Carrie Thomas, 37, performance poet

If I have a really bad day I’m holding on with my finger nails “this could be just a bad day, it doesn’t have to be four months of hell.”

For me the biggest stigma of mental illness comes from myself, for not being able to sort it out on my own. But I’m proud of myself too for learning to manage my illness. I don’t stay out working all night or take on too many commitments anymore. I’ve learnt the hard way in today’s climate where you get pushed too hard.

When I’m ill my behaviour becomes uncontrollable. I don’t stop, not even to sleep. I can’t stop spending money and I won’t settle at anything. Maintaining a track of thought becomes very difficult. For a short time I’m very creative and totally confident in my capability.

I fell ill in my first term at Oxford University. It was a loss of libido in life. I was terrified, tearful and stopped going out altogether. I took on society’s attitude and castigated myself for not coping. I felt such a failure and was convinced that the university had made a mistake in taking me.

The present was horrifying, the past was irrelevant and the idea of a future too terrifying to contemplate. So I made a suicide attempt in my fifth week at university which failed because someone found me. At 19 I was diagnosed with manic depression. Since then I’ve had a few relapses and been in four different hospitals. Doing performance poetry has been my way of trying to make sense of it all. I wrote “No Bony Abnormalities” after a spell in the Maudsley and perform it whenever I can.

Generally friends have been fantastic though some find me very difficult when I’m manic. I’m not aware how pretty bloody awful I am to be with. The last episode was in 1998 triggered by a tempestuous love affair and an impossible work situation. I went right off the deep end.

I lost one friend. We’d been best friends for 15 years, but when I was last ill she told me “I can’t deal with madness”. That was hard. It has also affected relationships which didn’t develop. For instance, when a man I met at a party came back to the flat and asked what the lithium on my shelf was, I told him and never saw him again.

Sometimes friends or acquaintances say “don’t worry, it hasn’t happened yet” but I think to myself “yes it has, it’s happen a hundred fold.”

FACT: Attempted suicide has increased by 50% since 1990 (The Samaritans, 1998)

Find out more about attitudes towards mental health

Tell your story if you have experienced discrimination on the grounds of mental health