Depression and its sidekick Anxiety, Mental Health’s Bonnie
to its Clyde, have been a constant presence in my life for many years. Even when I’ve been completely free
from them they’ve been there, skulking behind a hedge patiently waiting for a weak
moment in which they can pounce. As I’ve become more open about it, and as I
have become more involved, as part of my job, with others who suffer similar
problems, I’ve not, as I hoped, witnessed a growing understanding and
awareness. Where I’ve no doubt we are, as a society, becoming more confident
and more knowledgeable on mental health issues, far more often I have witnessed
evidence of fear, misunderstanding and even downright discrimination.
Most recently, I was told by someone in a position of some
authority that I can’t have depression,
as I have a lot of hobbies and a social life. “If you had depression,” she asserted
confidently, “you wouldn’t be doing these things. Depression has a significant
effect on your everyday life.” I ought to get round to telling my doctor this,
lest he continues to prescribe me antidepressants, or indeed telling my brain,
wide awake and racing at 3am with illogical fears, that it shouldn’t have the
audacity to believe this is a symptom of a wider condition.
It is because of these experiences that I’ve started –
tentatively, at first, but now wholeheartedly – to talk about mental illness in
my standup. Encouraged by a very positive reaction – the I’m Spartacus moment Imentioned in my last post – I now have a ten-minute set dedicated entirely to
discussing mental health. I acknowledge this doesn’t sound immediately hilarious
(I open my gigs now by saying “I suffer from depression, which is always a
promising start to a comedy set”, then joke that audiences tend to laugh out of
fear of what I might do if they don’t) but, as with everything in life, there
is humour to be found in mental illness, if only we have the confidence to
bring it out into the open. It is amusingly ironic, for example, that the side
effects of the tablets I take can include “excess sweating” and “excess wind”
(implying, perhaps, that there is an optimum level of flatulence to which we
should all be aspiring), yet they are prescribed, amongst other things, for
social anxiety, a condition probably not helped by persisting farting
accompanied by the smell of body odour. It is darkly comical, in a Darwin Award
sort of a way, that, of the 30 or so people who fall to their deaths from
Beachy Head each year, 1-2 fall off accidentally whilst hilariously pretending
to jump for a photo opportunity. It is, I remark, typical that Beachy Head
itself is only the world’s second most popular suicide spot, because America
ALWAYS has to go one better than us, as they have done here with the Golden
Gate Bridge.
The experience of talking openly about mental health has been incredibly liberating and rewarding, as well as unexpectedly moving. If I’ve helped even one person, that’s an amazing feeling. If I’ve just made people giggle a bit, well that’s fine, because that’s what standup is meant to do. Either way, I Am Spartacus, and I now know I’m not alone.
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