Centre for Mental Health

Recovery Stories

"My advice to people in prison now would be to tell them that they can make it. There’s a better life out there, and even in here, in the prison." Read Nash’s story

"Focusing on things I can do and not getting caught up in what I can’t do helps work towards recovery." Read Penny's story

"I now control my panic attacks, rather then them controlling me and I live life to the full." Read Sharon's story

Nash’s story

I have been out of prison and clean for three years now. I work part time as a criminal justice liaison worker and I am the Equality National Council Ambassador for London region. I have completed various training and leadership courses and work as a freelance trainer, designing and delivering training for SLAM, IMAGINE Community Options and others. I am a trained coach and mentor and provide mentorship for Ambassadors and volunteers of Southside partnership, I am also a member of various voluntary sector groups for BME communities. I’ve done a lot of public speaking and been involved in various research projects as a service user researcher. I’ve got my own flat, I enjoy reading, music, studying. My life is good with strong family relationships, a good social life with good friends and I am on top of my finances and have ambitions to take this all further, so I am studying for a degree in therapeutic counselling.

It wasn’t always like this.

Although I had a good upbringing in Ghana and I did well at school, shortly after I arrived in England aged 19, things started to go wrong and I spent the next 19 years in a life of drugs and crime. I was doing a lot of drugs. My life was chaotic. I got in bad company. I was heavy on drugs – I was so heavy it could never be enough for me. I was good at smoking and I was good at crime. I never hurt people and I was always lucky, I always got past the law, but this time they got me and I got sent to prison. This all led to mental health problems. I had long standing depression with psychosis and spent periods in mental health units on various medication. I felt isolated, family and friends gave up on me, I felt I had achieved nothing and there seemed to be nothing left for me in life.

When things were at their worst, I received a letter from my daughter, the one person who has stood by me all along. She told me I had let everyone down and now she was pregnant and I would not be there for her, I might as well rot in jail. This was a wakeup call. I knew I needed to turn my life around. I was already clean because time on the medical wing had stabilised me, I thought this is an opportunity to get my life straight. If I started using again it would mean I went through all that for nothing. I said to myself, “I can change my life”. There was a lot of temptation around me, but I knew the consequences.

I started to dream about a clean life where I could use my experience to help other people. This drove me to stay off drugs and take more courses. It felt good when I was recovering. I thought, “I'm not going back to this life”. When I had the opportunity to choose, I chose freedom.

While I was in prison I heard about Southside*. I thought to myself this might be a place that could help me get my life together. I heard that there are ex-prisoners that worked there. It gave me hope that I could get a job.

I was brought in front of the judge and he said I could go to rehab and have counselling and have voluntary drug testing. And if I stayed clean, he might reconsider my sentence. I had to prove I could change. I got a good report for conduct, and the tests came back negative. I was brought in front of the judge again, and he said he knew I was a good example of rehabilitation. He said he would reconsider my sentence and he told me, “You are a free man – go home”. I wept. I was just glad because I didn’t negotiate with nobody – he just told me I could go. And this is why I feel I owe something to the community.

In my work I go into prisons and meet the prisoners on release. For a lot of them it’s all a vicious cycle – you use drugs, and then you commit crime. Then you get sent to prison, you do your time there. Then you’re released, and you go straight back to using – and you commit crime again go to court, go to prison - it goes on and on. When they’re released, I take them into the community and I help them with accommodation, register them with a GP and stuff. I genuinely feel I have got something to offer. I told one of the prisoners that was released I was once in prison myself, he couldn’t believe it.

I said to him, “Let’s break down what you need to do to get back into a life you want” and he was so amazed when I understood where he was coming from. I live a disciplined life, I love my flat and I keep it clean, I look out for my kids, I’ve learnt to enjoy my own company and find ways of relaxing that don’t involve drugs, I am in control, I take responsibility for myself and I know I can help other people. Not just by what I say to them but by helping the staff to understand what might be going on. I have the triple advantage of knowing what it’s like to be in prison, knowing what addiction feels like and knowing what it is like to be a black man in a different culture. All these are things that many professionals need to get more of an understanding about.

I know I will never go back to my old life – I would never ever do that. I would rather die than go in front of that judge for crime – I don’t want to let him down. And the most important thing is that I won’t do drugs no more.

My advice to people in prison now would be to tell them that they can make it. There’s a better life out there, and even in here, in the prison. There’s a lot of opportunity to do things in prison and you can actually structure your life in prison. And you have the time to do things. If you just sit back, then you won’t make it – but you can make it if you want to. You’ve got to be real with yourself. The power is you.

* Southside Partnership prison project works with offenders and ex-offenders with mental health needs to give emotional and practical support, both whilst in prison and after release. This support helps to ensure that vulnerable prisoners do not slip through gaps in services and receive all the support they need for successful resettlement. They currently work with 12 prisons across London and the South East and also provide support after release within any of the London boroughs.

Penny's story

The standard dictionary definition of recovery is to return to a ‘normal state of health’. I prefer a definition of recovery that is used in sport - to describe the action of returning the paddle, leg or arm or back to initial position to make a new stroke. Once I have moved forward from a period of disruption I don’t want to return the place I was in before.

