DENISE COLLINS PODCAST EXTRA

AM: In your book you say your partnership with John was a bit like paragliding.  “On the face of it,” you write, you “looked like the strong one but he was the one behind pulling strings, controlling your direction and keeping you safe.” 

DC:  Yeah, the whole paragliding thing.  We actually had a holiday and we did this tandem paragliding thing and I was – John was the one at the back pulling the strings.  This is in real life; this is not metaphor; this is real.  And, you know, before we went up, the guy gave John all the instructions and I was just having a wonderful time, really enjoying the whole experience.  And it was only when we got down that John went wow, you know, that was quite difficult because I had to remember everything and I had to know what strings to pull and blah, blah, blah, blah.  And it was only really after he died that I thought that that was a bit of a metaphor for our life because I’m probably the one, on the face of it – as is maybe the case in a lot of relationships; I don’t know – where it looks like the woman’s in charge of things and has a lot to say about stuff and actually you’ve got kind of a man in the background looking to the world as if they’re playing along but actually – (laughs) – when it comes to it, if there’s a big decision to be made, you know — and that was kind of what it was like with us, really.  John was very, very easy going; however, if he didn’t want to do something or if he didn’t think something was a good idea, there was no moving him.  And so that was the – you know, on the face of it, it could look as if I was the one that was making all the decisions and in charge.  But actually, when it came to it, a lot of the things that I did, particularly in my career, I did because he encouraged me and because he had faith and belief in me.  And yeah, there were certain things where he was just like no, we’re not doing that.  

AM:  Yeah. A couple of things I want to touch on – I think you said both of these things in our previous conversation.  You told me that you don’t blame doctors, that you think it’s more a societal issue in terms of the broader question of why this is happening so often.

DC:  I think so.  I mean, I think – I don’t know, but I wonder whether — a lot of the kind of campaigning about mental health issues is funded by pharmaceutical companies who obviously have a vested interest in selling their product, and that’s what it is, at the end of the day, it’s a product.  I think it is a societal issue.  I think it’s an issue that these companies have a product to sell and if they can convince people that their product will stop us feeling depressed and anxious they’re going to have a lot of takers, you know.  I think it’s a wider issue that somehow we see uncomfortable, unpleasant, painful emotions as something that we just need to get rid of; you know, we’re looking for that solution; we’re looking for that quick fix; we want to get rid of them. 

I think there’s also a huge problem with the prescribing doctors who are not specialists in mental health.  You know, they’re general practitioners.  The clue’s in the name.  They’re expected to know a huge amount and so it’s probably not feasible for them to know all of the side effects of all of the drugs that they prescribe, you know.  They don’t have the knowledge.  So I think there’s various elements to the problem.  I don’t think it’s as simple as blaming the doctors.  The doctors, particularly GPs, there are huge expectations on what they can help with from the patients.  There’s huge expectations in terms of the knowledge that they’re expected to have.  I think it is unrealistic.  

AM:  What about John’s doctor?  Do you blame him?

DC:  I don’t blame the doctor.  I think there are things that he could have done that he didn’t.  I think if he had normalized John’s experience, if when John had told him not just how he was feeling but why he was feeling that way, if the doctor had said, you know what?  Given the fact that you’ve recently received the news that your twin brother has terminal cancer, I think it’s fairly normal that you’re not sleeping or you’re having trouble sleeping and fairly normal that you’re feeling upset; maybe take some time off work, maybe talk to – find someone to talk to, and maybe come back and see me in a week or a couple of weeks if you’re not feeling any better.  And I think that – you know, so do I think that that particular doctor could have done more? Yes. So I think there are things there but I think it’s not just as simple as going, well, that doctor was to blame, because I think that doctor’s working within a system and I think that system’s operating within a culture and a society where we have pathologized painful emotions.

AM:  In our previous conversation you mentioned the Council for Evidence-based Psychiatry.  Is that something that you want to talk about?

DC:  Yeah, I mean, again, I kind of started to come across websites, I started to come across other people who had had similar experiences, and, you know, because I have an academic background, I looked for authentic sources of information, as opposed to just anecdotal stories.  The anecdotal stories are incredibly powerful, but I wanted to see if there were, you know, initially books, so I came across a book by James Davies, and it’s an exploration of the links between psychiatry as a profession and the pharmaceutical industry. And I just found it, again, you know, fascinating – you know, rage-inducing but fascinating.  You know, there is this relationship between – you know, it’s almost that being able to write out prescriptions for drugs makes psychiatry a legitimate form of medicine and the fact that these psychiatrists will stand up and defend these drugs legitimizes the pharmaceutical industry, and that incestuous relationship that creates – literally creates these illnesses, so if you look at the DSM, which is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, there are new illnesses, conditions being brought out all the time, being recognized all the time.  I think one of the latest ones is prolonged grief disorder, so if you lose someone – so, for instance, I lost John four years ago; the fact that I am still grieving, the fact that I still miss him, the fact that I still think about him, the fact that I still find it difficult to imagine my future, I could be diagnosed with that and prescribed, guess what – (laughs) – some drugs!  So yeah.  So through reading these books, I came across the Council for Evidence-based Psychiatry, which are a group of psychologists, psychiatrists, academics, and medics who are disturbed by the pathologizing of human experience.  Their website is an amazing resource. Yeah, so that’s kind of – you know, that was how that journey happened.