CHRISTINE was suffering from depression by the age of nine. Her childhood had been characterised by isolation and anxiety. The isolation came from the cruelty of other schoolchildren because she had a squint. The anxiety revolved around such "adult" issues as whether her mother could pay the bills, whether her father would always have a job and whether the troubles in Northern Ireland would break out in the South.
Married at 17, she began to suffer panic attacks, phobias and obsessions. When she heard about illnesses she invariably picked up the symptoms within a matter of days and convinced herself she was dying. She could not sleep at night because of her fear of death and to pass the time she began to clean the house. "This was to become my greatest madness," she writes in Soul Survivors, published yesterday by the GROW mental health movement. The book is made up of the stories of Irish people who have come through serious mental illness with the help of GROW.
"Jobs that ordinary people only did a couple of times a year, I was doing every day. I couldn't sit still for a moment and I would search for things to do.
"My husband would come home in the evening for his dinner and I would stand in front of him until he'd finished. I would go so far as to be lifting his plate and wiping under it if he dropped something. If I gave a visitor a cup of tea, I would be in a state of panic until they would finish, the need to wash the cup was so great."
She developed anorexic tendencies and sometimes she would go through the whole day without eating for fear of dirtying a [worktop or a plate. She thought of suicide.
She was hospitalised and put on medication. She had been on tranquilisers for many years. She lost her ability to concentrate and could not bring herself to talk to people or to make eye contact.
When her mother persuaded her to start attending GROW meetings, she said nothing for six months. She first spoke one night when her suicidal thoughts were very strong. "I sat at that meeting and all I could think about was going to the river - I felt that I had been taken over by some force that was going to drag me there. I felt as if it wasn't me anymore in my body. This was one of my strangest experiences. I don't know where I got the courage from that night but I told the group of my thoughts."
She was given the task - this is part of the GROW approach - of cooking and eating one nourishing meal a day, no matter how long it took, and to keep repeating one of the GROW affirmations, "Never say I can't if it's an ordinary and a good thing."
Gradually, through the GROW process, she began to eat again and to regain her health. Group members kept in constant touch with her to help her stay out of hospital.
"It is seven years since I've taken any tablets and I've never had the confidence that I have now," she writes. She has maintained her new found mental health in spite of the unexpected deaths of both her parents.
GROW started in Australia in 1957. No membership fees or dues are charged and interested people can attend local GROW meetings without any prior arrangement.
Its national office is at 11 Liberty Street, Cork. Tel: 021 277520.