 Good evening everybody, I just first want to check that you can hear me. Yes, even at the back. Okay, that's great. So, welcome everybody to this evening's talk and especially, of course, big welcome to the speaker, Alice the Campbell, whose train was cancelled this morning so it was a rather stressful day all round but anyway, Alistair's here and he's smiling despite being on a crowded train. So, obviously I am relieved and pleased to see him and pleased to see all of you. Alistair Campbell, of course, is a very well known figure. Alistair is probably best known to most people for his life in politics for being Tony Blair's initially his campaign director. Later, his press secretary, director of communications and Tony Blair described him as a genius. We can revisit that after the talk. Obviously, Alistair has great skills as a strategist and as a communicator and I experienced those communication skills today when he was updating me on his train journey and where it was pausing. So, Alistair is an, because of his enormous skills, he's an advisor to governments all around the world in for their strategies. He's also the also the editor at large for the new European newspaper he had a career before he went into politics as a journalist. He had a brief career as a roulette. What do you call it? A roulette dealer and maybe that gave him a taste for risk. Alistair has a wonderful podcast which I'm sure that many of you listen to it's the most popular political pod podcast in the UK and listen to by people all around the world it's him. Alistair and Rory Stewart different sides of the political spectrum, and they agree to disagree agreeably. I don't quite always manage it I would say, but if you don't listen to it I can strongly recommend it. But politics is not what Alistair is here to talk to us about tonight there's an other side to Alistair's life, which is concerned with mental health, and he's been a great campaigner for changing how we approach mental health. He, as well as being a campaigner he has personal experience in that and he's written many books, and his latest book, live better is something that perhaps we should all be trying to do. Alistair has received many awards I won't go into them there just a couple that I'll mention. He's an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists and honor for his work on mental health he's a global global ambassador for mental health and of interest to this society is that he was given a global medal of honorary patronage by the Philosophical Society at Trinity College Dublin. So, you probably didn't know that but I know that Alistair's interested in football won't talk about burning. He's interested in and loves cold water swimming. He loves the bad pipes and you might get a little treat on that score later. And he hates the House of Lords. So he's As we say in Scotland he's a man of many parts, but we're going to hear about Alistair's personal journey tonight. And so I'll hand over to him to tell us about it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Yeah, I have to tell you that these governments around the world I advise the UK government is not among them. I mean you said I wasn't going to talk about politics but you've provoked me. Well, I'll tell you that the first listen thank you very much for being here, especially it's pretty cold out there. And she will come out to hear me. Glad they're on where you could be watching football on television indeed I could be watching football intelligent. But I am here and I have, as Pat said had a bit of a nightmare journey but anyway we've made it and and it's it's I've got a lot of connections with this place with this university. Rooted in my family, and one in a very close friendship. So my father, Donald. He was born almost exactly 100 years ago. The son of a crofter on the island of Tyree and he became a vet. And he was educated here at Glasgow University veterinary college. And my brother also called Donald. He was the eldest. He was a security officer at this university. But more importantly to him, and I think to the university he was the principal's official Piper. And he was employed by the university for almost three decades. And sadly, it's close at the moment but if you go to the bottom of the stairs coming down from where the fancy stuff goes on abuse all there's a very nice portrait there. So my brother, so the next time you passing just have a look and say hello to Donald. And the friendship that I mentioned was with somebody you will have heard of you will know that is Charles Kennedy whose story and connection with this university, both as a graduate and as a former rector. I'm sure many of you know very very well. All three, sadly, now dead, all three though do continue to play an important part in my life. And Charles and Donald in particular are fundamental to the theme of my speech which is Pat says is about the need to change the lens through which we view mental health and mental illness. Keeping it in the family when my mother died. She left this package of papers in which was a poem that she asked us to put on the back of the order of service. And the last line was those you love, don't go away. They won't beside you every day. When I walk, which I do quite a lot with my dog. I often have little chats with departed friends and family, among them, Charles Kennedy. So I might say to Charles, Charles quite a lot has happened since you left. Well, there are only 14 liberal Democrat MPs. Oh, dear, is Nick Clegg still in charge. No, he is now Martin Zuckerberg's right hand man. What the Facebook guy feeling me. Yes, Charles, Nick is a very, very wealthy man now. And who's the leader of the Labour Party, Ed Miliband, step down not long before I died. Well, first it was Jeremy Corbyn. Jeremy Corbyn. He could roll an hour, quite as expressively as Charles. It says next you'll be telling me to reason me and Boris Johnson went on to be a prime minister. Well, funny, you should say that Charles. No, you're not serious. Well, the thing is Charles. David Cameron, he called a referendum. He lost it. Theresa May became prime minister on the back of it. Then Boris Johnson screwed her over. He became prime minister. But since then, you don't want to know, you don't want to know. Anyway, he says about this referendum to Scotland's independent is it. I said, no Charles it was a referendum on Europe, we've got this new word now that everybody's talking about all the time and it's a complete and total catastrophe called Brexit. That's terrible I'm assuming the rest of the world in better shapes as Charles well, sadly, no it's not. Charles had two great qualities that I value perhaps above all any others in politics and indeed in life. He had moral courage, and he had wit, and he knew the value of wit. Maybe one of my favorite Charles Kennedy quotes, I'm a big fan of Piccini. Tosca is great. It's got the lot murder politics, sex intrigue. It's like the commons but with good music. And he appreciated the wit of others. And he had some wonderful stories of life on the campaign trail up in the Highlands. My favorite of which was a woman on his door he knocked to be told, I'm sorry dear, and you come back later and blow drying the cat. Now it was, it was funny to watch all the box box the interviews with the people in Fort William on the day that Charles died because virtually everyone who was interviewed said, Oh yes I love Charles I always voted for Charles. I'm thinking it's absolutely incredible he lost that election isn't it because they all voted for him. They would have seen, he would have seen the funny side of that as well, because there was a lot of pain in his defeat, but there was no bitterness I never once either heard him express bitterness is housing as leader of the liberal Democrats because he knew deep down that his colleagues had a point. They knew, and he knew they knew that unless he cracked his drinking a bigger problem was coming their way. And when he died, there were many people who said that had it not been to Charles is drinking he could have