EVERYBODY HURTS
How members of our community overcame their mental health battles — over lockdown and beyond
In the UK, Covid-19 cut deep. The death toll was steep, but a ‘hidden crisis’ was growing in mental health. Social isolation in lockdown hit the LGBTQ+ community the hardest — but some had already been struggling. Here, four men open up to Attitude about how they made it through the worst moments
My favourite scene in 2018’s Love, Simon is where Simon and his mum discuss his coming out. His mum tells him he can “exhale now” after keeping his secret inside for so long. For me, that perfectly captured what it was like coming out. It was the same when I began to open up about my mental health.
From the later years of school up until 2018, I experienced a steady build-up of anxiety. Through therapy, I discovered that it was deeply rooted in the rejection I faced at school as well as a fear of further rejection, which partly related to not being out (at the time) and being scared to let my carefully constructed façade drop for even a second.
With my mind also replaying every, even slightly, embarrassing moment in my life on repeat (as it still does), I changed from being fairly carefree into someone who was extremely guarded. I became increasingly paranoid about the people around me, convinced they all hated me, that they thought I was stupid and not worthy of being there. An imposter. As I write this today, all these thoughts remain a regular occurrence. Some days they’re harder to ignore than on others.
My obsession with the past turned into a fear of the future. Everything was a threat. I became hyper-vigilant: I can’t avert my eyes if someone enters my peripheral vision in case there’s danger headed my way. I would exhaustively overthink (still do) and worry about every little thing, second-guessing everything to the nth degree. As an adult, I became increasingly isolated and living alone made it even easier to be. Depression set in and I spent entire weekends shut in my flat with little to no communication with anyone. Work added further pressures.
Going to my GP in 2018 was the first step on an ongoing road to recovery. The relief that came from talking was instant. Finally, I could exhale. I also found that I wasn’t alone. Talking literally saves lives.
As lockdown hit last year, I was trying to get out of a situation that was pushing me back into depression. Plans to escape and travel the world were scuppered last-minute, but luckily, I was able to keep working. Isolation was tough. I began drinking more (though not to extremes) and struggled to find the motivation to do even the most basic things. Talking helped but we all know how relentless 2020 was and my determination for a brighter future kept me going, but at times only just.
Mental health scars often run deep. They don’t heal overnight and often require persistent work. And that is the challenge many will face in the coming months and years.
A survey of 2,300 people by the charity LGBT Hero in April 2020 found that for 79 per cent of the LGBTQ+ community, lockdown had a negative impact on their mental health; 43 per cent of these reported feeling depressed “very often” or “every day”, while 56 per cent said they felt lonely. There were similar results one year on, with other charities producing similar data. The LGBT helpline, Switchboard, also reported an increase in calls last year, with many citing concerns over Covid-19, lockdowns and isolation.
It’s important to put names and faces behind such stats. Mental health is not a onesize-fits-all situation. Everyone’s experience is as unique as a fingerprint, and it’s important to continue to have conversations about it, because they can have a real impact. Here we speak to four queer-identifying men about their struggles with mental health over the past 18 months and beyond.
“I changed from being carefree into someone who was extremely guarded. I became increasingly paranoid”
James Egan
“My struggle with anxiety is a constant feature in my life. I’ve accepted it will never go away, and it will come in waves. I just have to think, this is just a moment in time. That’s how I’ve been approaching the past couple of years.”
This reflection comes at the end of my chat with the former magazine writer-turned-cabaret star-turned-consultant (he can’t tell me what in) James Egan. He also admits, with a smile, that it’s not always easy to maintain that mindset. During our conversation, James seems to be in a good place, but this was not always the case.
James’ mental health struggles began after the death of his father when he was seven. “That left me with quite bad abandonment issues. Around that time, I was starting to realise I was gay, and I was going through the Catholic schooling system. That was rough.”
As if losing a parent wasn’t traumatic enough, James felt othered by kids at school, and became isolated due to his sexuality. “It was like a constant stream of rejection for things that I couldn’t control or didn’t have a name for at that point.”
Years of homophobic abuse at school and, at one point, being asked to leave due to his “life choices” took their toll. James completely lost his way; his anxiety meant he didn’t apply for university and was unable to see any kind of future for himself. Aged 18, he “broke” and went to his GP. A couple of years on anti-depressants helped build up his confidence again. “I moved back to London and started working for a gay film company and then went to QX [magazine]. Then I created and performed in a queer cabaret group [The Sex Shells] for five years and my confidence grew, and my anxiety decreased.”
