Steve

Steve is a poet and writer. But his day job is quite different. He used to work as a Principal Environmental Health Officer.

Somehow he took a degree in chemistry and biochemistry and later completed his Masters degree in Business Administration.

He experienced his first breakdown in 1997. There were various diagnoses, first simply an acute psychotic episode, then stress-related illness, followed by schizo-affective disorder and finally, after the second major breakdown, bipolar affective disorder.

He first told his story in 2001 and became an Ambassador for the mind out for mental health campaign. His experience has been vividly described in Fast Train Approaching… available through links on his website www.makingconnectionsmatter.org

Posts by Steve

Hopes and Fears

27 June 2011 | Posted by Steve | 0 comments

Topics: Someone who has experienced mental illness, Medication and therapies

How could she, Celia, possibly be diagnosed with cognitive dementia, we cried! She’d lost her daughter three months earlier at only 37, my partner’s niece.

Steve’s Blog – February 2011

22 February 2011 | Posted by Steve | 0 comments

Topics: Someone who has experienced mental illness, Work and money

One month into the new job!

Well into the New Year now and a month into the new job. It’s a challenging role providing Health, Safety and Environmental advice to a relatively small (but global) manufacturing company, just down the road from where I live with lots of health and safety risks, not least toxic gases and potentially explosive atmospheres! But goodbye and so long to commuting to London!

Redundancy is more than a state of mind

21 October 2010 | Posted by Steve | 3 comments

Topics: Someone who has experienced mental illness, Work and money

The day it happened reminded me of a rat running round a hamster wheel who stops suddenly, thinks to himself: ‘What now?’ I accepted ‘voluntary’ redundancy recently, it was really a case of ‘jump before being pushed’.

Steve’s July Blog

19 July 2010 | Posted by Steve | 1 comment

Topics: Someone who has experienced mental illness, Recovery

How to wrap a memory
Lumb Bank, Life Writing course, June 2010

We often hear how contact with nature and creative expression are good for mental health, good for the soul. Well, I’ve just returned from a week with the Arvon Foundation based at Lumb Bank near Heptonstall, Hebden Bridge, Yorkshire. I’ve been on a Life Writing course, (autobiography, biography memoir etc.) for me it was mainly about memoir, but a lot of the work involved creative writing.

50th birthday blog

05 May 2010 | Posted by Steve | 0 comments

Topics: Someone who has experienced mental illness, Physical health

Confessions: admitting to being the oldest Rethink blogger I suspect

March 2010

09 March 2010 | Posted by Steve | 0 comments

Topics: Work and money

Recent headlines commenting on Gordon Brown’s disposition under pressure, such as ‘Bully Brown’ and …he ‘is constantly on the verge of an explosion’ and ‘Gordon has fundamental character flaws’ (Evening Standard 22nd February 2010) raise some mental health questions.

Steve's blog: December 2009

23 December 2009 | Posted by Steve | 1 comment

Topics: Someone who has experienced mental illness, Stigma and discrimination

Happy Christmas!

From Tunbridge Wells in the snow, with abandoned vehicles on every street corner and juggernauts slipping down the hills on ice.

Steve’s Blog – New Horizons

13 November 2009 | Posted by Steve | 0 comments

Topics: Campaigns, Someone who has experienced mental illness, Services

The consultation, New Horizons, has closed. I hope you had a chance to have your say. On the whole I felt it was indeed taking a new, more refreshing approach, but I feel it may have missed the crux, the reality of truly understanding people with mental health problems as human as all of us, what makes up the whole of our lives, our inner landscape, our aspirations, hopes and fears.

Here’s a few thoughts I offered…

Notes from the Fringe, Edinburgh 2009

24 September 2009 | Posted by Steve | 0 comments

Topics: Someone who has experienced mental illness, Recovery

Hi, so long since I last wrote and so much has happened. Most of all my 9 performances of my story of breakdown and recovery, at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, went better than I could have ever expected.

The Big Issue & Lobbying

03 August 2009 | Posted by Steve | 2 comments

Topics: Campaigns, Someone who has experienced mental illness

Berlin! Now there’s a place to cycle to…I’ve signed up to ride for The Big Issue Foundation next year – something to divert my mind from Edinburgh. To cycle 367 miles, including a hundred mile day.

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