Helen Grant - Ghostwriter

When I was 19, I gave birth to Louise. I’d been with her dad for three years and the relationship was volatile. I wanted marriage; he didn’t. With hindsight that was a blessing. We shouldn’t have lasted as long as we did but when Louise came along, I was determined to be a family for her sake.

But within weeks of Louise’s birth, I was hallucinating and hearing voices. Mum took me to the doctor who looked at us clueless. He kept asking questions and making notes, pausing to scratch his brow. Thinking it was a bad bout of postnatal depression, he gave me anti-depressants.

But a few weeks later, my paranoia was worse than ever. I was cowering behind doors when the phone rang, hiding in cupboards when the doorbell rang, and begging mum for help. She called the doctor again who was more baffled than ever. Eventually, after digesting a tomb of medical encyclopedias, he diagnosed postnatal psychosis and prescribed anti-psychotic drugs.

Immediately after taking one, I had an allergic reaction. My body went into spasm, my eyes rolled back in my head and my legs jerked wildly. Completely paralysed, I’d lost control of every muscle and limb in my body, including my tongue which was stuck to the roof of my mouth. I lay paralysed on my parent’s bed, aware of everything going on around me but not able to talk, swallow or move.

The doctor looked panicked. Mumbling something about reversal drugs, he raced back to the surgery leaving mum to massage my muscles. When he returned, I was sitting up in bed with a cup of tea feeding Louise her bottle and chatting away.

Some people told me to pull myself together, as if it was that easy. They accused me of not being strong. But the voices in my head were beyond my control. So were the shadows on the wall and the strange messages coming from the radio. I saw the image of Jesus Christ on the living room wall. The characters on TV were talking directly to me so I spoke back to them.

Every snigger on the street was someone laughing at me. It wasn’t true, but the world I lived in had changed. Everything looked surreal; blurry around the edges and cartoon-like. I’d alternate between being euphorically happy and hyperactive to trembling with fear.

I went shopping in my pyjamas and a long rain mac, spent hundreds of pounds on moisturisers and socks instead of food, and stopped brushing my hair and wearing make-up. In my sick mind, everyone was conspiring against me, to murder and mutilate me. People spoke in code and it was my job to decipher what they were saying.

Needless to say, I spent a lot of time in a psychiatric hospital - 18 weeks in total. I saw some disgusting things and spent the whole time terrified of my fellow patients. I dozed with one eye open in case a pillow was put over my face during the night. One patient told me to “watch my back because anything could happen.”

I was reading a book in the lounge one day when a patient ran past naked. The staff wrestled him back to his room. As punishment, he left the taps on in his bathroom and caused a flood. Another time, I was walking along the corridor when a patient lunged at me. “You’re not the real Helen!” she screamed. “Your name’s Jenny Bunter and you stole my budgie!” She accused me of stealing her identity too.

My only friend in the hospital was a lad called Mark. He never told me what he was in for, but I suspected it was drugs and alcohol. We sat up late each night, putting the world to rights. He told me the patients weren’t real, that they were a figment of my imagination. “There’s no one else here. Just you and me on a cloud floating in the universe,” he said.

Sometimes Mark would turn on me. Without warning, he’d appear in my room, his eyes cold and black. “Take me to see my rabbits!” he’d shout, referring to the animals that lived on a farm near his house. When he was like that, trying to pacify him was pointless so I’d pull the emergency cord for help, afraid of what he might do if I didn’t agree.

When I was hyper, I was the star of the show. I organised parties, posting invitations under patient’s doors asking them to meet me in the dining room. On the dot of 8 they’d emerge from their bedrooms like the living dead, shuffling down the corridor towards the party, their hair neatly combed and reeking of aftershave and perfume.

I’d push the volume up on the radio and shout “Let’s dance!” and the patients would spring to life, running frantically around the room. ”Louder! Louder!” they’d shout, and we’d twist and boogie, and throw our arms up in the air and clap. It never lasted long. The nurses always put a stop to it, but for that 10 minutes or so, there was genuine happiness in their eyes.

On bad days, I wouldn’t leave my room. Every so often there would be a knock on the door. It was sometimes a nurse checking to see if I was alright, but mostly it would be one of the patients asking if I’d like to go for a walk, or if I’d swap clothes with them or share a cup of tea. There was kindness among the madness, but mostly there was craziness.

It took me five years to fully recover and when I did I moved away with Louise to study creative writing, media, art and journalism in Bath, Cornwall and London. I registered Louise at school and threw myself into work and study. The day I walked away from the hospital, I vowed to make something of myself and help others to succeed. When Louise was 8, we moved to Scotland and it was there that I really started to focus on my goals. Success would make my experiences worthwhile.

We moved again a year ago, and I have two more children now - Abigail and Callum. Both pregnancies were fine despite there being a high risk of recurrence. That’s because I spent 9 months researching postnatal illness. If the doctors weren’t going to help, I would help myself, and my determination paid off. I took vitamin and fish oil tablets, drank gallons of raspberry leaf tea, read positive thinking books and rubbed progesterone cream onto my body three times a day. I did other things too, and lots of stuff has happened since then - some good and some bad - but I’ll save that for another time.