been a truly great politician. But to me, that was like saying Churchill could have been even greater. Had it not been for his black dog, and his tendency to drown in scotch, Abraham Abraham Lincoln could have been even greater. Had it not been for his melancholia Clinton could have been a near perfect presidential. Perfect presidential reputation. How do you not have such a Kennedy s sex drive that is JF Kennedy not Charles Kennedy. So Charles was respected because of the political qualities that saw him rise so young and so far. But I think Charles is one of those politicians who loved because people sensed his vulnerability and through that is humanity. One of the things I want to say tonight, we have to learn to understand and accept that alcoholism is a disease, not a lifestyle choice. Of course, every time we raise a glass that is a choice that we make, but nobody chooses to have a disease. Some get it. Some don't. Charles got it badly. Why is not here now why we miss him, and why we miss his voice in the debate on the direction of our country. And for me, though I don't do God. When drink does take somebody I do have a very strong sense of their but for the grace of God, go I anyone who's ever had a troubled relationship with alcohol knows that this is the way you must think of it. That relationship, including not drinking, that is a relationship with alcohol too. I'm not sure that once Charles is drinking starts to become a problem. And I think for both drinker and friends it's almost impossible to know when exactly that happens. I'm not sure he ever really got on top of that relationship. He did go for periods without drink. There is a rehab to get dried out. But if this disease is in you will power alone. Let alone other people telling you is obvious what you need to do. Just don't drink will not fix it. You need to find a new way of looking at the world and living your life. And that can be a lot harder. If your life is in the public eye, every move you make subject analysis and often attack. It's not at all. Not far from here post psychotic breakdown in the mid 1980s. I was led by a wonderful psychiatrist from paisley by the name of Ernest Benny to the insight, unless I resolved to stop drinking, I would likely be back in such places again and again. And I was in the intense pain that follows a breakdown and heading for a depression that would stay with me for a long time. It clicked in me, and I knew that my life had to change. Also, back then I was in journalism, as Pat said, not politics. So when I got back to work, I felt I could be completely open about my problems and even in the macho hard drinking world of Fleet Street, most colleagues were absolutely brilliant. I think Charles felt that if he admitted to a possible problem when on the rise he might never reached the top. There is actually a lot more kindness in politics and sometimes people might realize. It wasn't unreasonable to worry about what his colleagues would say and do, how the media would respond and whether it would unleash a warrant of coverage that would hurt his family. And of course, how his constituents would react. In Scotland, I think it's fair to say, as as a country, there's somewhat troubled relationship with alcohol and that relationship notion I think does apply to countries as well as to people. There's also a standard Scottish opinion that deeply disapproves of alcohol and might not have been overly sympathetic. Certainly, so he thought. Also, I used to wonder, could he actually do the things he was going to need to do to be able to say genuinely that he sorted out his relationship with booze. Too many of our conversations around that time were laced with the little tales and little tactics that I knew so well from my own days of heavy drinking. So far, I passed 11 barely touched it weekend. Did find you see me on TV last night. They find feeling okay. I'm feeling okay. And it's the opposite. This is a really strange thing. It seems to me that it's the opposite to what people do when a relationship with a partner is going wrong. When it's happening, we can only see the bad side, not the person that we fell in love with when alcohol is the partner, you only see the good side, and you look for the bits that tell you everything's actually fine. Everything's okay, and you don't need to worry. And that I think is what happened with Charles, even when the evidence to the contrary is staring you in the face every time you look in the mirror, or every time you stare at the bottom of the glass. Now, I did get Charles to come to agree to go to a place I know in the Scottish borders place called Castle Craig. And we go every new year we've got to place in Fort William in our gown therefore William Charles constituency and Charles will come and spend some time with us. And he admitted he was going through a very, very bad patch. He told me about this place and he said that he was up for it. But by the time I went back to him with dates and rates. He had other things to deal with reasons to put it off. He had a sick father he wanted to help. He had an important speech to make at a meeting here at the university and a planning meeting for the next election wherever it might be there was always a reason, and so it went on. So I made my phone and it's, I don't know about you but I can't delete dead people in my phone, instead of my phone as Charles K. And I'm sitting at my desk one day and I got a text from Charles K saying that he died. And could I call on this phone to speak to Carol. Carol McDonald was his friend and his partner. He was worried about him after speaking to one the phone. She driven up to see him, and she found him dead. And she phoned around family, so forth and then she phoned me and she said, I know who would have wanted to know before it started to leak out. I think I knew why she wanted me to know. Yes, because I'm quite good at communication to help with the announcement, which I did. And also, I think Charles wanted me to be among the first to know that his relationship with alcohol had ended. It was over, and he want me to use that to keep my own relationship with alcohol on the straight and narrow. When I've got that poem of my mother's in my mind, the new walking along the people you've lost to their Charles is often there, along with others that I've known who fallen victim to this evil disease and he'll be urging me, push the urge aside. It also be urging me to keep heading up to the most beautiful place on earth, which is the Scottish Highlands, where now he rests in a little cemetery at Clunes, where Fiona and I make an annual pilgrimage, and I play on the pipes, the lament that was played at his funeral. His memory also pushes me on to campaign to change, to fight for a new relationship between our culture and alcohol, one which has to be led by politicians understanding that unless we face up to the damage being reeked across families and communities, in our National Health Service, killing our courts and prisons, then there'll be many, many more Charles Kennedys to come, not so well known, not so talented, but victims like him, of a disease that all too often we fail to see as one. And it's not enough for politicians to say, as they do, as indeed you may have heard of Matt Hancock of late. Matt Hancock once introduced me to a conference on mental health said some very nice things about changes that I was campaigning for. And he said, isn't it great that we're all talking about mental health more than we used to. And I said, no, to be honest, I'm fed up of talking about it. But unless we do keep talking about it, we don't get the change that we know that we need because my worry is the services that we need to match the demand simply on there. And I sometimes worry that governments use these awareness and anti stigma campaigns, welcome though they are as a substitute for rather than accompaniment to the services that we need. So on stigma, I think we're going forwards on services in many parts of the UK. I fear we're going backwards. And the reason I knew about this