How lovely to read that The Sun’s columnist Katie Hopkins has once again gone after “fashionable” mental illness. Having lost friends who took their own lives as a result of depression and have friends who have endured a lifelong struggle against this most debilitating of illnesses, I’m afraid I saw the red mist when someone pointed out her tweet tonight. It read: “Most of those suffering a mental health crises in the UK have agreed to be in the shadow cabinet Jez” #PMQs There are no depths to which this wretched woman will not plumb.
I understand the argument that says repeating her bile only serves to sustain her career and to encourage her, but I take a different point of view. Certainly in the instance of mental illness in general, and my specialist subject depression in particular, Hopkins merely emphasises the stigma that we face. I am of the view that she needs to be confronted on this subject.
I saw nothing “fashionable” about a friend of mine who threw himself into the River Thames and drowned or other friends who hanged themselves in the most ghastly of circumstances. There was nothing remotely fashionable about people taking their own lives. They were desperately, incurably ill. They weren’t making any kind of statement. They wanted to die. The single biggest killer of men in the UK aged under 50 is not cancer or heart disease. No, it’s suicide. Suicide is the biggest killer of men under 50. If that’s a fashion statement, I’m a banana.
Thankfully, not all of us whose lives are blighted by the black dog go so far as to take our own lives, but there are many more with varying degrees of illness. My own clinical depression is described as severe, but even I am in a relatively good place compared with others. Thanks to therapy, medication, the support of my family and friends and sheer good luck, I have never had to confront the ultimate decision and, if I am being honest, there were only a few occasions, a long, long time ago, when I considered it as an option. My friends often did have therapy, medication, the support of family and friends but no luck at all. And worse still, from everyone else’s point of view, they managed to hide it so well. The bullying dregs of society like Hopkins, who trivialise and demean those who suffer, are an obstacle to understanding and a roadblock in convincing people to change their attitudes.
Contrast Hopkins’ crass populism with the decision of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to appoint a shadow mental health minister in the form of Luciana Berger. I accept that the appointment is largely symbolic given that the current government does not have a mental health minister for her to shadow, but in demonstrating that some politicians actually get it I feel a great deal of encouragement. That Hopkins, who demonstrates such contempt towards the mentally ill, just so happens to be a prominent supporter of the Conservative Party should surprise no one. Cameron, aided and abetted by his friends in the Liberal Democrats, presided over huge cuts in mental health spending, so it is only right and proper that he has been indirectly supported by such a poisonous woman as Hopkins.
The Sun’s columnist attacks the mentally ill (among many others) whilst the Sun itself attacks the party which is trying to put it higher up the national agenda.
Rupert Murdoch and his sick little tabloid newspaper have much to answer for. He has presided over an organisation which habitually hacked the telephone calls of people from all walks of life, including a murdered schoolgirl. Some of these “journalists” have been to prison and at least one of them was a close friend of the prime minister. Murdoch is not even a British citizen, but through his power and ability to gain patronage from the establishment he pretends to oppose, his poison continues to seep through the British psyche.
No decent press baron (is there such a person?), no editor of conscience would employ a woman like Hopkins but we are not talking about decent people with a conscience. We are talking about Rupert Murdoch.
I have managed, so far, to rise from the occasional wreckage of my life for all the reasons given, but not everyone has been so lucky. I’m still here, struggling on, doing the best I can. Not everyone made it but none of my friends whose lives were ruined thought they were doing anything “fashionable”. No one would ever say that contracting cancer was “fashionable” so why say it about a group of people who suffer from a very different illness.
As Joe Walsh said, you can’t argue with a sick mind. And if that mind belongs to Katie Hopkins, I am not sure you should even try. Her mind is more sick than anyone I have ever met and loved and whose funerals I have had to attend.
