‘How I fought back from my lowest point’

The Kilkeel man, now 35, had seen his relationship break up, and just when he needed them most, had no family close by.

He was living and working on a farm in Essex, and felt he had made no friends. He felt isolated, desperate, and just terribly alone.

He’d been given anti-depressants, but they hadn’t made any difference.

Mercifully, Chris realised that the two people he did have in his life – his mother and his grandmother – needed him, and he couldn’t do this to them.

He stubbed out his cigarette, put the rope away and went to bed.

Chris came out the other side of mental health issues, but others are not so fortunate, and now he is sharing his brave and incredibly honest story in a bid to urge other farmers to seek help if they feel they cannot cope.

“Farming can be such a lonely job,” he says. “I’d spend up to 10 hours working alone, and when you have so much time on your own, you tend to overthink.

“I’d worry about my family, I’d worry about my girlfriend, and I’d worry about my friends.

“I realised that I didn’t actually have any in Essex. It wasn’t like home. I didn’t have a social circle and found it difficult going into a bar and striking up a conversation as I wasn’t interested in the things they were talking about.”

The Co Down man had arrived in England back in 2014 to help out for the summer on a large farm.

Work back home in Ulster was scarce, leaving him in the position where he was having to take on a couple of jobs at a time to make ends meet.

In February 2015 he was offered a permanent role at the farm in Essex, and jumped at the chance.

Being a family man, however, Chris found it difficult saying goodbye to his family, especially his grandmother, who he loved dearly, and his friends Paddy and Gary who were always there, supporting him, making him laugh and testing his limits.

But the local man was made of strong stuff, as his past clearly showed. When he was just 16, he had been diagnosed with leukemia, and spent a year receiving life-saving chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant at Belfast City Hospital’s newly opened Cancer Centre.

Even though he came through it, Chris says that when he looks back on that experience of his life, it triggered a long period of low mood, which lingered for a while, and eventually became unmanageable.

Fourteen years later, Chris found himself facing another life-threatening illness – depression.

He had settled into life in Essex well, enjoying his job, and meeting his girlfriend.

But still, something wasn’t right, and after the death of his beloved dog that November, he found himself thinking more about mortality and his own grandmother’s failing health.

His girlfriend subsequently noticed that he was starting to become more distant.

He says he simply didn’t want to worry her by opening up to her with his thoughts, and so put on a brave face.

“She was so amazing and caring, and I know she had her own concerns, but I really believed that I had to ‘man up’, be strong and get on with it,” says Chris.

“We were both trying to keep it together so much that we ended up pushing each other away.”

Finally last February, the relationship ended when Chris, determined to plan a great gesture for her birthday and Valentine’s Day, ignored her suggestions that she wanted a simple day horse riding on the beach.

It proved the final straw.

“She realised that I wasn’t ‘listening’ to her. That I was so caught up in my own thoughts that she had been sidelined,” he says.

“She had been so supportive of me for so long but I pushed her away. I have learnt that this is something that many depressed people do, but the reality was that my mental health issues infected her headspace too.”

After the break-up, Chris went down a slippery slope and tried to block everything out – but he couldn’t.

He worked 10 hours a day, didn’t speak to anyone, and returned home to an empty house where he’d grab a beer and drink the night away.

He lost six kilos in a week, and with no sleep, found himself in a very dark place.

After asking the farm manager for some time off, a chance encounter with the owner of the farm led Chris to admit that something was going on.

“He sat back in the office and just listened, and at the end he pulled out his phone and said, ‘you need to speak to a doctor’.

“I hadn’t even registered with the local GP, so we went to the hospital and spoke to the specialist mental health services who referred me.

“They gave me some anti-depressants, which made things worse, and left me to wait for an appointment.

“This was my lowest point. I had admitted I needed help. I was trying to find this help, but no one was reassuring me and I felt like I had been abandoned.

“I wondered – what’s the point? I wasn’t fit to work. I had no girlfriend, no friends, and I couldn’t go home as everyone thought I was happy and successful, and to admit that I wasn’t would have broken my mum and nanny’s hearts.

“So how did I make this stop?”

It was at that point that Chris found himself at the back of his house, contemplating taking his own life.

But he didn’t.

Instead, he stopped taking the anti-depressants, and replaced it with a short course of valium and sleeping tablets, and made the decision that he wanted to help himself. A visit from his best friend Paddy encouraged Chris to get a new dog, a Bordeauxdog, whom he named Dozer, and who became a wonderful source of comfort, companionship and motivation, particularly when the time came for his beloved grandmother to pass away.

And now, he feels really strongly about encouraging others in the same siutuation as he was to educate themselves about the specialist services available to those in the farming community.

“I thought mental health support was only for those in cities, and I didn’t want to speak to them as they wouldn’t understand.

“NHS waiting times are slow, but I needed some support and someone to talk to in those six weeks while I waited for my assessment.

“I honestly never knew that there is help available for farmers and their loved ones. Now that I do know, I want to do something to help raise awareness of this help so that I can maybe help someone too.”

He adds: “I’ve learned that pain, tough times and even depression are time limited.

“I’ve fought cancer and won. No matter how horrible things have been in my life at times, things have always gotten better. So if you’re experiencing a difficult time, don’t be afraid to reach out for help. 

“Things will get better.”