The Stuart Low Trust’s Step Up Step Out programme encourages those with mental ill health to take part in walks in nature

A FORMER journalist has described how a charity became his “lifelife to the world” after spending 25 years frozen in a state of depression.

Stephen Jackson, 65, who once specialised in features about classical music for the Sunday papers, “lost his career” and eventually his home after a love affair with a woman named Renata came to an abrupt end back in 1998.

“She thundered out in a great rage, and I had a complete depressive crash,” he said, speaking during this week’s Mental Health Awareness Week.

“I just went into a state which some call psychological death.

“And I just sat in a chair and stared into space for six months.”

For Mr Jackson, who lived in Drayton Park at the time, it wasn’t the first time he had experienced depression.

Describing a difficult childhood with a “very cold” father who had abused his mother and used to call him a “freak,” Mr Jackson said he felt depression was “always looming in the background” before his first major episode in 1981 when he was training to be a teacher.

But it was the breakdown of his relationship, aged 40, at a point in his life when he had found success as a writer, that he found impossible to recover from.

“I went from being the guy who was thrilled to interview Slav Rostropovich, the greatest cellist of his time, to somebody who was having to go through puddles of I don’t know what the word is for stinking water even to take a shower,” he said.

Stephen Jackson

“Things just went from bad to worse to worse to worse.”

After the heartbreak came homelessness. He was evicted and moved from one “hovel” to another before finally finding a permanent home in Hackney with an MP’s intervention.

But at some point he realised his troubled mental state was here to stay.

“I’ve spent the last 25 years in what – it turns out – is called a prolonged freeze response, which is where you don’t actually do anything, you just stay at home and hide and freeze,” he said.

That is where the Stuart Low Trust, based at the Jean Stokes Community Centre off Caledonian Road, stepped in.

“What Stuart Low does is it helps you unfreeze,” he said, explaining how, after experiencing suicide ideation, he forced himself to go to the mental health charity.

“And I suddenly discovered smiles, understanding, compassion. They don’t judge. They give you companionship, they think of lovely outings, sometimes very ambitious outings, and it has transformed my life,” he said.

The trust has recently launched its Step Up Step Out programme, to encourage those with mental ill health to take part in physical activity, including going for walks in nature.

People with mental health problems are six times more likely to die prematurely, with their lifespans up to 20 years shorter than the general population.

Society views those with mental illness as the “the nutters, the freaks, the ones who sit on a different seat on the bus,” said Mr Jackson, but for him those at the Stuart Low Trust “are the loveliest people I’ve met in many years. People need to understand that depression is not about self-pity. They should learn to listen to other people’s realities.”