Stanley Holloway with his gold disc for The Lion and Albert
Sunday October 12,2008
By Martin Townsend
Earlier this year I was the surprised, but very proud, recipient of the Mind Book Of The Year Award for The Father I Had, my account of growing up with a manic depressive (or, as it now more commonly known, bipolar) father.
As a result, the Mind mental health charity asked me along to talk to a couple of its local groups: one in Hackney, east London, a fortnight ago and another, in Uxbridge, north-west London, last week, to mark World Mental Health Day.
These have turned out to be very enlightening evenings. It is both humbling and interesting to meet new people, young and old, some of them suffering from a similar illness to my late father’s and hearing the circumstances that may have prompted the condition.
In one case, a young Indian man explained how he developed crushing depression after an injury put paid to his promising career as a professional cricketer. He had wanted to use his sports earnings to try to lift his widowed mother out of poverty.
His story reminded me of one of the episodes that had prompted me to write my book in the first place: the appalling newspaper headlines about Frank Bruno “going bonkers” which had accompanied revelations about the boxer’s manic depression.
Surely, 100 years or more after we ceased chaining up Bedlamites we were not still regarding mental illness in such a cruel and narrow manner? Even Paul Gascoigne’s recent travails have not been treated with anything like the sensitivity they should have been.
At the Uxbridge meeting my fellow speaker was Dr Liz Miller, who is Mind’s current Champion Of The Year for her work with and among mentally-ill doctors; a socially-stigmatised group if ever there was one.
She proposed that World Mental Health Day be declared a national holiday on which we send cards wishing Happy Mental Health to each other.
This is not such a daft idea. It is high time that the phrase “mental health” was separated from “mental illness”; a phrase that still provokes embarrassment among many of us, rightly or wrongly, hence those “bonkers” headlines.
Dr Miller made the point that great advances had been made in treating various forms of mental distress and illness without drugs, through, for instance, good, junk-free diets (stand up, Jamie Oliver) and more sunshine.
With the recession beginning to take hold in this country and many people feeling high levels of stress, her central point, that we should treat our mental health in the same way we do our physical wellbeing, is a very timely one.
All of which brings me round to a little personal discovery I made during these two talks: the spirit-enhancing power of reading out loud.
Coincidentally, the BBC last week announced a major poetry recital competition for seven- to 11-year-olds. The aim is to revive pupils’ interest in reciting poetry in public rather than just reading it quietly in class.
This is a brilliant idea in my view. Having read, at each of the Mind meetings, an extended chapter from my own book, I can testify that there is almost nothing better, not just for the ego but for the soul.
Much has already been written in recent years about parents’ failure to read bedtime stories to their children.
I spoke to fellow mums and dads about this at the time and none of us could understand the general reluctance.
What could be more uplifting, even at the end of a really exhausting day, than reading out a bit of Winnie The Pooh, Horrid Henry or Enid Blyton (with all the attendant funny voices, naturally)?
Not only is it fun for Mum and Dad but the sheer joy of hearing a child’s innocent and unbridled laughter is surely more precious than anything on earth.
If it’s good for the mental health of us grown-ups, though, just how much more rewarding can it be for children to do the reading and enjoy the emotional response of adults? Here, at last, it seems to me, is an easy way to boost the confidence of our youngsters.
So if you have bored children or grandchildren moping round the house, or are beginning to feel drained by the endless talk of pension disasters, mortgage bloodbaths and the rest, here’s my top tip for this weekend...
Just listen to Stanley Holloway’s immortal recitation The Lion And Albert and then take turns reading it out loud in a good, broad and glorious Blackpool accent.
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