place castle Craig near peoples and felt that it would be right for Charles was because it was where my son column sorted out his troubled relationship with alcohol and a regular is not touched drink now for almost 10 years. And I often wonder what we would have done if we'd not been able to pay as many alcoholics and their families simply cannot a castle Craig is a place where mainly British alcoholics are treated with mainly Dutch drug addicts. And some of them are there, sent at public expense by a government, which understands not just the addiction is an illness, but the long term savings can be made for the state. If we invest in treating it as such, even for the hardest cases. We will relax when they go back to the Netherlands, but many do not. And when those that don't are able to rebuild their lives, become healthy productive citizens again, we all gain from that. And I wish that our governments could be as enlightened as they are. So now, my brother, Donald. This is another who died to young, he was just 62. And in the eulogy I gave at his funeral. I thanked this university specifically. And I want to tell you why. Because of his farewell party, which wasn't far from years over in the library, just over a year before he died. He was retiring early because of these breathing problems. And proudly, but as the official Piper to the university. Among the students he piped out graduations he said, I've done 7,200 doctors. And I said, yeah, and you've seen quite a few of them since because don't have schizophrenia. He was in a crisis period in his life where he needed medical help, and often in some of the hospitals around here. But the reason I singled out Glasgow University for praise. And it's one of the reasons I readily accepted that's invitation to speak today is because at this university. He was never seen as a schizophrenic. He was seen as an employee who had schizophrenia. And there is a big, big difference. He didn't define himself by his illness, and nor did the university. His work was incredibly important to his well being. He loved being in a team in the security department, wandering around telling students to take their feet off the desks. He was the greatest that went with his position of being the official Piper of the university. He liked ritual. He liked performing. He liked being something. And above all, he loved his music. The last time this is one of these strange wheels and wheels things in life. The very last time that Donald played the pipes was alongside me at Charles Kennedy memorial service in this very university. He played it well. He was struggling for breath, even before we started and I said to him, listen, I can do this on my own. And he said, no, I'll do it. I like Charlie. We came down. We led the procession into the quadrangle. The third the way around you have to stop to fight the breath and I finished alone. And he never played again. He lost his work, and then he's piping to physical ill health after doing so well for so long with his mental health felt pretty cruel. One of Donald's psychiatrists once said this to me. He said, Donald is my greatest success story. He holds down his job. He owns his own flat. He drives his own car as a passion for his music. He has more friends than you and I do. He has a positive attitude almost all of the time. And that last bit was certainly true. He would sometimes say, you know what, I got given a bit of a rough deal, but you've got to make the best of it. And it helped that especially Latterley, he did do God and his faith was certainly a comfort. And I just want to say a few words about schizophrenia. It is a truly horrible illness. There are no crutches. There are no bandages. There are no scars. It's invisible. It is literally all in the mind. People who have it are often pariahs shunned in the workplace, derided and abused on the streets. And because of the stigma is at the wrong end of the queue for research, so that those on a lifetime of the kind of anti psychotic drugs that Donald took live on average, 20 years less than the rest of us. My dad Donald was 82 when he died. My brother Donald was 62 bang on the average. Imagine if we knew that the drugs we take for asthma or for diabetes shortened our life by 20 years rather than kept us alive for longer. We really think we would accept that. What do you think we might actually find the capacity to move with the speed we moved to find a COVID vaccine and find better treatments and cures. As well as my own experience of mental health, and that of friends and family. The other reason I do feel that my campaigns and communication background is useful in this area is because language is so important. Please about language. First one, please never use the phrase commit suicide when we talk about someone who ends their own life, which is the ultimate in mental health. We commit sins and crimes. That's where the phrase came from. It is neither sin, nor now a crime. So I wish we'd stop referring to it as such. We're not referring to schizophrenia as a split personality. It's an awful cliche. It's awful is the way that people use the word schizophrenic. When they mean there are two views of something. When somebody has a good mood, and then a bad mood, or when your football team plays one in the first half and badly in the second half, which I'm sure most of you hope will happen to England on Saturday. There's no number of butler that was that. Don't tell anyone with you. Schizophrenia is a severe illness in which the workings of the mind becomes separated from the reality around you. And it can be utterly terrifying. Imagine a cacophony of voices in your head, telling you to do things that you normally know you shouldn't do. Then imagine plugs and light switches, road signs and shop signs talking to you. Imagine sitting in a pub or on a train and thinking that every single word being said and thought by everyone around you is about you. Then imagine snakes coming out of the floor and cats charging through the ceilings. Donald had all that and more when he was in crisis. Often this happens a lot with people with severe mental illness when he felt good and he thought he could wean himself off the medication. That's when you tend to go into crisis. But imagine the strength of character it takes to deal with all that in a way that had so many people love him so much, not out of sympathy because he didn't want sympathy, but out of an appreciation of the real him unclouded by illness. All such have had that and never say it's not fair. I said it. I said it a lot for more than 40 years. From the first day my dad and I saw Donald lying in a military psychiatric hospital. Absolutely terrified. And his eyes, not the eyes that we knew. Not fair. Why him. I said it. I said it a lot. He never did. Not then, not ever, not once. Imagine being so keen to be in the Scots Guards doing well, but then this illness career terminated the prestige he had of playing in the Scots Guards first battalion pipe band gone. Never said a single word against the army. Just ended badly and got through it, got on with it, adapted and try to live the best life he could resilience, fortitude, courage, kindness, not letting even a horrible illness destroys zest for life and love of people and always looking for the positives. So he and Charles, and people who share their struggles they're the reason I campaign to change the lens on the way we think, talk and act in relation to mental health campaign to eradicate discrimination to end the inequality of access which means that only a fraction of those who are suffering from talking therapy actually get it to deliver on maximum waiting times which exist in theory, particularly right now, and not being met, and yet so few of us shout and scream in the way we do about cancer, or any to end the dissent disincentives in the system, which means mental health is the service most likely to be cut in times of austerity to make the words in the NHS Constitution. There should be parity between physical and mental health actually mean something to stop