Marion's story

Marion, 46, is a mental health campaigner and activist living in London. She has managed community care services for people with learning disabilities, offenders and currently works on a project involving adults with learning difficulties. Marion also fostered a child who has the learning disability Williams syndrome, who is still part of her family’s life, 20 years later.

Marion, who has been diagnosed with depression, says: “I started having problems relatively gently. I remember exactly when it happened.

“Someone sent me an email at work just over three years ago to rearrange a meeting and I started crying and crying, and I couldn’t stop. I found that the only way to stop crying in public, and the one thing that helped, was self-harming. It was like magic.

In 2004, my partner of 20 years walked out on me. We had had a civil registration ceremony and organised a 20-year anniversary party. Sylvia told me she was leaving me, and at the time it was completely out of the blue. Looking back, I can see I missed signs.

I was able to carry on functioning, and perversely self-harm was a wonderful coping mechanism. Technically, it is dysfunctional, but for me, it was very functional.

Self-harm has several functions: it plays out what I’m feeling emotionally, I am able to resolve things and ostensibly make them better by treating a wound. It all revolves around control – because self-harming by cutting or overdosing are reversible, I feel in control.” Marion was admitted to hospital under a Section of the Mental Health Act in 1995: “Once I calmed down, I found I was very well treated.”

Over the past few years, Marion has learnt alternative techniques to self-harm, including calling the Samaritans or her psychiatrist: “I have fantastically supportive friends and family, but I don’t call my friends when I’m feeling very low, because I don’t feel it’s fair to ask them for that kind of support.”

Work has also been crucial in Marion’s recovery: “It has been the main motor in keeping me going, and I find that working part-time gives me the flexibility I need to manage my illness. My current boss has been very supportive, and I think the qualities you need to be supportive of mental health issues are exactly the same being a good manager in general.”

Marion is also prone to instantaneous mood swings which last a few hours. She has found that various talking therapies have been very helpful in helping her through her problems, especially CBT: “I’m very lucky that I see my psychiatrist once a week for psychotherapy, and have a very sympathetic GP.”

Marion has nothing but praise for the support she has had from the NHS, and now works on the Star Wards campaign, which aims to animate acute psychiatric wards, transforming them into places where patients actively contribute to their own recovery.

She says: “The campaign offers practical solutions to improving people’s quality of life on psychiatric wards, mainly without extra cost, such as providing facilities for visitors. Patients as well as staff need wards to be a pleasant place to be treated and work, not a place of dread.”