'I had my wife sectioned'

I TOLD the taxi driver to lock the doors. My haunted expression must have said it all, as for the entire journey he drove in silence, professionally weaving his way through the clog of late-afternoon traffic towards the Royal Edinburgh – the city's psychiatric hospital.

Beside me sat Kate, my best friend, my lifelong companion, my wife. But not today. Wildly staring ahead, rhythmically rocking back and forth, intensely agitated and singing at the top of her voice, mentally she was gone, lost to another world.

Fighting back the tears, I tried to calm her down, stroking her hair I soothingly whispered into her ear: "We're just going to the hospital. The doctor will be waiting for us there." Inwardly my mind was racing. I had never visited a psychiatric hospital. I didn't know whether Kate would be admitted overnight or just for a few hours. I just prayed the doctors would be able to look after her. I moved forward to reassure her: "Everything's going to be all right," I said. Our eyes met but she didn't see me. Within seconds I was summed up and dismissed, her mind racing through a landscape of delusional hallucinations, unable to keep pace with the organised reality of normality.

We passed the Cameo, an art-house cinema on the south side of Edinburgh, where as undergraduates we had both enjoyed many happy times together. Something on the film display board caught her attention, and for a moment Kate's expression fell still. She looked puzzled, as if trying to work through a particularly difficult maths equation.

"What does it mean?" she said, the tone of her voice a notch higher than usual. Although she was addressing me, it felt as if she was unaware of my presence. It was as though she was conducting a parallel conversation with another being.

The light caught her face and I could see how four days without sleep had ravaged her appearance. Deathly white with dark, grey-lined heavy bags beneath her eyes, her face was contorted by the exhaustion. I breathed a sigh of relief knowing that within minutes we would be approaching the hospital grounds. Suddenly Kate lurched forward. Wrapping her thick black winter coat around her, she violently burst into tears, screaming manically as if her life depended on it.

As the taxi stopped I grabbed hold of Kate and gripped her in a tight bear hug. Together, with Kate by now trying to escape and screaming louder and louder, we wrestled our way through the hospital's bright yellow doors, where fortunately we were met by a nurse. Kate was admitted and sectioned under the Mental Health Act. Later I found out that her mood escalated to such an extent she had to be held down by three nurses as they injected a sedative to knock her out.

February is an unforgiving month in Scotland at the best of times. That night, as I left Kate for what turned out to be the first of two six-week spells in a psychiatric hospital, I suddenly found myself alone. Not only had I lost my wife, I had lost my best friend, my lover, my support, the woman I had relied on every day of our married life, the woman I hoped would one day mother my children. As I stood in the dark, freezing-cold car park, the emotion of the last four days caught up with me and I began to cry uncontrollably. Little did I know that the intensely lonely world of caring for someone with acute mental illness had only just begun.

Up until this day in February 2007 Kate and I had enjoyed 11 very happy, incident-free years together. When we first met at Edinburgh University she was recovering from a psychotic episode that had seen her hospitalised and sectioned. At the time she warned me about the damaging nature of her illness, but I'd never really experienced it first-hand, and failed to appreciate just how powerful and destructive it could be.

As the years passed we had become more and more complacent. Kate took lithium, a mood-stabilising drug, and it worked very well. On the surface everything was normal. We married, Kate completed her law exams, we bought a flat together and moved to Edinburgh where I secured a job as a reporter on The Scotsman, and later Scotland on Sunday. Thoughts soon turned to starting a family, and when Kate's doctors advised her to come off her medication, as pregnancy and lithium do not mix, we jumped at the chance. After 12 years of good health another episode looked increasingly unlikely. Looking back, we were hopelessly naive.

When Kate first went into hospital I was unaware of the stigma still surrounding mental illness. It is very much a taboo subject, surrounded by prejudice, assumptions and ignorance. Mention it in company and people look away, uncomfortable and lost for words. Every time I mentioned bipolar, the conversation would more than likely dry up. Family and friends would do their very best to avoid talking about it. The situation isn't helped by the enormous ignorance surrounding manic depression. I kept having to explain that severe bipolar is a problem that physically affects the brain's systems that control mood swings. A sufferer will experience extreme swings in mood, from feeling very low to feeling intensely high. If left untreated, the high feelings can spiral out of control, leading to mania and then psychosis.

I found myself constantly explaining that it was a physical condition of the brain and not related to her work or "the time of year". No amount of stiff walks, physical exercise or sunny weather could prevent an episode. The best analogy I could come up with was having a bad back, sometimes it just crocked, leaving the sufferer paralysed for a few weeks. It was the same with Kate.

The loneliness of it all was the hardest part. While Kate was being cared for by an army of doctors, nurses and consultants, I was left on my own. The worst thing was that the very person that would usually help me through such a crisis, Kate, was unable to. I decided the best thing to do was to carry on as normal, so the day after admitting Kate into hospital I did what I always do on a Tuesday morning – I went into work.

In reality I was a mess. Watching my wife lose her mind was both frightening and deeply traumatic. I hadn't appreciated the effect it had had on me. In the short term I went into denial, pretending everything was going to be OK and I could cope. Working on a national newspaper, writing to deadlines and coming up with stories is highly pressurised at the best of times. I dropped into a routine of working in the day and driving up to see Kate in hospital at night. I was running on adrenalin; within a week my weight dropped a stone and although I wasn't sleeping I believed I could cope.

It sounds strange but I felt betrayed. Like a tornado, Kate's illness had ripped through our marriage, tossing us both up and leaving us to pick up the pieces. In many ways it would have been easier if Kate had suffered an accident or contracted a conventional disease where I could have discussed things through with her. By now she was taking a frightening cocktail of medications that bludgeoned her personality.

On one occasion I arrived at the hospital to find Kate heavily sedated, having just taken her afternoon medication. By that stage she was allowed day release and I had planned to take her home for the afternoon. Once in the car, Kate immediately passed into a deep, drug-induced sleep. Helping her back into the house I sat her on the sofa, where she slumped forward, mouth open, comatose for the next few hours. It was horrifying. I remember asking myself: "How did I ever let her get into this state?"

Months later, when Kate was out of hospital, she was put on a drug which made her shake. I will never forget the image of her bravely making a cup of tea while violently shaking all over.

When I tried to talk to Kate she accused me of feeling sorry for myself and called me a cry baby. It was the illness speaking but it still hurt. I tried to speak to various people but nobody really understood what I was going through. It was at this stage that I felt most vulnerable and thought about leaving the marriage.

But I was fit, healthy and able. I had a moral responsibility to look after Kate. I wasn't going to run away.

It is hard to put into words the extent of the trauma that we have gone through since that fateful day nearly three years ago. Since then Kate has suffered another psychotic episode similar to the first but practically worse. In that instance I had to drive her from Buckinghamshire to Edinburgh in a state of severe mania. We have also endured months where Kate has struggled to function while recuperating on heavy medication.

Then, this May, Kate's health dramatically improved. Thankfully it now looks like the worst is over. The doctors have finally found the right balance of drugs and Kate has started a new job. But we are by no means out of the woods. There is still the issue of children. On lithium there is a risk of damage to the baby's heart, coupled with the worry that Kate could have another episode during pregnancy. But we are learning to work through our problems. There are moments when the emotion of it all overcomes me and I feel physically and mentally shattered. But if anything the experience has made me stronger. If there is one lesson I have taken from everything, it is to keep going. The bad times can't last forever.

Will and Kate both support Stand to Reason, a charity that stands for social justice and anti-discrimination in mental health. For more information, please visit their website www.standtoreason.org.uk or e-mail [email protected].