people being shunted around the country for treatment to stop mentally ill kids being locked up in police cells because through no fault of their own, the police have come the mental health front line to accept that prisons are filled with people who will be better off in possible than in jail to ask ourselves why mental illness is a research desert, compared with physical illness to urge the governments to address more in mental health today as a way of saving money tomorrow to develop a preventative mental health service, not as we have now a mental illness service so stretched that a sick man woman or child has to be an absolute crisis before urgency is applied. Also, if I can move to the final argument about how we can change the lens, not just to speak up for the mental ill, there's people who need support, but to speak up for the mentally ill as often major contributors to our life and times. Anything I've achieved in my career, I do not feel I've done so as a daily telegraph journalist once put it, despite a history of mental health, but because of it. The resilience that comes from building back from breakdown, the ability to deal with setback, a thick skin. You'll see that when the questions come. Loyalty to others who've been close to me and who stayed loyal to me, the energy and creativity that comes from emerging from a depressive episode. I genuinely believe that if it had not been for my breakdown and the insight it gave me and the ongoing depression after that, I would not be able to do the job that I did for the Labour Party as long as I did it with the energy and the commitment I had, nor take on all the things I do now. The reason why I say that is because of the yardstick that the breakdown gave me for pressure. I still get depressive episodes, I still get anxiety, I still get very stressed, but I find quiet space, and I say to myself, if the breakdown was nine out of 10 bad, how bad is this? Now I'm not recommending psychotic breakdowns in the middle of Hamilton at all, but I am saying that sometimes it's too simplistic to think of mental illness only in terms of the suffering and the pain. I honestly think mine made me what I am, and I'm proud to talk about it because I'm proud that I learned from it and use it to this day and get good out of bad is one of my rules of life. Now to me, the most dreaded place on earth is the comfort zone. My least favourite word is content. My mother was a very content person, and there is nothing wrong with that. It was all she ever wanted to be happy in her life, which she was, and to care for her family and others, which she did. And she would often ask me, why do you put yourself under so much pressure? And the answer is, as you would shake her head as I gave it, that pressure can create physical, emotional, psychological change, which helps focus, sharpens the mind, gives greater energy to the body, and improves performance at whatever it is you're trying to do. And my mother would say, you're absolutely rigour me. Now, when King Lear was on at the National Theatre in London, I did a talk there on power and madness, with a guy called Namiye Nassir Gami, who was a professor of psychiatry in Boston in the United States. And he said, normal people are naturally conformist. They go through education and career paths in which the goal is often to be liked and to achieve, according to the norms of a previous generation, parents who want to keep them safe and secure, teachers who want to get them through standard exams, and he believes, gaming, that this normality obsession discourages the development of skills that are needed to excel, and that great achievement, he says, requires something beyond the normal. And he argues further that innovation and creativity are explicitly a reflection of mania. First, there are four main features of mania, increased rapid thought, increased physical and mental activity, increased likelihood of risk taking. Increased confidence and self esteem. And when taken to excess, as I know those characteristics can be dangerous and potentially even deathly. There's enormous advantage in them, when the mania is more or less under control, because by definition, increased rapid thoughts and increased activity enable you to work harder get more done. So provided the work is good, and the decisions are okay. This should in theory lead to more success and achievement. And I've heard, may have heard of this is a David Brailsford cycling genius transform British cycling won the tour of France, etc, etc, etc. When I asked him once what other walk of life he'd learned most from, he said, psychiatry, no doubt about it. He described his hiring of a psychiatrist by the name of Steve Peters, as the single most important, the single most important active innovation, I ever did, definitely an innovation, not just the marginal game. And he said this, there is definitely a link between hyper achievement and being a slightly, or even seriously unbalanced personality. David Brailsford came across Peters, Peters was dealing with psychopathic psychopathic personalities at Rampton I security psychiatric hospital. He said that a lot of the things he knew applied to our right our riders. I'm not saying they're all psychopaths he said, but what makes them special is that their minds don't work in the same way as most peoples. They are extreme, extreme ambition, extreme talent, extreme drive and ego, but there are risks with that risks to them as individuals and to the team. They can be strong, but they're also vulnerable. And Steve he said Steve Peters was brilliant at making the strong side stronger and the vulnerable side, less vulnerable. But to move from sport to politics. Who is the greatest political figure of our lifetime. And if I did a survey of that and show of hands. I think many of you would say, and I would Nelson Mandela. For much of his life. He was labeled an extremist, not least by the UK government of today. He certainly had an extreme mindset. Is it normal to be able to endure 27 years in jail and come out smiling and for forgiveness. Is it normal to be able to cope with the torture of knowing you may never see your family again, and what's more that they're being abused and how you're outside, while you're inside. That's extremely who usually wins surveys on questions about who is the greatest Britain, or the greatest ever Prime Minister. It doesn't have to be Tony Blair, but it's Winston Churchill. Who is the American president, that all American contenders, apart from the narcissist and chief Donald Trump feel they have to Lord as the greatest ever president Abraham Lincoln, both were depressives in Churchill's case of the manic variety. Florence Nightingale, Marie Curie, all had what doctors today would define as mental illness. Now just imagine the world in which those five have never been able to fulfill their potential because their mental frailties have been viewed as overwhelming obstacles. It would be a very different place. They were all massive change makers and their influence is still with us today. Florence Nightingale single handedly reinvented the basic concept of health care, as well as challenging the idea that women could not be medical professionals, but she had a personality that today will be described as bipolar. And that's the gaming is written a book which he sets out where he sees a strong link between depression and realism, which can contribute to leadership skills required in times of challenge and difficulty. The thing about crisis he says is that the depressive imagines the worst and works to avoid it. The optimist believes they can handle the crisis and everything will turn out fine. When Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was pursuing a policy of appeasement, Churchill was constantly warning him about the danger of Hitler, and the need for a stronger repose. It was a steady message through the premierships of McDonald, Baldwin and Chamberlain. Now were, gave me asked the question, were his depressive instincts making more realistic about the threat that Germany