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	TX: 27.01.05 - Depression PRESENTER: LIZ BARCLAY听

	Downloaded from www.bbc.co.uk/radio4 THE ATTACHED TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT. BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE 麻豆约拍 CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY. BARCLAY A Scottish student who has written about her battle with depression has just been awarded the first Young Mental Health and Wellbeing Award by NHS Health Scotland and the Scottish Executive. She won it for her article about the stigma of mental illness and about her own experiences between the ages of 16 and 20 with mild depression and later when it was more severe and she spent time in hospital. MURRAY I'm pleased when visitors came to the ward. For every person who visited that was one less person who was going to harbour false ideas about the mentally ill. Some patients had an eating disorder, some suffered schizophrenia and others were battling alcoholism. They all had one thing in common however, they were among the most sensitive, kind and special people I've met. BARCLAY Part of Anna Murray's article. As part of her prize the 21-year-old student Anna Murray, a third year English Literature student at Glasgow University, was given the opportunity to visit Prague to talk to young people there dealing with mental health issues. Anna described her symptoms to me that she'd experienced at the start of her illness. MURRAY It really came in the form of me feeling pretty low and tearful and probably quite detached, whereas a normal teenager should be having lots of fun and carefree and all that kind of thing. BARCLAY How did that affect your work? MURRAY It didn't really affect my schoolwork that much actually, if at all, I think in some ways I really channelled myself into my schoolwork and focused on it. Actually I was a straight A student at school. It was probably more in my personal life that I felt if I wasn't at school or whatever I started feeling really out of sorts. BARCLAY When then did you think about looking for help? MURRAY My parents noticed that it had really gone on too long and they were keen for me to go to the GP. And when I did I didn't really get paid much attention, I got given a prescription for a low dose of very mild antidepressants. BARCLAY How did it all come to a head? MURRAY It came to a head almost two years ago now and my mum she noticed that I'd been low for some time and she decided to take me away on a foreign holiday in the hope that that would cheer me up, but in actual fact that was really the crunch point when everything came to a head. I was acting in ways that I hadn't acted before and I was getting symptoms that I hadn't got before - obsessive thoughts and couldn't figure out what was happening to me, where I was, who I was really. BARCLAY You ended up in hospital I think at that stage. MURRAY Yeah, that's right. I was hospitalised for two months because it was clear that I actually was suffering from severe depression and it took quite a long time but eventually they got the right drugs for me and the drugs began to kick in and I slowly began to get better. BARCLAY Obviously feeling a lot better now. MURRAY Oh definitely yeah, I really feel that I'm on top of the world, I'm so positive, I'm so happy and I just want to take my opportunity now to help other people who are in the place that I once was and I really want to reach out to people who feel that there's no hope and tell them that yeah there certainly is hope, you will get better, you may think you won't but you will definitely. BARCLAY Is that what made you write your story? MURRAY It was one of the things that made me write my story. There's such a big stigma surrounding mental illness that a lot of people are maybe ashamed to ask for help. And one of my reasons for writing this article was to address that stigma. I feel very, very strongly that there should be no stigma surrounding mental illness. BARCLAY Do you think that if your GP had taken a different approach right at the start, do you think if you had heard of the symptoms that you began to experience from someone else beforehand, do you think that any of that would have helped you, do you think that it would have resulted in you being treated better sooner? MURRAY I don't really know because when you're like that you're not in a state of realism, you're not - you can't think rationally because the tool that you use to think rationally, i.e. your brain, is ill, so you can't make rational decisions like I think if I now went to the doctor the doctor would help me. That's why I think it's very important that it's treated prior to it becoming as severe as that, when it's in its mild form. By the time it got to that stage it was really too late in a lot of ways. I was on a one way road into the hospital. BARCLAY You won, as part of your award, a trip to Prague to see how mental health issues are dealt with there, what did you find? MURRAY I got the opportunity to speak to a lot of health professionals and medical students. I was quite taken aback by some of the attitudes, I have to admit, that these people should be taken away from the hub of society and put in institutions or hospitals away from the main society, probably that's a lot to do with them having just come out of a communist regime fairly recently. However, I did notice a lot of very, very positive things, in actual fact things that here in Britain we could actually maybe be influenced by positively. For example, I visited a couple of rehabilitation cafes, which employed young women with schizophrenic illnesses, who had recently been ill, and the aim was to allow them to run a caf茅 serving members of the public. And there was three of these cafes in Prague and I really thought this was such a brilliant idea because I think a lot of the time there are really negative attitudes in the media, especially about mental illness, a lot of scaremongering and really these youth cafes were a really good way of challenging negative views about the mentally ill. BARCLAY You've got one more year left at university, what then? MURRAY My experience in Prague and with the writing I've been doing really has made me think that I would like to have a career in a humanitarian field or in some form of charity. When I was in hospital I met so many wonderful people, so many sensitive people, so many strong people and I really feel that it's my responsibility almost to give a voice to these people. BARCLAY Anna Murray, winner of the Young Mental Health and Wellbeing Award in Scotland. Back to the Transcripts homepage Back to the You and Yours homepage The 麻豆约拍 is not responsible for external websites

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