Woman’s Hour Radio 4
The Untold Missing Radio 4
TV and radio host Fearne Cotton talked on Woman’s Hour about her depression and her book Happy.
We stared into the abyss between real life and social media life.
“Social media gives me control as to what I would like people to see of me,” she said.
But the flip side to all that is the “compare and despair” and people believing in the fantasy created.
What wasn’t there were her episodes of depression, she had never breathed a word about them.
So when she did, she was surprised at the letters and emails of support. She was surprised that three friends in one week felt free to talk openly about their depression.
Loneliness is such a huge problem on planet earth, she said, she could not have dreamt of the response she received.
Kirsty – not her real name – could not have dreamt about how her life might turn out in this riveting drama based on a real life story.
It unfolded in episodes – so that we shared in the desperation and the panic and the resignation.
There she was with a tiny five-week-old baby out looking for her partner Zack. She was hunting desperately.
Zack, in his late 20s, kissed his family one morning, went out to work and just never returned.
“We met at uni, we were both doing English. You never actually read any of the stuff, but you would always get firsts in everything,” she mused.
She couldn’t work out if he had gone deliberately or not. Zack has bipolar disorder. She contacted the authorities, but they didn’t seem to help.
We journeyed with her through 76 nail biting days as she searched, trudging the streets with a five week old baby.
Then the doctors got in touch to say he could be collected.
He had just been wandering, following a voice, he had got lost.
And if it happened again?
“I can’t do that again,” sighed Kirsty with resignation.
“It would kill me... he can’t come back if it happens again.”