posed and Chamberlain optimism, binding him, blinding him to reality. I would say the same I should add about George W Bush and Tony Blair, both non depressive optimists with regard to Iraq, but that is something perhaps I shall address another day. Now Lincoln, his law partner, William Herndon is one of my favorite opening lines in any book that's ever been written at the thousands about Lincoln. He was with melancholy drip from him with every step that he took. But he also said, Lincoln had an inner strength as tough and now the season hickory would, and the increasing hostility that he said spoken politics provoked as the country drifted into war seemed to bounce off him like peas from a pea shooter against the wall. That I would argue is resilience through depression. Ganey believes that Martin Luther King and he wins all the surveys about what was the greatest speech that was ever delivered, even though none of us can ever remember anything apart from the first line about the dream. He said that he became a great leader, not despite being a manic depressive in his view because of it. He argued, gave him energy and high self esteem, which contributed to his charisma, which is important in any campaign leader. And he made him forward thinking, which is important in strategy. And his depressive side outweighed the manic side often and the qualities associated with depression, particularly the understanding of human emotional pain allowed him to be an exceptional empathetic team lead leader. It's not unusual for anxiety to go hand in hand with depression. Charles Darwin. And here is an extraordinary fact. Charles Darwin was born on exactly the same day as Abraham Lincoln. Every the 12809 that was quite a day for the world. Charles Darwin had chronic panic attacks that often left him if he had to speak in public in floods of tears palpitations skin information, agriphobia, blinding headaches and agonizing stomach cramps. For 25 years, he consulted more than 20 doctors in the vein bed to find a cure. But Darwin's illnesses accompanied this restless intellect that couldn't accept the status quo, and it was constantly asking the question, what if. So the reason it's important to understand all this is that a lot of the stigma that's still attached to anything that smacks of abnormal mental activity. And that means that so many more organizations in my view are missing out on having potential and using the full potential in their midst. And it's really strange this because sport is leading the way. Business is second. And politics is that when it should give them the scale of the state of the world. It should be the other way around. Just think about it. Clearly, the demands in sport are predominantly physical. And it's now seen as absolutely routine. The top sportsmen and women to have proper psychological and psychiatric support in politics and business by contrast, where the challenges are much more mental than physical. No such attitude change has taken place. It's still considered to be an admission of weakness, even to suggest that you yourself are suffering any kind of mental strain. The stress under which political and business leaders work the hours, the volume of decisions the nature of issues they have to deal with the shocks and setbacks, the abuse, the time spent separated from family. We must acknowledge the potential negative psychological impact of that and try to do something about it, but most leaders just plow on. So that is odd that most top athletes will have proper support, but politicians operating under massive pressure think they can do without it. Similarly, as regards the politician with whom I've spoken most this evening Charles will never really know if you might have benefited from such support. So there you go. I hope I may have persuaded some of you to get involved in campaigning on this because it's through campaigning that we can make change. And it's needed more than ever because the campaign has gone forward, and I worry it's now going back. I honestly hope that one day before I'm gone, we can look back and we can wonder, did we really used to accept medications that took 20 years of people's lives. Did we really used to think that the mentally ill were more likely to be violent than the general population. When the truth is, they're more likely to be victims of violence than the general population. I think it was okay to discriminate on the workplace on the grounds of someone admitting to mental health problem past or present are still happens all too often today. And I actually I call for a bit of reverse discrimination in this area. I speak to a lot of businesses. And the best of those businesses are filling the gap left by government because they know that if they look after the mental health and well being of their employees, they'll be a better firm. And I'll argue to them. If you have two identical CDs in front of you, same level of school qualifications, same degree, same sorts of interests, both done the gap year thing, and the interning and the volunteering. They always got six months that went a bit missing, and they admit it was because they had a breakdown, or they're in rehab, even if they were in prison, whatever it might be. And I will say, go for that one. We're looking for in people that we employ honesty and resilience. They're the qualities that we get from somebody who's able to put that down there and not feel imprisoned by that stigma themselves to join in campaign for change. One day, hopefully, we will have that parity between mental and physical health that today exists in the words of the National Health Service Constitution, but not in the practice of government or the reality of health care. And only in my view, if we can genuinely say there is parity between physical mental health only then can we really say we are a genuinely civilized country. Thank you very much for listening. I understand that some of you like to get a bus home now. And I have to have two minute pause to allow those who want to get a bus home to get their bus home, and then I'll come back and take questions from those who don't want to get a bus home. I'm not going to be offended by any of you who wants to get the bus home. However, you will miss at the end me playing the lament that I mentioned on the pipes, and I might even play something a bit happier. So is that we don't all go home crying. So thanks for listening for now bus bus people leave and we're back in two minutes. Thank you. Okay. Thank you will now start the Q&A session just before we do that. I should have told you about the fire escapes. One out there and one out there and one out of the back but it's a bit late in the day. So, questions for Alison raise your hand. There's a man with a microphone Russian Georgia. Good evening. I believe the Scottish government was one of the first to introduce minimum pricing for alcohol. Do you think that's liable to have any influence on alcoholism. And if you do think it's going to be successful. Should it be more widely adopted by other governments. I want to welcome this gentleman about this. As you went out, he told me it wasn't going for buses going to pee. So, welcome back. I, I'm even I was rather inconveniently spelled from the Labour Party to vote in the Devon European elections I'm still 100% Labour. My Labour friends were a bit feed off with me when I very evolvedly supported what the SMP government was trying to do. Because there is, you know, a lot of people here to connect to the university believe in data believe in research there is so much research showing that there is a link between pricing and consumption. And there's more that this idea. Yes, of course, if you're better off. You are more likely to withstand the economic pain but actually it does force you to change that as well. So it's all it's a cultural as well as a health thing. And we were just talking a minute ago about the, you think about this. This is just to understand how change can come provided governments take a lead and do stuff. So, take smoking. If this was as 