I'm coming out of the 'mental health closet' for my daughter

Bryony Gordon with her daughter Edie. Photo / Geoff Pugh, Telegraph

It is Mental Health Awareness Week, so in that spirit I thought I would share with you all the ways in which my own mental health has failed me over the years. When I was pregnant with my daughter almost three years ago, I became so depressed that I had to be put on a "watch" list by the hospital, which meant monthly check-ins with the maternal mental health unit and a visit from the friendly psychiatrist when my baby was less than a day old.

I once collapsed on the pavement during my lunch break from work, hysterical and crying, having what I now know was a panic attack. A passing colleague had to pick me up and take me back to the office.

And speaking of the office, I've cried a lot there - and in parks, and taxis, and on random street corners, though on those days I felt I was doing well in that I had at least managed to get out of the house. Because I once lay in bed for an entire week without washing, or really eating, convinced that the ceiling was coming down and the walls were coming in.

Another time, I called my husband 87 times (I know because, helpfully, my iPhone tells me this kind of information). He was late home, and I was petrified he had died in some sort of horrific car crash. I cried so hard I thought my throat might burst. (As it turned out, he was stuck in a tunnel on the Tube.)

According to Mind, the mental health charity, a quarter of us suffer from mental health issues each year - everything from anxiety to depression to eating disorders and phobias (my own mental health issues are caused by obsessive compulsive disorder, more of which later). Yet the shame and fear that surrounds these issues means many of us struggle to admit what we are going through and ask for the help we need.

Despite mental health making up 23 per cent of what the NHS terms the "burden of disease", it receives only 13 per cent of the budget. Fine, you might think - better to funnel money into tackling, say, cancer and diabetes. But mental health problems are said to cost the economy pounds 105.2 billion a year. The stigma that surrounds anxiety and depression is damaging not just to people's minds but also to their bodies.

To me, increasing mental health budgets is a no-brainer. Happy people make healthy people. When you are depressed and anxious, you make bad choices. During my twenties, I was stuck in self-destruct mode; the only way I could "calm" my mind was by self-medicating through excessive amounts of alcohol and food. Of course, this just made it worse. But stuck in the depths of misery and insecurity, you just want the pain to go away.

I was just 12 years old when I first realised I was perhaps a bit mad. I became terrified to leave the house, scared of the germs I might encounter. I had heard about the "silent epidemic" of Aids and in my prepubescent mind I assumed it was everywhere. I couldn't go near anything red - not even a postbox - in case it happened to be blood. I washed my hands 100 times a day until they were - ironically - bleeding. I was convinced I was dying. I had never been so scared in my life.

But I would be this scared again: again and again and again and again. Yet the cause of my anxiety wouldn't have a name until I was 17, when my mother marched me to the GP after another attack left me unable to leave the house for days. I was diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), and left the surgery with anti-depressants (I've tried them all, from Prozac to Citalopram to Sertraline). But even after the diagnosis, I was always too embarrassed, too daunted by the scale of the problem, to seek long-term help. So whenever it returned - and return it did, every couple of years - I would make up a physical illness to tell my employers, and cower at home in misery under my duvet. How could I admit that unless I said certain phrases, I thought my family might die? The flu just seemed so much easier to explain.

It is only now, as I nudge 35, that I have managed to be completely honest about my illness and get proper treatment for it. Maybe it's the support of a loving husband who has never minded my little "idiosyncrasies", as he calls them. Maybe it's just age and maturity and the fact that I care less about what people think of me. Whatever the case, it seems faintly ludicrous that it has taken me more than 20 years to get help.

As well as "normal" OCD - where I wash my hands and check the oven and sometimes take the iron to work just so I can be sure it is switched off - I have a type of OCD called Pure O. This is an incredibly common but rarely talked about form of the illness that makes people obsess over intrusive thoughts about blasphemy, abuse, sex and even murder. While most people have occasional weird thoughts but let them go, a person with Pure O feels such discomfort that they obsess about them until they become convinced they must be a potential serial killer or stalker or paedophile.

It's a horrid, shameful illness that I managed to keep hidden from friends, family and, to a certain extent, even my husband, until Christmas last year, when out of the blue it came for me harder than it ever had before. Shortly after my daughter Edie was born, I felt the OCD actually eke away, perhaps because I had more pressing things to worry about. But just before she turned two, it came back with a vengeance and, once more, I spent an entire Christmas locked in my own head, convinced that I had hurt her in the night, before blanking it out. The thoughts were darker and more disturbing than they had ever been because, as ever, they preyed on what I held most dear to me: this time, my darling daughter.

"Enough is enough," I finally snapped to my husband. "I don't want to do this any more. I don't want to feel like this." So I called the Maternal OCD helpline, where a woman told me this was normal, and I wept and wept and wept in gratitude to her.

I realised then that it really was time for me to try to draw attention to the fact that mental health issues are normal. So I spoke to my boss and my colleagues - they needed to know why I was always bursting into tears at my desk, and they couldn't have been more understanding.

I publicly "came out" about what I was going through in the column I write. And before I knew it, I was inundated with others sharing their stories - most poignantly, the woman in her seventies who had never known what it was she suffered from until she read my piece.

Reading email after email, I learnt that so many other people were also gripped by the fear of being "found out". Knowing others had experienced what I had gave me the strength to get proper help: through everyone's advice, I started cognitive behavioural therapy, cut out alcohol and began eating more healthily. I know I will never be rid of my OCD, but at least I can try to control it.

This is why we need to be more open about mental health: because depression is, by its very nature, an inward-looking thing, talking to other people, opening up about what you are going through can only be helpful.

I don't want my daughter to be embarrassed and ashamed if she suffers from anxiety or depression. I think the time has come to stop being afraid. The time has come to make a song and dance about mental health issues. Because, really, what better way is there to deal with it?

Five tips for dealing with your anxiety:

1: Try to do something each day: get out of the house, see someone, keep busy. Try to keep as many parts of your normal life going as you can.

2: Accept yourself: this is who you are; you may never become someone who's not anxious about anything, but if you receive the right help you can live as normal a life as possible and still achieve your goals. The key is learning to manage your condition and not letting it overwhelm you.

3: If you're a parent, try to avoid displaying your anxiety in front of your children too much, as there's a risk of them picking up cues from you that you see the world as an unsafe place. Let your children take up small challenges and don't try to limit the stresses they may suffer: they should be encouraged to have a go at things. This will help you too, as an anxious parent, because it will force you to confront whatever it is you're anxious about.

4: Take on challenges you find anxiety-provoking. Don't avoid them. They will get easier the more you do them.

5: Get in touch with someone who can offer you psychological treatment to help you reformulate how you see yourself and the world. There are self-help books out there, but it's quite a difficult thing to do on your own and professional support can help to change your mindset.

We all experience anxiety to one degree or another, but when it inhibits us from living our normal daily lives, that's when it becomes a problem that warrants attention in terms of treatment. Coming out of the "mental health closet" is important because it can empower you to do something about it and receive medical help. It also means you can access more social support among your peer group and work colleagues. There's still a stigma attached to mental health in this country, but it's slowly being broken down, and the more people talk about it the easier it gets.