After a solo adventure to Brazil prelockdown, James was planning a more permanent move. “My consultancy job means I can work anywhere. I’d reached a peak in my mental health; I felt confident.” Enter Covid. “I had to come back from Brazil, and I honestly felt like I had lost… not everything, but I felt like I’d got to a point where I realised exactly what I wanted in life and Covid obliterated it. There were days in early lockdown where I couldn’t even get out of bed.”
Like everyone, James had to adapt to a “new
“I was grieving the loss of my potential new life, the opportunity that I’d finally been able to pursue”
normal” as claustrophobia set in. “I couldn’t work out what I was feeling. Everyone I knew was healthy. After a while, I realised I was grieving the loss of my potential new life, the opportunity that I’d finally been able to pursue.” He adds that he doesn’t want to minimise anyone who has unfortunately lost anyone to Covid.
“The constant uncertainty doesn’t help if you’re predisposed to anxiety. The rules changed every day — no one knew what was going on. It’s been a real struggle, particularly early on when we weren’t able to go and focus on other things.”
James likes to appear bulletproof. This, he admits, has often led to him not reaching out to people when he should have for fear of being a burden and convincing himself that people didn’t want to hear from him. “I think it comes from an inner feeling of worthlessness that, maybe, is rooted in that constant stream of rejection. What you [often] experience being a queer kid,” James ponders.
He has only recently begun to open up. “About a month ago [July,] I just felt rudderless, it was at a point where I thought, this Brazil thing isn’t happening. I don’t know where my life is going, what I’m doing right now; there’s no clear avenue. I like to have a personal goal to work towards, and mine was gone — for now, at least.
“I posted a picture of myself during a happier time and said ‘I’ve been feeling really up and down lately’ and explained why.”
The response was all positive. “No negative feedback whatsoever. The friends in Brazil said, ‘You’ll be here soon!’, which I think is a bit of classic Brazilian optimism.” But mostly James heard from people in the exact same place.
“We’re in this world now where everything is falling away, and I decided to stop pretending I was absolutely fine all the time because I was worried I’d seem weak when I wanted to project ‘success’, or that it would affect my desirability to people who don’t really matter.
“All the people-pleasing is gone now. The pandemic has made me conscious of who and what is important to me. Trying to present everything as being hunky dory doesn’t seem as necessary any more. So now I have no real reason to project anything other than, like
— I hate to use this word — authenticity.” If I hadn’t been able to see the eye-roll, I would certainly have been able to hear it.
Regressing into his teenage self helped James manage his anxiety, namely bingeing on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. “I sort of went mad and bought all these Buffy comic books and just read them. As a teenager, that fantasy world was something I retreated into because the real one was too anxiety-inducing and isolating. And because of the uncertain nature of the pandemic, I was retreating into something that I knew felt safe.”
He has also taught himself Portuguese and is now nearly fluent.
Before we end our Zoom call, I want to know what advice James has for others. “It’s going to sound trite, but talk to someone. Whether it’s a friend, medical professional, or helpline; if you don’t, it just festers, and you isolate yourself, which exacerbates it.
“When I was at my lowest points with depression or anxiety, I’d say to myself, what are the things in this world that I want to be around for? What are the things that get me up in the morning? Things might be going to crap, but there are things that make me want to be here. So, I try and remind myself of that stuff.”
Declan Doyle
Declan Doyle’s sexuality has been central to his mental health. It’s something he’s more at peace with now, but his has been a tumultuous journey.
“I grew up having girlfriends. I even had a kid and settled down with a woman. But I knew there was an attraction towards men. Where I grew up, being gay wasn’t accepted. I struggled with being myself, so I put it to the back of my mind for a long time. I didn’t act on it and thought it would go away.”
We can all imagine why that would be the case: societal attitudes, depictions of gay men on TV and in films and so on. The usual suspects.
“It wasn’t until I had my daughter that I realised I wasn’t fully being who I am as a person,” Declan confesses. “I felt bad for having a kid, knowing I still had feelings for men. I felt like I couldn’t be myself and spiralled into drinking heavily to escape the feelings I had. There was a point where I felt like I’d rather be dead than attracted to men.”
