BiPolar Good Stigma Bad
Mental Health Memoir by former Solicitor Chris Wainwright
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INTRODUCTION
 
I wouldn’t bet my shirt on it but I doubt if there are any jokes involving shoes and cobblers that I haven’t heard. I’ve got my Dad and his two older brothers to thank for that. They were director / managers of three shoe shops under the ownership of A T Wainwright & Sons Risborough Ltd. The boys had been given the business by my grandfather Albert who had to leave the area in unfortunate but not uncommon circumstances. I was the eldest of mum and dads four children brought up in Princes Risborough. From the time I began circulating my surname gave me away hence the title of my memoir. When I went to school in Aylesbury there was no getting away from shoes! I was lucky really because an association with shoes isn’t hard to live with compared to inheriting a bipolar illness once known as manic depression! My memoirs main purpose is to give an idea how the illness affected me and to encourage people to fight bipolar and other mental illness stigma. Some might say that ‘fight’ is too strong a word but I couldn’t disagree more! I say stigma is so damaging and deeply embedded in society we must fight harder to bring it to an end.

One Saturday I was working in our Princes Risborough High Street shop when I asked dad if I could join the company. He told me, “Yes boy if you can’t find anything better”. Whenever I brought the subject up again I was told the shops wouldn’t be ‘enough for me’. I liked Princes Risborough Primary School. I was good at most things and had plenty of friends. I passed the 11 plus exam but it was so obviously unfair it left me with a lifelong dislike of the system. I was no fan of private education either because it give children from wealthy families another  advantage over everybody else. Fairness in all things always mattered to me. Education is a basic right and everyone should have an equal lifetime entitlement. Governing society and reconciling the assortment of political beliefs has become so complicated that fairness seems to have gone out the window. These days I describe myself as a Humanist.
Heston Blumenthal appeared on TV recently and very bravely revealed that he’d been diagnosed with a bipolar disorder. A couple of months prior to that I’d been trying to get an appointment with Oxford psychiatrist Professor Geddes to review my own illness. After 50 years since my diagnosis I thought I deserved it but unfortunately I didn’t meet the NHS criteria. I decided against going privately but I’d have had to stump up £500.00! Everyone knows the country’s in financial trouble. Until it improves we’ll go without more and more. Inevitably the less well-off will suffer the most. As a youngster I remember the slogan ‘I’m Backing Britain! I never thought I’d live to see a sustained ‘Cut-Back Britain’!