25 years ago, I could be standing up here. And the chances are might be smoking the chances are a good quarter of you might be smoking now. I would all be breathing in. Right, there's not a single person who came in tonight, who even thought about lighting up a cigarette once they walked through the door. Do you know why that happened, because one government decided to give it a go. And you know what government was. Ireland, the Irish government, and we followed and then others followed and now you know you still go to some countries I was in Turkey recently and I think it's horrible. Going to a restaurant people at the next table smoking because it was and it's such a shock. Now so that I'm saying that you have to take those steps to make change. And, you know, all the are and of course these lobbies the alcohol lobbies are so powerful. You know, so they they are into governments, the chances of the current government in Westminster doing it, zilch absolutely zero they completely own lots of barrel by all these big corporate vested interests. I think it would have an impact wouldn't be the only thing you'd have to have a lot of other stuff that definitely won't do. He's choosing the questions. You're you are right. Right, just just before you just before the question. Can I just check that the people at the back can hear Alastair or do I need to get him back here. You can you can hear him okay. Okay, great. What was that. Yeah, I didn't notice that we're quite young those hands that went up. Okay, maybe if you should I stand here. Yeah. Okay, yes. One of a dozen psychiatrists I can spot in this audience but and what was your take on, you know, have we have overextended the idea of mental health and mental well being and doesn't detract from people with the severe illnesses like your brother. You know, with a mother who is schizophrenia. And the problem is, that is a real discontinuity from everyday mental health I could not understand what was going on in my mother's mind. Thinking Bible John was at the door and hearing voices right. I think there are everyday mental health problems that there are things that are kind of off the scale discontinuity and can be explained by everyday feelings. So the campaign for mental health, and maybe deliver our response to those with the civilians problems. How do we strike the balance. And I think through, I think through the, the normalization of the discussion about it. So I always have if you look at the charity sector example you've got charities that just deal with depression. You've got mine which kind of goes right across the piece and you've got something like rethink which is very very focused on psychosis and schizophrenia. And what I would define as the very serious mental illnesses. But I think that if you think, you know, I've never had cancer. Okay, so I don't know what that is like. I've had a bad knee. I don't know that that's on an illness scale. I'm kind of over here and the cancer's over here. And I think likewise if we can have that same level of normalization around the debate about mental health, and I want to think about his mental health not mental illness. We can, we can deal with that. And actually it would help as I think, if we have that preventative service that I'm talking about where the people down here, starting to feel a bit odd, a bit of anxiety, a bit of low mood where might be, if they can get some sort of understanding and encouragement it means you can put way more resources into the stuff over here. So I totally take the point and I can see where you're coming from but I think actually destigmatizing will deal with that. I want some women and when I say I want some women I mean, I mean I am away from home but I didn't mean that at all I meant, but after this I want a woman. So you have to do with me at the moment I'm afraid another psychiatrist. I think it's, it's important to stress that alcoholism is not a lifestyle choice I agree with that. The juxtaposition of lifestyle choice with illness is interesting because illness on the other hand is suggesting that it's something that just happens to us and there's a lot of awareness now. And Gabel Matt is a big name out there, for example, in terms of understanding alcoholism as a response to something and trauma is the word that's often used. And that is suggesting it's not just an illness that happens to us but we can think about it as a response to circumstances and engage with the circumstances and clearly you did that in your own life very clearly because there was some choice that you're able to activate and connect to a sense of agency. So that juxtaposition can leave us with a sense, if it's not a lifestyle choice, it's an illness, which can make it difficult to look in that broader way. Well, I'm going to take a note of that. I'm going to rewrite the speech for the next time I deliver it. I think that's quite a good point actually. I think, I think maybe it's because I was talking about Charles. I think with Charles, I did feel he has had it in him. I felt there's something there that I completely get your point about the trauma I think that people get get driven to a point where they're seeking solace in some kind of addiction to drink, whether it's drugs or gambling, whatever it might be. So yeah, I actually, I completely agree with that point, just I didn't make it myself. Thank you. But where's my woman? Okay, I'll ask you a question. No, no. No, I want a different woman. No. I can ask this question because I hadn't met Alastair till tonight. And he thought I was a man before he met. No. No, as I just would like to ask you about one of the things you said at the very beginning about Scotland, having a complex relationship with alcohol and one might think that that tends sometimes to be a feature of northern nations Finland, Norway, for example. Why is it a cold. Well, or it might be the dark. It might be the dark. I mean, I think the other thing to remember about when you look at the data on drinking. If you if you just go through I can't remember the stats off the top of my head. But if you actually remove the fact that there are, you know, several million people in the UK who either for reasons of choice or religion are T total, never touching alcohol. Right. So when you see these figures about average alcohol consumption, it's higher than we think because you've got to take that out. And I do think I might have some heavities as I said, and I saw that very, very big cultural divide. A lot of people didn't drink at all. And those who drank and drank incredibly heavily. It creates all sort of difficulties and divisions within within a community but I do think that I think the northern, the Nordic thing is probably related to climate and to light and all that stuff. Yeah, as a lady who's not part rise to the back. She might be a part. Hi, I'm a secondary school teacher. And we had identified I think a couple of years ago, a lack of resilience in school children, which has obviously got much worse over the last few years. And I was taken by the things you said about mental health building resilience, whereas one of the problems we seem to have is lack of resilience escalating mental health. I wondered if you had any thoughts about that. How old are your kids? Secondary school, do you say. Yeah, okay. Well, the first thing you do, you go back to school and say this resilient stuff, Alastair Campbell's got a book coming out in June. Right, and it's called but what can I do, and how are all our young people got to take over and change the world and a lot of it's about the resilience you need to do that. But I think you're right. And I think there's, I think there's a lot of stuff going on in the world that we think we understand but I'm not convinced that we do. So for example, we talk about anxiety, this sort of seems to be this kind of epidemic of anxiety particularly amongst young women, suicide nine biggest killer of young men. And we, we've, we've persuaded ourselves and it may be right that social media is a massive problem here. That may be