Stephanie Walsh is a senior first-opinion veterinary surgeon at Rutland House Veterinary Hospital.

I qualified as a veterinary surgeon in 2004, and spent three and a half years in mixed practice before moving to small animal practice. I am now senior vet at a busy, multisite first opinion practice, involved in the British Veterinary Association as regional representative for the North West, and co-chair a veterinary wellbeing group.

Compared to many of the experiences shared through the &me campaign, mine may seem quite minor, but if I hadn’t been in the lucky position to have amazing and supportive colleagues and friends and family around me then maybe things would have been different.

I initially visited my GP because I thought I had a chest infection as I was struggling to breathe. The GP asked me if I was sure it wasn’t anxiety, but I was adamant it must be something physical. I thought anxiety was a weakness, something that effected other people.

Several weeks later, as I slid down the wall in my consult room to sit on the floor crying, unable to do anything, it became apparent it was not a chest infection. I was lucky as I only needed a short period of time away from work, and talking therapy worked well for me.

There is increasing evidence that early intervention for mental ill-health can reduce the need for time away from work, reduce the risk of relapse and lead to improved recovery.

Hopefully by sharing my story, we can work to reduce the stigma, and open early channels of communication to help look after the mental health of ourselves and others.

Steve Carter is a Director at Priory Veterinary Surgeons in Reigate, Surrey.

I can honestly say that my life has been enriched by the lessons I have learnt from having mental illness. The aspects of my character and the feelings that I have been made to confront and examine closely have made me a much better and a more grounded person. That has only been true once I had come out of the other side of several pretty sad and difficult periods of depression, spread out over two decades.

Here I am aged 58, owning my own vet practice with over 40 staff members in it, still enjoying the variety of small animal practice four days a week, including the emergency out-of-hours work – I am writing this while being on call – and I am still learning new things to add to my skills. And when I go home I have a wonderfully supportive and stimulating family of which I am very proud. I have lots to look forward to – that has always been the case, but when I was depressed I just didn’t see it that way at all.

I have a family history of depression, not that I understood that until the illness hit me out of the blue. My life up to 2002 was one long line of apparent success up the ladder of education (though I did have an exam anxiety wobble one summer), and a steady professional development, including a partnership in the practice. I have a strong work ethic and take pride in achieving goals. I had a young family and was working very hard.

I went to Devon as part of the veterinary team dealing with the Foot & Mouth Disease outbreak of 2001 – it was like a war zone in many ways, and I think I had a sort of PTSD mixed in with physical exhaustion. My performance in the practice ground to halt in 2002 and I lost all sense of purpose.

My partners were generously supportive – I think they saw it coming before me – and I had two months off work. Gradually my depression lifted and after going to visit my friend’s practice to see if I could cope with being in the thick of it again, I went back to work. That was scary because before this episode I felt no anxiety about work at all, and thrived on its challenges; now it felt more like a burden that could easily tip me into depression again.

My colleagues were very supportive and treated me normally and kindly without any sense of me being “damaged goods” – I was very fortunate in that respect. It was only me who thought that I was damaged, but that view has changed for me, although it took a long time to get to that point.

My therapy over the years has been a mixture of medications, psychoanalysis and other counselling, as well as the self-learning involved in looking after myself properly. I know that reaching for help and talking to others in confidence was key to my becoming well. The single most important realisation for me was that I am always going to be vulnerable and it was necessary to come to terms with that “weakness” whether I liked the idea or not.

I still take medication to balance out my mood, which tend to swing. I now feel that the positive mood swings are the times when I am most productive and useful, and they are when I feel the most fulfilled, but I know that there will be periods of lows when it is hard to get motivated. I have gradually learnt from others, including my wife, how to recognise the signs of impending depression and I then find ways of taking the pressure off myself and making myself feel more optimistic inside.

Not only do I feel more knowledgeable and more gentle about myself, but on top of this I have become much more understanding and empathetic of the states of mind of the people around me. I recognise in others many of the difficulties I have experienced. At work, that has been a great help in improving how I go about supporting the staff of the practice, for example, providing group and one-on-one wellbeing, resilience, and counselling sessions for those who want help.

I am proud that these initiatives have arisen from my personal journey of adversity –  I have come to realise that all experiences are learning experiences and there is something worthwhile to come out of the grimmest situations, so that what can feel like an intolerable burden can be turned into a stimulating challenge to be solved, and one can then move on to other things. When something makes me laugh or sing spontaneously, nowadays it has a special meaning for me.

Dr Cathy Wield successfully returned to work in emergency medicine in the UK after two bouts of major depression, which included hospital admissions and brain surgery.

Cathy is passionate about speaking out and reducing the stigma around mental health and has written extensively about her experience of being a doctor with depression (her books are Life after Darkness: A Doctor’s Journey Through Severe Depression and A Thorn in My Mind: Mental Illness, Stigma and the Church). She notes, however, that there is still room for improvement in the way that we respond to mental ill-health. Cathy is currently exploring a new medical culture, having recently moved to the United States.

Cathy says: “It seems that recovery from mental illness is not enough. Well, that’s the impression I get from our stigma-filled world. It was really bad when I was suffering from depression – when you have low self-esteem as a result of your brain chemistry, then often those who you know well, like family and friends, unwittingly betray their ignorance with ill thought-out advice or banal platitudes.

“Most of us try to do the right thing and seek advice from our GP and/or various other health professionals. Even then we cannot guarantee that we will be treated with the dignity and respect that we deserve. I was fortunate in that respect for most of the time during my illness, with the exception of some of the nursing staff during my inpatient stays and, of course, the various different specialities that I had the misfortune to come across after bouts of self-harm.

