HER mental ill-health made her try to kill herself and forced her to give up a job she loved, but Helen Hardcastle has no regrets about the way her life has turned out.

“In spite of huge losses, such as my career and stable finances, I view my illness as a blessing and not a curse,” she says.

“I’ve met some lovely people as a result of it and I’m doing more things that are worthwhile. It was almost meant to be.”

Helen, 53, of Bournemouth, first experienced symptoms of bipolar disorder at just 11. “I started having quite bad moods. I would be very tearful, then I would get over-excited,” she recalls.

Helen believes the illness was triggered by being sent home from school with head lice.

“I was then put into the B stream because I missed exams. I remember being absolutely traumatised by that.”

Bipolar disorder, sometimes known as manic depression, involves extreme highs and lows in mood, sometimes punctuated by periods of normality. The disorder has affected many famous people, including Spike Milligan, Vivien Leigh, Adam Ant, Ray Davies, Kurt Cobain, Frank Bruno and Stephen Fry. Helen’s condition became a problem when she went to university.

“I was doing modern languages and it all seemed like gobbledegook. Nobody told me it was my concentration that had gone.

“I struggled for the whole of the first term. The second year, it happened again. I got very ill and had to give up. At that stage I was getting very bad depressions. It was very seasonal.

“In the summer I would go off around Europe and do au pairing. When the clocks went back, down I went,” she explains.

“The highs are quite enjoyable. The first time I had a real high, I was in a private hospital. I was allowed to do art and walk around the grounds all night talking to the animals.

“They gave me permission to do stand-up comedy routines. I was sent out of groups for being too giggly and I lost weight.

“I had 13 weeks of severe depression, three to four weeks of being high, then I stabilised.

“When I’m high, I notice textures and wonderful ideas come into my head. I usually go three or four nights without any sleep.

“When the depression is coming on, getting up in the morning becomes difficult, and it seems to happen very quickly.

“I try and see it as a blip. If you let yourself go down the hole, you can’t pull yourself up. I try and do the things I can do, but decisions of any sort are incredibly difficult. When I’m very bad, my perceptions are so very black.”

Many people with bipolar disorder are put on lithium to stabilise their mood, but Helen was allergic to the drug.

Instead, she takes a type of anti-depressant that is now rarely prescribed because it is dangerous to mix it with certain kinds of food and drink.

Helen trained as an occupational therapist, but had to give up a senior position in the NHS after 10 years because of her illness.

She also did a psychology degree, and after one 13-month bout of depression, became interested in learning how to manage her condition herself.

She now teaches other sufferers on a self-management course run by Dorset HealthCare Trust.

She is also heavily involved with the Bournemouth and Poole BiPolar Self-Help Group, which offers support not only to sufferers, but also their families and friends.

l The local self-help group usually meets from 7.30-9.30pm on the first Wednesday of each month in Poole. For more details or to be put in touch with a member, contact MDF The BiPolar Organisation national office on 08456 340 540 or email groups@mdf.org.uk.