Declan, now “fluid/bisexual”, describes drinking himself into “oblivion” most weekends, a pattern which began to affect weekdays, too, as he struggled with his sexuality and felt unable to open up to anyone.
He found himself in a dark and lonely place. He was then introduced to Grindr, which in turn led to him experimenting with drugs. “The first few times I met a guy, I was quite drunk, and I decided to do whatever he gave me, not knowing what it was. It was cocaine.
“I slipped into a pattern of drinking at the weekend, going on Grindr and then doing drugs. Then it became every weekend, and I’d miss out on spending time with my daughter and my family because I was taking drugs with random people.”
It took breaking up with his daughter’s mum for Declan to start getting himself back on track. A trip to Barcelona was also a wake-up call.
“I was away with this guy, and we took a s***load of cocaine. I got to the point where I felt like I was having a heart attack. I was in a foreign country, I didn’t know what to do, I wanted to call the ambulance. I was with someone I didn’t know that well. I could have died in that hotel room, but thankfully, I didn’t. I was, like, this is enough. I’ll end up dead and I don’t want to die.”
Two years ago, Declan made the pledge to become teetotal. He had got through around six months of sobriety before lockdown hit. “I felt like the world was ending.” At a family barbecue he had a few drinks. “The next day, I woke up and thought, this can go two ways. I can go back to drinking and drugs, and I could do it whenever because I was out of work. But that would have been a really bad situation for me, especially living on my own. So, I decided to be strong and just not pick up drink or drugs. So, I didn’t.”
Instead, the former model began a rigorous regime. At 7am every morning, he’d meet a friend for a workout in the park. Then Declan would go home and study (he’s now a full-time barber), which he says kept him busy and was “the best decision”. Now his mental health is “in the best state it’s ever been in”, and he has been sober for a year and a half.
But lockdown isolation still had an effect. “That was really hard, to be on my own for quite some time. It was quite testing being at home with my thoughts. It was tough.”
Declan’s been very open about what he’s been through and believes that more people need to be honest about addiction. With a modest 20,300 followers on Instagram, Declan has quite a platform for discussing mental health and addiction. But with that following, and people seeing him as something of an influencer, is there an assumption that he doesn’t have any problems?
“I’ve had a few people message saying they felt really depressed and they thought that I wouldn’t have that problem or issues with self-hatred or depression. I still have down days. I’m only human. Sometimes I look in the mirror and I feel like I’m a piece of s***, and I pick myself apart. It’s just balancing that. There’s always ups and downs.
“I’ll only post pictures where I look good, but nine times out of ten, I was probably having a s*** day. And sometimes I do just post to feel a little bit better and so people will think I’m doing well.”
So, does that mean people might not check up on him if they think he’s doing OK, when he could be having a bad day? “Yeah, I guess so…,”he says, looking out of the window. “I never really thought about that, maybe…”
At his lowest, Declan has felt like there’s no hope. At his best, he’s unstoppable. As well as exercise, Declan uses daily affirmations and doing simple things every day such as making the bed. Everything is a win.
He has no doubt that he chose the right path at the beginning of lockdown and, so far, he’s come out of it in a good place. His strength has been his family, especially his daughter, who has been a “blessing”.
“I can sit within myself and be depressed, but if I’ve got my daughter over I can easily snap out of it and not focus on me. Whatever I’m doing is going to impact her.
“Without her, I think my mental health would struggle more than it has and what it does now, because I’ve got someone that needs me in her life. That, for me, is a reason to stay strong and make sure that I’m doing everything I need to. For her sake.”
“I felt like I couldn’t be myself and spiralled into drinking heavily to escape the feelings I had”
“I still have down days. I’m only human. Sometimes I look in the mirror and I feel like I’m a piece of s***”
Patrick Jeffries
Patrick Jeffries has had depression on and off for about 10 years. An actor who also works in digital sales, he was first diagnosed with clinical depression and anxiety in 2011, at 25. A toxic environment meant he was no longer the lively, charismatic and bold person he once was.
“I wasn’t sleeping, I was having really bad nightmares. I was anxious all the time. I lost any kind of zest for life. My boyfriend at the time (a doctor) asked if I’d done the mental health checklist. I hadn’t, so I did and basically checked every single box. I went to the doctor’s and went onto anti-depressants.”