right. I don't know. But we've persuaded ourselves that's right. And I think all we've done in doing that is give ourselves a kind of, a kind of excuse. And especially my generation, I think we can sort of give it that excuse and say, well, it's something we don't really understand. Because our parents didn't know we had to kind of get on deal with now they're having to do that. But actually I think what we're doing is underestimating deeper reasons why it is proving so hard to be resilient. And the single most obvious one is poverty. What do you think the climate crisis is having a terrible effect on, we think about I'm 65 right I'm probably going to live on another 20 years or whatever. Right, the world's probably not going to end in that time. But you know, let's start thinking a bit longer term you really do start to feel that kind of existential threat. So I think, I think we're not, I think we're giving ourselves a superficial analysis of what's happened to these kids. But I think I look, can you teach somebody to be resilient. You can certainly teach people about resilience. And I think we should think about about doing that with kids we do with our own kids. So, I don't know, I presume the Scottish, I mean none of the curriculum change the change but you know I'm every time I see Michael gove, when he was Education Secretary wrecking the schools. But also, you know, we've got to kids have got to become more resilient. Can we teach is there anything we can teach to do that I think we can. Right. Okay, we have an online question from Dallas Carter. Was it a mistake to close most psychiatric hospital in the 1990s in favor of care in the community. And should we be replacing the bed for lost, even if not in separate hospitals. Well, I think it was. I was a journalist then, and Mrs. Thatcher is the Prime Minister and I can't pretend that I ever found it very easy to give her the benefit of the doubt. I think there was a, I think there was, I think there was good motivation within it, but also possibly a bit of bad motivation as well I think it's, I think the good motivation was the feeling that these were institutions, bit like our families that were built a very, very long time ago. And do you know by the way do you know where the phrase round the Ben comes from. You know my mother went to said I was barman she used to say sometimes I'd run the bend as well. And round the bend was a planning thing is that the asylum rules were put where people can see them around the bend outside out of mind. So that was that was kind of and that was a good to sort of say you know we're not shutting them off into places that we don't recognize as being part of society. But the problem was that the, the much wanted care in the community wasn't really there. So if it's like at the moment, go back to the question about the, the impact that these campaigns might have the one I'll tell you one genuine worry is that we're making people think, yeah, maybe I should think about that maybe I'm going to go find the help isn't there chances I feel worse that you feel more isolated and so I think we're in a similar position there so I think care in the community. Great idea. Great idea provided the carers there. I think he became an excuse basically for family staff to pick up most of the pieces. Well, that's a cool question. Thank you very much for an excellent talk, but this is actually the second time I have read and now listen to your talk because by accident today I went into check up on your CV on the web and found your speech. I enjoyed it. Good. I enjoyed it better when you spoke it. However, my question is, is that compliment or not. You could, you could have a wee bit of advice. You could have put up a couple of slides with the four steps we need to use in the lens to change this lens and the names of the five people. Especially made mental notes as I did the piece of paper, and I mean, I will re look at your speech. However, the question is, but I will take a board. Yeah. So slides. I always say power power point corrupt power corruption power point corrupt either slides and what was your other one pictures. I'll give you the criticism later. Thank you. Yeah, the in your speech, you did say we should not use the term committed suicide. What term should we use because my, my nephew at the age of about in his early 40s to end as a vet 60 was very successful as a vet committed suicide on a Sunday night after a very good Friday meeting with the rest of his family, who are both two daughters, two sisters, one's a GP, and the other is a GP who trained as a psychiatrist. Yet this lad committed suicide. What should we say, what did he do in the end of his life by suicide. He killed himself. He committed it's, he just should have ended ended his life by suicide. Yeah, he ended his own life he took his own life he killed himself is to commit, omit underlines the fact that it was a crime. You know you commit burglary you commit murder you commit manslaughter, or you commit a sin. Now there may be some parts of the church and still think suicide is in. So, calling it suicide is fine. Um, you know, I listen, these things are, it's not a big it's not a huge thing, but it's sort of, I know people who've been affected by suicide who survived suicide. And they feel it. So I think it's, it's, and the, you know, I do think language is so important in this field is how you make change. Yes. Hello. Hi. So, what should services for people with schizophrenia look like. I spent a great deal of my life working with people with schizophrenia as a psychologist attempting to properly implement community care against all the odds. The question was what, what services for people with schizophrenia. What should they really look like in your view now. This is not going to be honest when I mean when when my brother died, my sister and I would we drew this, we would do this map in around the UK of all the places he'd been in hospital. Okay. And some of them were really, really, really good, really good. And so, but I think that one of the reasons he settled here was actually because he had all the things that you need to be able to support what he was trying to do with his own illness. I mentioned the job and I know that's not possible for everyone, but it's possible for a lot of family was incredibly important to him and again for a lot of people that's not possible, but he had that as well. He had a very, very, very good relationship with a very, very good GP. And I think that the, a lot of GPs are terrific. But I think that when it comes to serious mental illness, you need, you do need to keep up to date what's going on, but but ultimately he had that he had that relationship. And he also had, that's the reason I mentioned university he had this ability, they had the knowledge that if he became ill, it was not, it was not going to lose his job. But it's the layers of support in the community, I think. Now you can, a lot of people can't have those because some people, they get kicked out of the family. Or they get, you know, because of the, they do something they end up in prison they get, they get ostracized. But I think if you have all those layers and then of course the other thing you do need, the other thing I really do wish that you had was medication that didn't have the awful side effects and didn't take years of your life. So all of that is still a horrible illness and it's only going to be all those. I think that could at least alleviate it. Just a point of information, we know that there's more depression, the further north to go in the world. And that there's more schizophrenia, the further south go. But also in terms of alcohol. And the next lecture in this series is about Robert Burns, who wrote in one of these letters to a friend that I think in Edinburgh about drinking a bottle of port to Curie's hangover. So there's a connection again between, you know, alcohol and culture and creativity. That's the hair of the dog, isn't it? Yeah, very, very, very black dog. Very large dog as well. