Living better: an interview with Alastair Campbell and Fiona Millar

In January 2021, Mansfield welcomed British journalists, authors, activists and life-partners, Alastair Campbell and Fiona Millar, to present the first Mansfield Public Talk of the year: ‘How I (and we) learned to live better with depression’. MCR Welfare Officer, Daria Jensen (DPhil Psychiatry, 2019), and JCR Men’s Officer, Mitchell Marshall (History, 2019) interviewed Alastair and Fiona before their talk, to discuss mental health in greater detail.

Alastair: I’ve always loved beautiful scenery, but it’s only in the last couple of years I’ve really got into trees. I’d say nature is very important. It’s on my list of things that make me feel better; it keeps me calmer. We go out to Hampstead Heath every morning.

Fiona: I didn’t manage stress well at university. I got obsessed with work, which was unusual; I hadn’t worked hard at school. I actually performed less well because I was so stressed. I try and do something that takes me out of my job and for me that’s swimming. It’s always been my escape mechanism.

Alastair: I quite like stress… well, not stress, but pressure. In the past I might have taken it too far, but I do like pressure that makes me perform better.

Alastair: Well, sometimes I’m not very good with pressure. It’s not necessarily nice for people living with me. I’ve put myself under intense pressure because I’m doing something that I consider important, and want to do it well. Sometimes I think students need that sort of stress: those moments, almost, of panic, that you can turn into something positive.

Fiona: I was listening to an interview with some year-11 students. They were talking about the stress they’re feeling. They said they needed the stress of upcoming exams to motivate themselves. But we’ve seen the impact of letting too much stress get on top of you. Alastair’s first nervous breakdown is a good example. It’s important to recognise when it’s getting dangerous.

Alastair: It’s a combination. A lot of the stuff comes from my psychiatrist. And then, making the documentary and writing the book has also worked well. The Living Better book starts from this incident I had in Scotland a few years ago. It was like my lights went out suddenly. By then, I’d started to work through this concept of the jam jar, where I have my own tactics to manage my depression. After the initial moment where I said ‘right, well OK, I’m not going to kill myself and I know I’m going to get through this’, I wrote a tick-list of things that helped me. This included everything from doing something for Fiona, saying something nice to our kids, playing my bagpipes, talking about football to Sean Dyche the Burnley manager. It included going for a walk, exercising even though I didn’t feel like it and writing something because that always helps. I went through them all one by one. I felt better, I did feel better.

Fiona: One thing that’s helped is for our family to understand

Alastair’s situation. When the children were told what was happening, they were both in their teens and early twenties. That was a real light-bubble moment because there were things that hadn’t been articulated before about his mental health, the way it was affecting all of our relationships. Being open about it, and having a professional explain the situation to families is really important. That’s not done enough.

Alastair: I did a project recently with a health service trust. Afterwards, the project leader sent me a message saying he’s had all his staff do their own jam jars. I’ve also had primary school headteachers tell me their students are devising their own resilience jam jars. I think there’s a lot in the book that can help people avoid getting mental illness. Fiona’s started a group now for people who are partners of those with mental illness.

Fiona: Yes, for people who are in the situation I was in. The group has been meeting once a month. They’re so grateful to have somewhere to speak with others who feel the same way that they do. The other thing is employers. I tell the story in the book about calling Alastair’s then-employers in the 1980s, to explain that I thought he was having a breakdown. They made me feel small, stupid and irrelevant. Now, I’d like to think employers would take it seriously, to try and support their staff. There’s progress, but it’s probably not true universally. It should be. If you can address these issues earlier, you stand a much better chance of getting good mental health rather than mental ill health.

Each Friday at 5.30pm during term time, Mansfield hosts a lively and engaging series of public talks, which are free and open to all.

Mansfield Public Talks are convened by Principal Helen Mountfield QC, and feature leading figures from varied fields. Previous speakers include former President of the Supreme Court, Baroness (Brenda) Hale of Richmond, composer, Errollyn Wallen CBE, and poet, Ben Okri OBE.