After moving to London, Patrick’s troubles worsened when he began to succumb to addiction. Financial issues added further strain: “I decided that once I’d paid off my debts, I was going to end my life because I couldn’t see a future for myself. But I didn’t want to leave my family with debts. I knew it would mentally break them as well. It’s something I lived with for a good five, six, seven years.” Thankfully, changing medication in 2017 stopped him from continuing to think that way.
Two years later, Patrick went on a night out, where “just a drink” turned into an all-night bender (which, he says, happened all too often), and he realised he’d lost control. Flatly, he tells me that he didn’t think he was going to survive if he stayed in London. Booking himself a one-way ticket to Thailand, he spent six weeks backpacking before living in Australia for two years. Eventually, he moved back to the UK, and later relocated to Brussels for work.
Living alone there, at the beginning of lockdown, he adopted a dog, who had come from two abusive owners. Despite training, the dog proved too difficult to control and after it injured three other dogs and was lunging at children, Patrick had to return it in December.
“I stressed about what people would think and what they’d judge me for — that I shouldn’t have got the dog at all, which was probably true. That was a massive problem, because I’d built this new friendship group of dog owners that I couldn’t see any more because of the dog attacking them.” Patrick became isolated. He started drinking again and sleeping less. “The second lockdown was a lot harder,” he admits.
Being cast in two TV shows didn’t help, which Patrick believes demonstrates that even with positive things happening in your life, depression can still dominate.
A brief trip home at the beginning of 2021 convinced Patrick to move back to his parents’ in the UK following a tough year in Brussels.
“I realised how much happier and healthier I was, how much better I was doing with my job and how much better they [his parents] were doing with me there as well. Work changed their working-from-home policy and said I could relocate.” As he tells his story, he worries that by this point it seems like he has a habit of running away from things, but wonders if he’s running away or saving himself.
“It’s probably a bit of both,” he concludes, while I suggest that people are often running towards something, rather than away from it. Regardless, Patrick says he made the right decision. He has now moved into a flat on his own.
On top of depression, Patrick has struggled with body image and this worsened due to lockdown restrictions. “I used to be very overweight as a kid, and I lost a lot of weight when I moved to London. I still thought I was fat, even though I had a six pack.
“During lockdown, I couldn’t go to the gym. I couldn’t control my diet. I have to work out because my metabolism is really slow and I put on 12 kilograms over lockdown, so that caused issues with self-confidence and body dysmorphia.”
Sharing his feelings online has given Patrick some comfort. This catharsis has led to a number of encouraging exchanges with people who have had similar experiences.
“It gave me a reason to keep doing it and to remove that stigma around mental health and being vulnerable on social media.”
In one Instagram post, Patrick discusses his mental health as something that can change on a week-to-week basis, with negative thoughts being stronger on occasion. “Something will happen that triggers it and then it will be a three-to-four-day depression. Then I’ll come out of it.”
He thinks that people still assume depression is a chronic thing, rather than something that can fluctuate. “The one thing I’ve always said to people is, ‘Everyone’s journey is different. There’s no blanket explanation of depression,’ because that’s not how it works.
“One of my favourite ways to describe coming out of a depressive phase is like colour is there again, everything seems brighter. You can physically feel it lift. It’s like a cloud just disappears.”
One of Patrick’s methods of coping with depression is to sleep through it. “That’s probably one of the best things you can do.
I’ve always been lucky that I’ve had supportive friends, family, and work. Work have always been phenomenal. So, if I’m not in the best frame of mind, they’ll let me take the time.”
The right medication, therapy and support network also help, according to Patrick. Like mental health itself, the solutions are just as varied and unique. It often takes time to find the methods that suit you. Key to Patrick’s support network was a WhatsApp group with two friends, one in Canada and the other in Australia, who all checked in on each other.
Patrick’s advice for people is: “The one thing you have to remember at dark times is the light always comes back. That sounds like an Ariana Grande song… It’s always temporary and you’ve got to ride it out. It might come back again, but it will always go away. You’ve just got to try and keep powering through.”
“I wasn’t sleeping, I was having really bad nightmares. I was anxious all the time. I just lost any kind of zest for life”
“Everyone’s journey is different. There’s no blanket explanation of depression, because that’s not how it works”
Nick Collier
“It was probably the best thing for me,” is not something you’ll find many people saying about the last year and a half. As an actor and performer in the theatre, Nick Collier was among those whose industry closed practically overnight. But he’s used the time productively, and the results may be about to pay off.
