lot of money, but I really enjoy my sessions.
I don’t just talk about my problems, but all aspects of my
life and it has also enabled me to understand more clearly what
my wife went through when I was ill. It has made me face things,
and discover things, and it certainly helped me to undemonise my
mother.
“People ask me why I spend so much money on my treatment. But
they go to the gym and yoga classes and they end up spending just
as much as I do. Theirs is physical therapy, mine is mental.”
Mr Oddie called for more psychoanalysis and psychotherapy to be
available on the NHS, and concluded: “In an ideal world there
wouldn’t just be physical check-ups for children at school
and for adults later in life, but also mental health check-ups.
“I hope my story is helpful to people. I have come out the
other side and life is quite good now.” |
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