“There is still a long way to go to eliminate not only the stigma of current mental illness, but also of the past. While I worked in A&E until August last year, I did my utmost to be open about myself and to educate my colleagues. We are whole people, the mind and body are not separate entities and we all deserve respect and care regardless of our past or present symptoms, or what brought them about. But changing attitudes takes more time than I first thought.”

Rob Pettitt is a Senior Lecturer in Small Animal Orthopaedics at the University of Liverpool.

My life ‘rapidly’ changed a few years ago when I had a serious mental illness. I say rapidly as it resulted from an elongated period of high stress at work and the breakup of my family life. I had always been a ‘get on with it’ person who could always be relied on to make deadlines, organise and generally be someone who you would turn to in a crisis. My previous career in the Royal Navy was very much about putting on a brave face in adversity – ‘it pays to be a winner’ was much quoted during my time.

Trying to balance a clinic with ever-changing staffing levels and my home life, in particular maintaining as normal and happy a life for my children as possible, eventually took its toll on my mental health. One morning I woke early and was physically unable to leave my bed. It was the weirdest and scariest feeling I can ever recall. If anyone had said to me that I would be unable to get out of bed I would have given them a look – how difficult could it be? After phoning in sick, I lay in bed for hours – it was mid-afternoon before I even tried to get a drink.

When I look back now the first thing that set me on the road to recovery was a friend of mine from work who had very similar problems. She rang me as soon as she heard and within ten minutes was at my door. Having someone around at that time was invaluable – she organised a doctor’s appointment, contacted all those who needed to know and basically ensured I was not alone. The GP was very helpful and signed me off work for four weeks initially, and started me on antidepressants. I also sought counselling in the form of a life-coach in order to get the balance back into my life – what I can’t understate is the feeling of being a failure at that time. The counselling allowed me to steadily believe in myself again.

In all I had eight weeks off work – I knew I was getting better as towards the end I was raring to go back. My employers were fully understanding and gave me a phased return with a reduced administration load to allow me focus on fully returning to health. I continued on the antidepressants for a number of months before I gradually phased them out and to date have had no need to restart them.

So what message would I give to others? Work and life are stressful and feeling stress is natural. What is important is to develop strategies in order to cope with these stresses. Communication is essential – talk to friends, relatives and people at work. Mental illness is sadly still taboo in many areas which is wrong – we would not hesitate to tell people if we broke a bone; the same should apply to mental health. What surprised me was the number of people who have been affected and you will always find someone who has been there – support from others is invaluable in those difficult times so you do not have to suffer alone.

DB:   ‘No’, ‘Never’, ‘What, you?’, ‘We had no idea?’, ‘Why didn’t you say something?’

Just a few of the responses I received from friends, family and work colleagues when I explained to them why they hadn’t seen or heard from me for a while. I’d been in hospital following a suicide attempt. That admission to hospital was the first time anyone, including the medical profession – and me – knew I was unwell. My marriage had broken up several months previously. I was devastated and finding it hard to cope.

But I chose to tell no one, probably for two reasons: I was ashamed that my wife had left me; and self-stigma – I didn’t want to appear to be struggling emotionally. After all, I had always had good physical and mental health. I was successful – top of the class at veterinary school and after a short spell in practice was now thriving in a demanding role in the pharmaceutical industry. And I had coped with other challenges I had encountered. I was a coper – I believed it and I’m sure most others would have thought it. But those challenges were changeable situations for which addressing the problem itself was sufficient. I had never appreciated the importance of emotion-focused coping strategies to regulate feelings in situations that were unchangeable, like the break-up of a relationship.

I just thought I was stressed – after all, who wouldn’t be in those circumstances? But in fact I was becoming progressively more unwell. What started as worry, early waking and palpitations – which I recognised – led to patterns of thinking of which I did not recognise as being disordered. I felt trapped and worthless – suicide was the only escape. From a medical perspective, my biological, social and psychological risk factors had converged and tipped me into major depression.

That was the first of multiple suicide attempts and several prolonged stays in hospital. Over a three year period I spent twelve months as a psychiatric inpatient. I was treated with antidepressants, antipsychotics, mood stabilisers, talking therapies and electroconvulsive therapy.

But now, thankfully, I am well – and I have been for fourteen years. I still take antidepressants but I suspect I don’t need to – I know the early warning signs and how to act on them to prevent worries potentially escalating into ill health. The medication is my security blanket – I derive comfort from the thought that it may help prevent me ever becoming that ill again.

To what do I attribute my recovery? A mixture of medical treatment, psychological therapies, supportive friends and family, rest and time – they all contributed, probably in similar measure.

What did I learn that I can convey to others?

• Talk to someone. Confide in trusted friends, family or colleagues or a support helpline about your troubles and worries.
• If your distress persists, seek professional help – as with physical illness, the longer you leave it untreated the more severe and potentially more treatment-resistant it becomes.

I firmly believe that if I had confided and sought help early I would not have become unwell.

Don’t worry that disclosure may affect your career – it should not, and your health must come first.

After a phased return to work, my career has continued to progress, I have gained additional professional qualifications and moved into roles of increasing responsibility. Enlightened employers are increasingly recognising the diversity and transferrable skills that people with lived experience of mental health problems can bring to the workplace. My episode of mental ill-health by no means defines me but it’s an important part of me and, although I would not wish it upon anyone, I think it has changed me in a positive way, both personally and professionally.

• No one is immune – it can happen to anyone – including those for whom you would least expect it – including you.
• Complete and sustained recovery is possible. And finally…
• The best prevention? Be connected. Forge and nurture confiding relationships with trusted friends and work colleagues – and make sure you use them, early. It really is ‘good to talk’.

Thank you for your attention.