Let’s talk about our feelings, not label normal emotions

Psychologist Lucy Foulkes welcomes the drive to destigmatise mental illness but cautions we are in danger of labelling normal negative emotions as clinical disorders 

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In 2008, when Lucy Foulkes was aged 20, her life looked idyllic. She had a loving family, great friends, a lovely boyfriend. At university, she was studying psychology, which she adored, and had a great summer job as a swimming instructor. There was nothing external to prompt a catastrophic mental breakdown, and yet it happened.

“I was in Turkey when everything came undone,” she writes in Losing Our Minds: What Mental Illness Really Is And What It Isn’t. Walking back to their holiday apartment after a day on the beach with close friends, “I began to feel like I couldn’t breathe. My thoughts became dark and opaque.”