Forget bravado — seek help for your depression
MANY people seem to think mental health problems are phoney diseases for the rich and famous looking for sympathy.
I suffer from a mental illness and only found the courage to face my fears by seeking help. Luckily for me, I wasn’t in the public eye, unlike singer Sinead O’Connor, so I couldn’t be judged.
I had been fighting myself for years thinking I could bench-press it from my thoughts and be a man about it. We keep quiet about our problems and our greatest fear is: ‘What will the neighbours think?’
I was 27 when I began to realise something wasn’t right. I couldn’t function, and I lay frozen in my bed as if I’d been tranquillised.
Then came the panic attacks. My heart was beating so fast, I thought it was going to explode. All my happy thoughts turned into a melancholic nightmare. It wasn’t until day four that I managed to drag myself to a doctor, to be told I was suffering with depression. I didn’t think men of my age could be depressed. That’s what my bravado told me.
My life was consumed with vanity. I never had time to realise I was covering up something. I kept thinking I could cure myself, then one day I held my hands up, and cried and cried.
I got help and I talked about it — that’s the first step.
It all made sense, and I could breathe for the first time in ages. I went to drama school, started painting and writing, and did whatever I could to focus my energy on living.
I’m now 37, married and have two children. I still struggle with depression, but now I take control of my problems and I own them.
CHRIS WILD, Enfield, Middlesex.
First class
INSPIRED by the Mail article about how airlines drag their feet over compensation payments, I finally got around to claiming for a delayed Emirates flight in 2012.
I received an acknowledgement within two days, and the full amount of more than £1,000 was in my bank within ten days.
GRAHAM STARKEY, Rochdale, Gr. Manchester.
Close in on terror
ANOThER day, another terrorist attack.
Every time this happens, either with guns, bombs or vans, terrorists kill or maim dozens.
It’s time our leaders started by closing down social media outlets which refuse to remove ISIS postings and dark web sites, and by deporting immediately illegal immigrants instead of going through the courts for years to achieve the same end. IAn BALLoCH, Grangemouth,
Stirlingshire.
Powerful left
BEING left-handed has never held me back in life (Letters). I enrolled in the Royal Marines and succeeded in saluting everyone without ending up on a charge.
My biggest problem was training with weapons, particularly the .303 Lee Enfield rifle, where the bolt is on the right side of the barrel.
I managed to load and reload by reaching my left hand over the rifle to manipulate the bolt at speeds sometimes faster than my right-handed comrades.
I became one of just a few in my squad sporting the crossed rifles, indicating I was a marksman.
I also proved to be a menace in the boxing ring, where opponents dreaded my left hook.
JIMMY HoDGE, Folkestone, Kent.
Grievance politics
NICOLA Sturgeon says she wishes her party’s name did not include the word ‘national’, because of the negative connotations of nationalist ideology.
Yet more than a simple name change would be needed to improve the SNP’s approach.
Equating the SNP with Scotland as a whole would have to stop, as would accusing critics of the SNP of ‘talking Scotland down’.
As for the near-daily round of grievance rhetoric aimed at the rest of the UK, it is difficult to see it as anything other than the very essence of nationalism. KEITH HoWELL, West Linton,
Peeblesshire.
A national disgrace
NICOLA Sturgeon claims she is uncomfortable with the word ‘national’ in the party name, and if she could change it, she would.
Perhaps she should consider renaming it the Scottish Independence Party then she would have a true indication of the support she has for separation. B STEvEn, Glenrothes, Fife. NICOLA Sturgeon needs to realise that the problem is not the SNP’s name, but its aim. GEoRGE BRoWn, Balfron, Stirlingshire.
Pride in our country
NICOLA Sturgeon spoke at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) rally Pride Glasgow 2017 over the weekend on the need to stand together, and for there to be no divisions in society.
She obviously never saw the irony of her position, in that she represents a movement that wants to divide our 300-year-old political, economic and social Union. WILLIAM BALLAnTInE, Bo’ness,
West Lothian.
Still in denial
I AGREE with former equality tsar Trevor Phillips on the Left’s racism and sexism (Mail) and on the consequences of political correctness that led to the coverup of the grooming gangs.
I was born Chinese and have lived happily in the UK for 50 years, and have brought up my family to believe in traditional British values and justice.
I am Asian, as is more than half the world’s population, and strongly object to the BBC describing the perpetrators of the dreadful crimes in Newcastle and elsewhere as Asian.
There’s still politically correct denial throughout much of the social services, police and by politicians, which has led to Labour MP Sarah Champion being forced to resign from the Shadow Cabinet. That is why, I am afraid, these outrages will continue.
Last year the NhS treated more than 9,000 cases of female genital mutilation, but there was not one prosecution for this illegal act.
I am ashamed that criminal acts have been tolerated through a misguided pandering to misogynistic primitive cultures that have no place in a civilised British society.
MARY ZAo, Grouville, Jersey.
Bells hell
I ONCE worked in the building trade near Liverpool Anglican Cathedral when there was a bell-ringing practice in which the main bell, Great George, was rung for an hour. The resonance was nauseating.
Why not record Big Ben’s chimes and rig speakers on the houses of Parliament or Portcullis house, where the MPs have their offices, and continue to use them on a loop throughout the works?
ALAn BoWER, address supplied. A BIT of peace and quiet will do us all good. If you want to know the time, check your watch or make a recording of Big Ben. What is bonkers is suggesting builders should have their hearing ruined. Whoever thinks it is acceptable should apply for the job. RoBERT AnTonY, Maidenhead, Berks. WHAT’S all the fuss about Big Ben? Most builders can cock a deaf ’un any time they want.
R. MARTIN, Halifax, W. Yorks.