Photo and text from Mind Out for Mental Health's 1 in 4 project, 2002. One way of looking at mental health problems is as a gap between the way we view the world internally and the way we experience it externally. If there’s too big a gap we get into trouble. I went to a co-ed boarding school in the 60s and fell in love with another boy there. This was a time when people were sent to prison if they were gay. I was so ashamed, I would rather have died than admit to anyone I was queer - in fact that was the option I chose. I took an overdose at 16 and having failed to kill myself, emotionally I fell to pieces. Mental illness was treated like a variant of physical illness in those days. I was bundled off to a mental hospital and made to sit in bed wearing pyjamas, having my temperature taken. The doctors and psychiatrists showed me inkblot tests and stuff and didn’t even get close to what was really bothering me. What saved me was being referred to Finchden Manor, a therapeutic community for disturbed adolescent boys, run by the great visionary and healer George Lyward. He had already understood and foreseen the growing crisis of masculinity which has since overtaken us. When I first arrived I was shown into an oak paneled study where this stooping old tortoise of a man clasped my hand in both of his, for rather longer than was comfortable, and looked deep into my eyes. "Hmm - you’re very lonely, aren't you ?” he said. And that was it - after all the drugs and inkblot tests back at the hospital - here at last was somebody actually understood what it felt like to be inside my skin. He talked to me for over an hour with complete perception and understanding, and it felt as if the whole of my life had been transformed. Finchden looked quite scary and unsettling - with forty or more “maladjusted” boys running wild all over this rambling Elizabethan manor house. But I knew instinctively it was my one chance to choose Life, with all its uncertainty and vibrancy - rather than going back to the slow suffocation of boarding school. For the next six years Finchden Manor became my home with George Lyward protecting all of us from the pressures of the outside world - even (maybe especially) from our own parents. At 23 I left and moved to London, where I joined a band and eventually had my 15 minutes of fame in the late Seventies. I desperately wanted celebrity, to win the unconditional love and approval of a large mass of people, to validate my existence. I didn’t feel worthy or capable of winning that love one to one. My self-esteem became inseparable from my career. If you'd asked me how I was, I'd have said "the new single's doing really well, thanks." But in fact the pressures of fame proved intolerable and everything soon fell to bits - the hits stopped happening, the bands broke up and the money ran out. And when a journalist wrote that I was crap, I believed that too. Disaster followed and I became more and more withdrawn, not answering the phone, seldom going out. By 30 I had started collecting painkillers for another suicide dose. But then I had a second chance of choosing life. Reading Joe Orton’s biography I was suddenly struck by how clear it was - years before the event - that his lover would eventually kill him. The warning signs were there for anyone to see, but he simply let things slide. So I flushed my collection of pills down the toilet, phoned my manager and said "Find me a shrink, any shrink - now." I was in therapy for ten years. At the beginning, I couldn't have sustained a relationship with an ant, but within a couple of years I'd started seeing lovers again. By the time I eventually left therapy I'd been in a steady relationship for four years and my first child was born shortly afterwards. I kept quiet for a long time about the fact that I was in therapy. Having a public career profile, I didn’t think it would help my work prospects or dignity to admit to depression. Above all I didn't want anyone to imagine I was seeking to be "cured" of my bisexuality, which was very far from the case. Having had relationships with both men and women, I could happily have settled down with someone of either sex - in the event it turned out to be a woman. Although people like Woody Allen poke fun at psychotherapy, there's no question - it works. FACT: Homosexuality was not removed from the official register of mental disorders until 1973. (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual)

It's walking to the battleground that always makes me cry I've met so few folks in my time who weren't afraid to die But dawn bleeds with the people here and morning skies are red As young girls load up bicycles with flowers for the dead An aging woman picks along the craters and the rubble A piece of cloth, a bit of shoe, a whole lifetime of trouble A sobbing chant comes from her throat and splits the morning air The single son she had last night is buried under her They say that the war is done Where are you now, my son? An old man with unsteady gait and beard of ancient white Bent to the ground with arms outstretched faltering in his plight I took his hand to steady him, he stood and did not turn But smiled and wept and bowed and mumbled softly, "Danke shoen" The children on the roadsides of the villages and towns Would stand around us laughing as we stood like giant clowns The mourning bands told whom they'd lost by last night's phantom messenger And they spoke their only words in English, "Johnson, Nixon, Kissinger" Now that the war's being won Where are you now, my son? The siren gives a running break to those who live in town Take the children and the blankets to the concrete underground Sometimes we'd sing and joke and paint bright pictures on the wall And wonder if we would die well and if we'd loved at all The helmetless defiant ones sit on the curb and stare At tracers flashing through the sky and planes bursting in air But way out in the villages no warning comes before a blast That means a sleeping child will never make it to the door The days of our youth were fun Where are you now, my son? From the distant cabins in the sky where no man hears the sound Of death on earth from his own bombs, six pilots were shot down Next day six hulking bandaged men were dazzled by a room Of newsmen. Sally keep the faith, let's hope this war ends soon In a damaged prison camp where they no longer had command They shook their heads, what irony, we thought peace was at hand The preacher read a Christmas prayer and the men kneeled on the ground Then sheepishly asked me to sing "They Drove Old Dixie Down" Yours was the righteous gun Where are you now, my son? We gathered in the lobby celebrating Chrismas Eve The French, the Poles, the Indians, Cubans and Vietnamese The tiny tree our host had fixed sweetened familiar psalms But the most sacred of Christmas prayers was shattered by the bombs So back into the shelter where two lovely women rose And with a brilliance and a fierceness and a gentleness which froze The rest of us to silence as their voices soared with joy Outshining every bomb that fell that night upon Hanoi With bravery we have sun But where are you now, my son? Oh people of the shelters what a gift you've given me To smile at me and quietly let me share your agony And I can only bow in utter humbleness and ask Forgiveness and forgiveness for the things we've brought to pass The black pyjama'd culture that we tried to kill with pellet holes And rows of tiny coffins we've paid for with our souls Have built a spirit seldom seen in women and in men And the white flower of Bac Mai will surely blossom once again I've heard that the war is done Then where are you now, my son?