Her Maj is toe posh to suffer Mentally ill need not weep alone

I BOUGHT a pair of new shoes this week but made the stupid mistake of wearing them straight away. Now my bunion is on fire.

The Queen never has this problem.

Because a designer has revealed that HM gets a servant to break in her black patent “work” shoes before the royal tootsies get anywhere near them. The THE first night that I spent in a psychiatric hospital was the lowest point in my life. Lying in the dark, crying, wondering how I’d be become such a worthless failure, I felt total totally alone. I’d bee been ignoring the warning signs for month months – the sense of impending doom c creeping up. Then one day, 13 yea years ago, I got home from work, cl climbed into bed with my coat still on and couldn’t get up next s morning. My best friend got me to a p psychiatrist, who diagnosed cl clinical depression. A And because he exp explained it as an illness, not a weakness of cha character, I gave in, deci decided to blame my brain chemicals, and had tr treatment. But I was lucky. I had health insurance and went to an a acclaimed private clinic which c cost £640 a night, even then. Over the next few weeks counselling, group therap therapy and antidepressants, helped me emerge from the black fog of my depression. Prince Ha Harry was lucky too. He could a afford private therapy when he came close to breakdown during two years of mental “c “chaos” sparked by bottled-up grief over his mother’s death. Harry deserves huge respect and admirat admiration for revealing his own battle this wee week in a bid to change attitudes. The cha charity Mind called it “a defining moment” for mental health that led to 38 per cen cent more people calling its helpline. The Heads Together charity that Harry, WilliamWillia and Kate set up will also THEY’RE creepy and they’re kooky, mysterious and spooky, they’re all together ooky, The Addams Family.

I loved the macabre 60s TV series about Gomez, Lurch, Uncle Fester and the gang.

So I can’t wait to catch The Addams Family musical which has just started a nationwide tour.

Les Dennis is unrecognisable as Keeper of the Queen’s Blisters wears a pair of beige cotton ankle socks with the £1,000 shoes and must only walk on the Buck House shag pile while they’re wearing in. Sounds sole-destroying, but HM’s maids are devoted to her. Do you think Prince Philip gets someone to break in his Windsor brogues too? I’d say the footman’s a shoe-in. tackle the stigma and get people talking about issues which affect one in four people.

But what happens when those suffering do find the courage to ask for help?

Mental health services in this country have been decimated by Tory cuts.

A depressed friend who has just asked her GP for help faces a three-month wait for just six sessions of NHS therapy.

So she was offered anti-depressants – one of the 62 million prescriptions that cost

tm taxpayers £800million a day.

The shortage of hospital beds for the most seriously ill is scandalous. They’ve plummeted from 70,000 in 1987 to just 18,700 today. Patients are sent hundreds of miles to get a bed – costing the NHS £ 54million a year and adding to their suffering.

I saw this first hand after discovering a friend who had just attempted suicide. She was sectioned under the Mental Health Act and taken to an NHS unit – where she spent the night on a waiting room floor before being sent to a hospital miles from family and friends.

And the Chief Inspector of Constabulary says vulnerable people who’ve committed no crime are picked up and locked in police cells when they should be in hospital.

We are one year in to Theresa May’s fiveyear plan to “reform” mental health services but the crisis is getting worse.

If she’s in power for the next four years, she needs a new health department, which is prepared to work with mental health experts. It must listen and come up with the cash to prevent mental health services breaking down completely.

Or millions more people will be left alone, crying into the darkness.