Actor David Harewood opens up about suffering psychosis
Actor David Harewood tells Guy Kelly how his breakdown at the age of 23 has inspired a candid new BBC documentary
If he wished, the actor David Harewood could probably divide his life into any number of significant chapters. He could think, first, of growing up in Birmingham in the Seventies, one of four siblings and the son of Barbadian immigrants. He could remember gaining a place at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art when he was 18, and working up to become the first black actor to play Othello at the National Theatre in 1997.
He could pick out significant films and television series – including the role that finally made him a star on both sides of the Atlantic, as CIA counter-terrorism director David Estes in Homeland – and, of course, personal moments, like becoming a husband and a father. Yet instead, Harewood tends to think of his life in just two distinct parts: before, and after the breakdown that saw him sectioned.
It happened when he was 23. Recently graduated from Rada, he was living in London and beginning to pick up auditions and win roles, but in reality he was lonely and turning to alcohol and cannabis. He wasn’t sleeping much but had boundless energy, rattling through a run of Entertaining Mr Sloane at Derby Playhouse and feeling like he was “on fire” every night. He now knows that was mania.
“I knew I was on the edge of something but it was really f---ing exciting,” he says now, when we meet near the Thames. When he returned to London after the play, he “jumped into whatever vice there was, went for long walks… and that’s when the big crash happened.”
Psychosis is broadly defined by
perceiving or interpreting reality differently from those around you. This most commonly manifests in hallucinations – hearing, seeing, feeling, smelling or tasting things that aren’t there (hearing voices is the most common), and delusions, where somebody has beliefs others don’t share – such as their role in the world.
A common statistic is that one in 100 people experience psychosis, yet symptoms exist on a broad spectrum: no two cases are identical, and while some people do not feel distressed enough to seek help, many others, like Harewood, experience problems that require urgent attention.
It means there is no blanket treatment, either: antipsychotic medications vary in efficacy and carry side effects, but the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) recommends that talking therapies should be made available to every psychosis patient.
“My friends at the time were saying on the grapevine, that ‘Dave’s not right’, but for me it was exciting. And they didn’t know if I was just getting a bit out of hand, or just being a little bit boisterous. That’s the thing with psychosis – you can be fine for a few hours and then you’re off.”
More than three decades after the event, Harewood recently attempted to piece together the activities and delusions he experienced at the height of his psychosis for a forthcoming BBC documentary. He remembered performing “street theatre”, singing and dancing with strangers, and wandering across London through the night.
He recalls no visual hallucinations, but he heard voices – specifically one purporting to be Martin Luther King, who told him to walk to Camden, enter a shop at 3am, go to the back, find a suit and put it on, then turn around and, at that moment, millions of people would be saved. He went, but of course the shop was closed.
Eventually two friends stepped in and attempted to drive him home to Birmingham. In the car, however, Harewood told them he had three brains in his head and that he was dying, so they only got as far as the Whittington Hospital in north London. There, after much restraint and sedation, he was sectioned under the Mental Health Act.
“I was in the Whittington for four days and I don’t remember a thing about it. I was obviously on some pretty heavy psychotic drugs, and eventually they must have worked, because at some stage I sat up in bed and felt completely normal again,” Harewood says. His friends have since told him they wondered if they did the right thing by taking him to hospital, but he’s adamant.
“When that voice came into my head, I did anything it told me to. If it had told me to jump in the Thames, I would have done. I was lucky – a lot of
‘My friends didn’t know if I was just getting out of hand or being boisterous’
people don’t have friends to support them.”
If a person has a tendency towards psychosis, it’s most likely to show itself during late adolescence, as it did in Harewood. It’s at that age when stresses are high, identity is being questioned, substance abuse is most likely (research shows people who use high-strength cannabis daily are five times more likely to have a first episode of psychosis), and there’s a good chance of feeling lost – literally or otherwise. Harewood ticked all those boxes, but especially questioning his identity.
“Coming out of drama school in London, I was unprepared for the complexities of society at the time,” he says. “I was fairly well spoken after Rada, so I wasn’t black enough for the black crowd, and a bit of a novelty as a Shakespearean black actor, so my identity was under a lot of pressure. I had to choose what camp I was in, and I wasn’t able to set my own course.”
Harewood moved back in with his mother in Birmingham and spent three months recuperating, before returning to London as “the new David” and resuming his budding career. Now 53, he sees a therapist, but has never had repeat symptoms and has always been entirely honest about a very strange few months, especially to his wife, Kirsty, and two daughters.
He turned the saga into an anecdote, yet having re-examined events for his documentary, in which he met many individuals affected by the condition, he wouldn’t joke about it anymore. Nor does he regret it, though.
“I think my psyche was saying something wasn’t right and needed to change, and although it was painful and scary, I feel quite privileged it happened and I came out of it,” he says.
“Some of the things I was stressing over – the stresses of being British and black, that people still shout ‘go home’ at us – have their tentacles in what’s happening today. That schism is, I think, one reason why black men are statistically so much more likely to have mental health problems.”
It wasn’t until October 2017, when Harewood tweeted about his history of psychosis, that anybody in the wider public knew he’d been through all this. That message was retweeted almost 35,000 times, and he was inundated with other people’s stories of their episodes, inspiring him to make a documentary.
“I had messages saying ‘thank you for saying it’. Lawyers, bankers, journalists saying they’ve been in exactly the same position.” Now he hopes to help shout that message as loudly as possible.