We can all benefit from a positive approach to mental illness, says ALASTAIR CAMPBELL

ALASTAIR CAMPBELL on how we can all benefit from dealing with our psychological issues.

Alastair CampbellBBC TWO

Alastair Campbell believes we would all be better off if we were more open about mental illness

When I asked Team Sky cycling supremo Sir Dave Brailsford from which sphere outside his own he had learned most, he did not hesitate: “Psychiatry.”

He said the recruitment of Rampton Hospital psychiatrist Steve Peters to help develop the mental strength of his cyclists was one of the most important hirings he ever made.

There is a strange irony here.

Sport is predominantly physical, athletes putting their hearts, lungs and limbs through pressures that most simply could not endure.

Yet they now routinely have psychological and psychiatric support.

In politics and business on the other hand, though their work is predominantly mental and intellectual, leaders shy away from such support when perhaps they need it most.

The life of a politician is something of a laboratory for mental health problems: long hours, the volume and nature of issues, time spent separated from family, attacks from media and public, the shocks and setbacks.

Likewise many in business operate under huge pressure yet resist accessing support.

“It really surprises me,” says Andy McCann, Wales’ rugby team mental skills coach, who also works with business and the military, “that maybe 90 to 95 per cent of top athletes have proper psychological support but politicians operating under massive pressure think they can do without it.”

The (mistaken) fear here is of the headlines and how people might interpret them.

It is still considered a weakness even to suggest that we might have psychological problems (this despite the fact that Winston Churchill and Abraham Lincoln, widely seen as Britain’s and America’s greatest leaders, both had serious mental health problems).

I confess that when I was in Downing Street as Tony Blair’s director of communications, though I had serious depression at times and needed professional help, I didn’t get it, in part because I was worried about the media reaction and that of colleagues.

WATCH BELOW: ALASTAIR CAMPBELL WAS FILMED AT THE INDEPENDENT BATH LITERATURE FESTIVAL ON FRIDAY 27TH FEBRUARY 2015

Alastair Campbell at the Independent Bath Literature Festival

Yet I am now convinced I could have done my job better had I had the kind of support I have now, with a psychiatrist I see when I am particularly depressed, medication and a sports psychologist (McCann) who helps me not only deal with pressure but try to turn it to my advantage.

At one stage I was experiencing surges of emotion, sometimes anger, sometimes fear, sometimes a confused mix, when being interviewed on TV or facing questions on the public speaking round.

I will always be grateful to Jeremy Paxman for delaying coming to me on a Newsnight programme when I was in the throes of a sudden, doubtless psychosomatic, asthma attack.

Another low psychological moment was an interview I did with Andrew Marr a few years ago when I remained silent for an inordinately long time (in TV terms) after he asked me how I felt about the fact that “people don’t believe you”.

The emotions swirling around made me fear I was going to hit him.

When I left the studio I called McCann and after several sessions, discussing simple techniques for dealing with the feelings as they came, I got myself back under control.

I used him again when preparing to give evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry.

We envisaged worst-case scenarios from being knocked over by photographers on the way in to being attacked by protesters inside and having a mind-freeze during questioning and talked through how to handle them.

None of this happened but similar things have happened since and the visualisation preparation has kicked in.

This is not always about psychiatry, which is essentially the treatment of mental disorder.

It is about understanding our potential weaknesses and vulnerabilities and giving ourselves the best chance of living with them and, in the best-case scenarios, using them to our advantage: like Martin Luther King, bipolar, whose insights into depression gave him great empathy and whose mania gave him the energy to lead a movement of disparate forces and egos.

Why can we not call a spade a spade, a breakdown a breakdown, depression depression?

I could mention many great figures in history who had what today we would define as mental illness.

Yet the fact we resist the help we might need underlines how far we have to travel in breaking down the stigma and taboo.

This is not merely bad for people who are mentally ill.

It is bad for all of us.

Why, whenever a City executive is taken ill do we talk about “stress-related illness”?

Why can we not call a spade a spade, a breakdown a breakdown, depression depression?

We would all be better off for the openness.

And we would all be less likely to reach the breakdown or the depression in the first place if we had proper support which we felt we could access without fear of exposure or ridicule.

Politics is hard.

It needs resilient people to get to the top and though resilience comes from character and experience it can also be learned.

As for business, firms invest in training and often vast salaries, and then the moment the high-powered executive cracks up all that investment is gone.

It need not be.

If we took seriously the state of our minds, and the help we can give them, and the openness from which all of us could benefit, we would have a better chance of winning as individuals and as a country.

Sport is showing the way.

Politics and business should follow.

  • Alastair’s new book Winners And How They Succeed is out now (Hutchinson, £20 hardback, £11.99 Kindle)
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