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I was wondering, there's also a relationship between alcohol and behaviour in Scotland and the further north to go in the world, but the further into Europe you go. You know that relationship, for example, in France, there isn't a relationship between alcohol and bad behaviour, domestic abuse, and all the rest of them. So I was wondering what kind of solution she would offer for that. I don't know. I think it is about I think it is this cultural thing about Britain. I think we're way too tolerant of it. I think we're way too tolerant of antisocial behaviour. If you, I think that, right, so for example this football match on, on Saturday, France, England. I've got a house in France and spent a lot of time in France, and you're absolutely right. You can see you can go to, you can see people in French bars who might be having too much to drink. But they don't seem to want to, they don't seem to feel that it gives them the right then to kind of be imposing themselves on the entire community. So almost like we give people permission to be a complete pain in the ass if they've had too much to drink. We don't like challenging them. I think what I think is about, I think we've, and I do think this is a marketing thing, I think the alcohol culture has managed to persuade us that it's impossible to have a good time unless it's related to drinking. If you're, and you can't fail or succeed. So you watch, how this World Cup thing, you watch how many of the commentators say, well, Bill McCown used to, didn't he say, you know, they'd be dancing in the streets, right? But they talk about it, you know, and we'll be, we'll all be celebrating with a drink tonight. Well, why? And I think it's a culture. There's a lot of research done on the power of marketing and advertising. There's a reason why companies spend millions and millions and millions on advertising, because it works. So we ban smoking advertising. We ban smoking sponsorship. And that's another of the reasons why we've changed the culture on it. And I think until we do the same, if we break that link between, you use the word behavior, we have a culture where any aspect of behavior is covered by alcohol. Somebody dies or sound, have a drink. Babies born, wet the baby's head. You know, it's, and you're right, the French, the Germans, Germans, I think used to do it quite a lot. I don't do it now. Didn't really answer the question about what you do, but that's definitely not a woman. That's a man. There's a woman with a red coat there. Yeah. Thanks. Just to say, first of all, I was at Charles's Memorial where your brother played and it was a real honor. So thank you very much. Okay. They sounded wonderful. My question was about the challenge that you're setting to us and the way forward you've talked about how the stigma in society regarding mental health has improved, but in the workplace you alluded to things like the Equality Act that protect people, but do you think there needs to be further legislative change to move things forward? I'm not sure it doesn't. I'm not sure it doesn't need more legislation. I think it needs leadership. I think it needs legislation that exists for people to be aware of it, but it also needs leadership, particularly in the in the business world and to be fair, a lot of the businesses and I doing it. I was at an event during lockdown at an all staff event for the Bank of Ireland in Dublin. 3,000 people on it. And the woman, the new CEO, a woman called Francesca McDonough, she opened the meeting by saying we've asked Alison to speak today because we've learned a lot about you guys, the staff during the lockdown. And from this day forward, our strategic priority as a company is changing. The number one strategic project our company from the bank from today on is the mental health and wellbeing of the staff. Because if we don't get that right, we're not going to fix the other stuff. And I was like, wow, I've never heard that before from a big employer. So I've now used that I go around. And it's interesting that banks, the financial sector is way ahead of a lot of the others. And I think the reason twofold one, nearly all of them had suicides during the crash. And two, they know every time that happened it cost them a lot of money. They've got to go and get new talent and what have you so they thought we've got to do something. And they are doing stuff. So I think I don't think that needs legislation I think it needs leadership. Yeah, I think we'll take one, one more question from the lady in red. Just, thank you for this evening. I'm just thinking maybe a wee bit about Charles Kennedy and then drinking culture. Do you think that the drinking culture and the number of bars and the houses of parliament has any better as in this, you know, it's less than any comments on past or present practice and availability. Well, the gentleman who gave you the microphone said, made that exact same point when we were talking down here. I mean, it's, it's bonkers. It's absolutely bonkers. It's a workplace. And at a time when the sort of public respect or lack of the parliament is so, so high disrespect is such an obvious thing to do. Just don't have them. If you're at work, you want to go to the public. Okay, you need places you need meeting places at meeting rooms. You want to pay you can still see the paintings and the nice architects all there. But it's just an absurdity. It's an absolute absurdity. And when I worked there when I was a journalist. And that was when I was drinking. I tell you what I did. This is back to the cultural point. I persuaded myself that going to the bar was work. I did. I did. I persuaded myself that going to the bars were just as in the last couple of weeks. I persuaded myself that sitting on the sofa watching for four matches a day, as long as my laptop's on my lap. Right, is working from home. Right. It's been a lot of working from home in the last few weeks. And it's even asking the question. It's absolutely mad. And it just encourages that I think I'm going to say I think I think politicians drink less than they did. Because when I was a journalist, you can watch politics and bounce off the walls. Right, seriously, watch them bounce was going to vote. It's a kind of unspoken thing. We didn't really write about it much was today, somebody get the phone out and be on social media straight away. So I think the politicians are much more careful about drinking. But that may mean that they're doing other things. Okay, I say things. Maybe. Oh, maybe on that. I want to leave time for Alastair to give us a scroll on the pipes, as he promised. Yeah, I think we can. Certainly because she has said I have to. We can call a halt to the question so first I'm going to thank Alastair, but then save your applause until after we have the tune. What would you like me to play a part on the lament? I can't end with a lament. It's a nice tune though. A happy tune as he said you can choose it. You mean you don't know your back butchers. I don't know what you're saying. So I'll set this off. It might be a bit weird. Okay, just before you go and get the pipes Alastair. I'm sure you'll agree that we've had a very thoughtful and illuminating talk. It's given us a lot to think about the lack of services the lack of research, the stigma attached to mental health. 12 years of Tory government. And also our inability to deal with differences with people who don't conform to the norm. And less so when it's their behavior than we now have societies move towards being more tolerant of physical disabilities but not so much towards mental disabilities. We only know that people used to say that the character Malcolm Tucker in the thick of it was modeled on Alastair. I think we can see that that is not true. Because the big difference, Malcolm Tucker couldn't play the bad pipe joyful stuff. So, thanks ever so much Alastair we've all really enjoyed your talk. Everybody safe home there are refreshments outside. And Alastair will be around for a little bit to answer. Any further questions. No, no. He's going to mingle.