I’m speaking to Nick the day after he, or rather his alter ego Ella Vaday, has been announced as one of 12 queens who will appear on the third series of RuPaul’s Drag
Race UK on BBC Three. “A national lockdown and a worldwide pandemic is probably the hardest time you could possibly decide to do one of the biggest competitions in the country,” Nick muses. “It was also hard to get ready with no shops open! It was quite testing.” I guess we won’t be seeing any H&M this series…
But this is certainly not a position Nick expected to find himself in this time last year. Since graduating at 19, Nick has worked on many of the top-billing shows including Wicked and The Book of Mormon.
Pre-lockdown, he secured a role in Hairspray but, three days into rehearsals, production shut down.
“I went from doing a job I’d waited five months to do to suddenly having no job whatsoever and no income. It was a horrible time to be stuck without a job or foresight of when the industry would pick up. At first, everyone thought we’d be off for two weeks. So, it was quite fun at first. Then it just kept going and going…”
Thirteen years in show business had given Nick a thick skin. Even so, he describes the sudden shift from being very busy, which he likes, to having almost nothing to do as the most difficult part of the last year and a half. “The struggle was not having a purpose and having a career that was so easily shut [down]. In an instant, any show just closed.”
Not only was his theatrical career stopped in its tracks, but his burgeoning drag career was also halted. “It was so annoying because I was getting booked at new venues. I got booked for one-hour gigs at places and it was starting to get somewhere. Obviously, it got cancelled.
And every time we came out of a lockdown, I had gigs booked and then it got cancelled. It was like Snakes and Ladders.
“I like to have a reason to get up and do
something — to have a job, to go to the gym. I couldn’t do that. So, yeah, I spent days watching TV and being really lazy and eating more and drinking more.”
Taking a job in Morrison’s helped take up some of Nick’s now abundant time, but this came with its own challenges, as anyone who works in retail will know.
But Nick had a saving grace and was able to use his spare time to hone his drag and saw a huge growth in followers during lockdown. If he was feeling a bit useless one day, he’d paint his face. Try a new look. There he found a purpose again.
And while there were days sat in front of the TV, Nick was able to channel his energy, usually spent singing and dancing on the West End, into something positive. “I think had I not had that lockdown, I wouldn’t have gone on
Drag Race and have perfected my makeup as much as I have. I wouldn’t have had the time to do it. So, in a way, being locked in my house with nothing to do has benefited me.
“I think as an artistic person, being able to paint my face and use my creativity was soothing. So that was a saving grace definitely. It would have been a lot worse if I’d had nothing to do.”
Eventually work began to creep back into Nick’s life. Starting with virtual drag bingos, he began booking gigs in between lockdowns, and since the last lockdown he’s been doing drag full-time. He now has to remind audiences they no longer have to sit still with masks, and that they can sing and dance again. “It is strange now because I’ve got used to it being a certain way and it’s taking some adjusting to remember how it used to be,” Nick laughs.
All the while Nick was preparing (and then filming) the third series of Drag Race
UK. But the appearance of two bright red dots on our foreheads signals we need to move on in the conversation.
It’s clear that Nick was able to find something that helped keep him afloat during a troubling time. He recognises not everyone was so lucky, and that many have struggled, but he still believes in having conversations around mental health.
“I think too many people don’t want to talk about it. And I think it should be the norm that everyone talks about it because everyone goes through it. I don’t think there’s somebody who’s never had a down day or a time where they can’t do anything as much as they want to.
“When I was struggling, I would share that and say, ‘I’m having a day off or a mental health day today’, because I think it’s important, especially with a large following, to show people that it’s actually fine for you to have days where you can’t get off the sofa, and you can’t do anything.
“I do it because I have friends that openly talk about it as well. I think they’re really powerful and strong for doing that. When
I’m feeling a certain way, I’m not ashamed to admit it because a few of my friends and family have had depression. It used to be such a taboo and it shouldn’t.
“I think for me, you’ve got to keep trying to find something to get you through it, whether it’s getting a chocolate bar or a bag of crisps and eating them. Get your favourite things, do something you enjoy.”
“When I’m feeling a certain way, I’m not ashamed to admit it”