Name	Lionel
Age	54
Education	10 O levels, 3 A levels, certificate in Law
Circumstances	Married, 3 children
Job history	Inland Revenue, followed by VSO in Botswana. Oxfam (UK), then Notting Hill Housing Trust
Job title	Chief Executive
Place of work	Newcastle City Health NHS Trust Sector Public health
Organisation size	Annual turnover: £95M. Staff: 3,500

After a nine-month period in a psychiatric hospital, I started looking for work within the NHS. I'd always believed that people with mental health problems experienced discrimination in the job market, so initially I was disinclined to disclose my psychiatric history.

The first job I landed was in personnel. Working there confirmed all my suspicions. I saw that discrimination was rife at recruitment level, and that I wouldn't have got anywhere if I had been honest.

After a while, encouraged by the enlightened response of a superior, I decided to be more open about my condition. Things picked up, and I began to do really well.

In 1999, having risen through the ranks of my NHS Trust to become Chief Executive, I experienced a serious bout of depression. Immediate colleagues were supportive, but many others seemed convinced that depression was a chronic, debilitating condition and that no one with a mental health problem could possibly be a good leader. Try telling that to Winston Churchill!

Unfortunately for me, the Chair of the organisation shared these misguided and discriminatory views, and decided that the time had come to try to get rid of me.

Major restructuring of my organisation meant that pretty soon, I was asked to go. I'm now working as a freelance consultant, and I love it.

	The experience of being a psychiatric patient was the most important piece of training and education I ever received. To have been a user of services that I went on to manage and develop was invaluable.

	I think the barriers I faced were embedded in the heart of the working culture. It just wasn't acceptable for managers or Chief Executives to have problems such as mine. This kind of denial meant that people refused to acknowledge and discuss my problems. So there was little chance of identifying my needs and requirements.