For me, I think that recovery is when I am no longer focusing up on how I am feeling and instead begin thinking about doing things in my life. Its about rebuilding basic structures in my life again and moving on. Focusing on things I can do and not getting caught up in what I can’t do, helps work towards recovery.

From 1994 to 2005, I experienced four periods of extreme altered states – (what others might term psychosis). Over that time I have had 3 hospital admissions, the first time, sectioned. I have had periods of both high mood and low mood. There have been many times when I couldn’t sleep in the night without needing someone to reassure me I wouldn’t die.

I was given a diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder, which I did find helpful in the past but in the last few years I have found it more helpful to reject the idea of illness and diagnosis in order to try and focus my energies instead on thinking about what I can do well and then what I can do to stay okay and in balance. Since 2005 I have been discharged from psychiatric services, come off medication and returned to work.

The ultimate shift, after the last time I had been in hospital, my cousin, who had also experienced some difficulties – said “Penny you don’t need to do this to yourself anymore" - and something kind of clicked with me, and I realised I had a choice, I could make positive choices about my own health and wellbeing.

The different things that have helped me paddle on are; doing regular exercise, improving my diet, spending time outdoors  with nature, allotment, creativity - artwork, poetry, photography, learning relaxation techniques - tai chi, meditation, homeopathy, someone to talk to outside of family, friends, services, changes to lifestyle and work being more flexible, more leisure time.

Through experience I feel I have a better understanding of how my energy levels naturally ebb and flow . For me, high energy is associated with being quite creative or working on lots of different projects -so I can’t switch off - a term I call busy headed. I have learnt that I need to switch off and I can’t remain busy headed for too long! I also know that it is perfectly okay for me to have low energy times and switch off from the world, but not for too long! So I often find I have to do the reverse of what I feel like in order to stay more balanced.

I also feel I have gained a number of other personal strengths and understandings. I think this has come with experience and doesn’t happen overnight, a lot of paddling…!

Taking responsibility back, planning, setting goals, developing positive ways to deal with stress, planning ahead for stressful times, developing self awareness and self-discipline.

Learning more about myself and natural energy levels, learning when to ask for extra support or feedback, learning to take my own wellbeing seriously.

I think my recovery has really been one long journey with a number of lapses - each time starting from a place of more understanding. Each time building on what I have learnt before.

Over the last few years I have realised that the things in my life that have helped me move on and recover are the same things that I need for my continued wellbeing and I try to keep on working towards keeping a balance of these positive things in my life.

Sharon's story

My psychiatric challenges started when I was very young following a significant family trauma. I remember being a very anxious child and this holding me back significantly though my childhood and adolescence. At 18 I left home and brought a home with my partner; my anxiety worsened and I started to experience severe panic attacks, social phobia and agoraphobia. The relationship was very difficult and I encountered years of domestic violence, fearful for my own life for much of the next seven years. Even the simplest of tasks became a chore and it limited my ability to live life to the fullest. Work was my safety net and somehow I managed to maintain my work in the mental health field whilst assisting people with similar challenges. However, other areas of my life became more challenging and at times this led to real despair. Life was passing me by as I had no belief in myself or my abilities and dared only to dream of training professionally in the mental health field. I worried so much about my managers and colleagues finding out about my challenges that it prevented me from seeking professional help. How on earth could I seek help from the team that would need to offer me support? Despite these difficulties I have never had a day off work with my mental health, although I now wonder how on earth I achieved this.

Thankfully this relationship ended with me physically intact, and I was left to try to rebuild my shattered life. For the next few months I had to try to manage to live on my own, something I had never done previously, and prove to the bank manager that I could pay the mortgage independently, despite being on a low income. I also had to get through the long nights alone with the awful anxiety and panic attacks. From somewhere deep inside me I tried to read about anxiety, and learn coping strategies for my debilitating panic attacks. I worked three jobs around the clock to maintain the mortgage and slowly my confidence started to develop. In time I met and married a wonderful man who believed in me and encouraged me with my dream to train as a social worker. I embarked on my social worker training months after giving birth to my son. The birth of my son sparked a real instinct to get my challenges resolved; I couldn’t bear the thought of him growing up witnessing my despair.

A work colleague shared with me her own psychiatric challenges and I was astounded that someone that I looked up to and admired had also experienced similar challenges. She encouraged me to seek support from secondary services and to continue to develop my coping and self management skills. I was still worried about seeking help from my GP as by then I was working with my GP surgery in my role as a social worker, so I took a spurious route to get support out of area and finally accessed some secondary support to help my recovery.

I had already come along way on my road to recovery by this time and I spent the next few years delving into issues from my childhood that were the probable route of the anxiety.

I have only just started to speak of some of these difficulties as I strongly believe that the stigma and discrimination people with mental health issues encounter needs to be challenged. If I have spent my life trying to hide this, what hope is there for others who are not in the mental health profession? I therefore feel I have a duty to stand up and be counted as someone who has survived the rich tapestry of mental health issues. I now control my panic attacks, rather then them controlling me and I live life to the full. I have a fantastic job as a Peer Employment Project Manager and although I still get anxious at times I can engage in all the activities and delights of a rich and fulfilling life.