I’m a Tory politician with bipolar, and here’s the truth about living with my condition

The Welsh MS shares his experience with bipolar disorder, and why his outdated views on gender delayed his diagnosis

My last period of depression was just over a month ago. The Senedd – or Welsh Parliament – was still in summer recess, and I missed the hustle and bustle of politics and having a structure to my day. I kept myself busy with constituency matters in the Vale of Clwyd. But as always happens when I get down, I withdrew from my normal family activities, became introverted, and started sleeping a lot.
“What’s the point?” I said to my wife, Catrin. “We’re all going to be dead one day.” These sorts of statements can upset my wife, but she’s more used to them now. This is what it’s like living with bipolar disorder. Then – as is also the case with a person with bipolar disorder – my mood resolves, and I am mostly back on a maintained level again.
As a child growing up in Rhyl, I could be disruptive in class. When I was nine or 10, I was sent to see a lady who asked me questions (who was actually an educational psychologist) and was eventually diagnosed with dyspraxia, a developmental disorder that affects movement and coordination.
Though I was always bright, I struggled in maths and left school after my GCSEs to take qualifications in health and social care, at first working with children with learning difficulties, then as mental health support worker and later as a physiotherapist. I always had an interest in politics, joining the Conservative Party in 2015. I became a local councillor two years later, eventually being elected to the Senedd in 2021 as the first ever Conservative member for the Vale of Clwyd.
In my late teens and 20s, I was known for being lively. Friends called me “the life and soul”, “mad” and sometimes “unpredictable”. I recall one camping trip in 2016 where I carried on chatting away in the tent, cracking jokes and using colourful language when everyone just wanted to go to sleep.
From the outside, it looked as though I was having a ball, but there was something about my excitement that felt out of control and unsustainable, though I didn’t know how to express this at the time.
Catrin and I met on the evening of Boxing Day 2013 and we married four years later. During this period, I felt as if I was on a psychological big dipper. My mood was often exuberant, but at other times I could be snappy. I would have trouble sleeping, and often woke up at night sweating, and my mind racing.
I could tell Catrin was worried, but she wasn’t quite sure what to do. I was able to hold down my job working in mental health at the NHS, but one day, my manager came to see me with a concerned look on her face. She started to talk to me as if I were a patient: asking how I was sleeping, how things were at home, whether I was eating OK. I said I was fine and thought my manager was being unreasonable in even asking that question in the first place.
Eventually, in 2016, I went to my GP about my night sweats. Instead of examining me physically, the doctor gave me a mental health questionnaire. “What’s he on about?” I thought. “Why is he calling me bonkers? This is a physical condition.” I told myself I was a man – I’m 6ft 3in, fit and strong – so I was just going to do what men always do, and pull myself together. I Ieft the appointment, with no follow-up arranged.
But over the next couple of years, my mental state deteriorated. At times, my perception of reality was becoming warped. There were occasions on my commute to work where it seemed as if the street lights were talking to me, the road wobbling in front of me – everything just seemed bigger than it should. Don’t ask me how, but for months I was able to hold it together. If you’d looked at me, you never would have believed there was anything wrong with me. These episodes usually passed as quickly as they’d arrived and I would get on with my day.
After my son, Sam, was born in 2019, my paternal instinct kicked in. I’d held it together for a decade, but I started to realise I couldn’t carry on into fatherhood like this. By early 2020, I was feeling weak and unsteady at work, and then I started hearing voices. There was a middle-aged woman with a deep voice in my head, mumbling words I couldn’t understand. I could even hear her during meetings.
I finally knew I couldn’t do this any more and I made a plan to end my life. On the Sunday afternoon, I went into the living room and said to Catrin: “I need to go to hospital.” She didn’t put up any resistance, and I insisted on going by myself, rather than bring my wife and newborn baby. Somehow, I managed to drive myself there without incident.
I hadn’t wanted to go to A&E because of the terrible waiting times. And I thought I would be there for hours, or worse, discharged to see my GP on Monday morning and I wasn’t sure I could make it that long. But as soon as I told the receptionist what was going on, she rolled back on her wheelie chair, and commanded: wait there! “Oh God,” I thought. “This is serious.”
A nurse from psychiatric liaison led me into a secure room with a bed (I was a voluntary patient, and never sectioned). At that point, I wasn’t given any medication but a member of staff was with me at all times. I alternated between crying and staring, dazed, into space. But I also felt safe, that I was finally in the right place, and that things would probably be OK if I did what I was told by medical professionals.
On the Monday, I saw a doctor, who took a detailed medical history. After 15 minutes he said to me: “You have all the symptoms of bipolar disorder.”
Despite my distress, I wasn’t surprised. I had hidden my suffering for so long, it was almost a relief to get a diagnosis. The doctor prescribed me an antipsychotic medication to slow my thoughts. This worked to a degree, and after a week, I was deemed well enough to go home and I returned to work after three months.
As my condition stabilised, I started seeking out resources from my GP and charities like Mind. I stayed on the medication for a year, but eventually weaned myself off it. My wife said it was making me look pale and withdrawn, and I was starting to gain weight.
I realised that the main thing that helped me with my condition was talking about it. My hospitalisation had coincided with the start of Covid, so it mostly went under the radar and everyone else was preoccupied with the pandemic. But over the next few months, I started to drip-feed information to my colleagues and constituents.
In October 2021 I was involved in a high-profile incident where I missed a vote about the introduction of vaccine passports in Wales, which meant that the motion passed (I was going to vote against it). And though this was nothing to do with my mental health (it was because of an unstable Zoom connection) I received a lot of media attention and started to struggle a bit. I felt it was probably time to let the world know about my illness, and perhaps share it in a way that might be helpful for other people.
Before I made my announcement, I did a lot of soul-searching. Would people think I was a nutter? Unfit to be a politician? But I decided it would be worth it.
In November 2022, I stood up in the Senedd and made a speech. I told my fellow politicians about my suicidal feelings, diagnosis and hospitalisation. “The only reason I got in this mindset was due to my own ignorance in not dealing with what I knew was a problem for a sustained period of time,” I told my colleagues. “Like a lot of young men, I thought to myself, ‘Just pull yourself together, go for a pint and it will be fine.’”
My party was really supportive, with the leader Andrew RT Davies coming out about his own mental health struggles. My constituents also knew me as a decent local lad who cared about them, and that despite my health problems my underlying political principles were still there. I wanted them to know a person can have a mental illness and still function, and I do believe that message is getting out there.
These days, I spend my life working hard, night and day, to do the right thing by my local area. On the whole, my mental health is much better. I sometimes still feel like my mind is racing – it feels like someone is skipping in my head – and I have to sit down. Exercise is vital to my routine: every Monday and Thursday, I try to run 10k.
My wife has been unbelievably supportive – so many women would have done a runner by now, and I can’t praise her enough. Sam is now five, and we have a daughter, Martha, who is two. Catrin still gets upset when I face my depressive times, but she knows how to read my moods better now, and knows that this will pass.
Last month, I became an ambassador for Bipolar UK, the national mental health charity supporting individuals who have bipolar, as well as their families and carers. My aim is to raise awareness of the condition, end the stigma around it, and speed up diagnosis. At present it takes 11.9 years to receive a diagnosis in Wales, compared with 9.4 years in the UK – it is far too long. So many people are suffering in silence from a condition that can be treated, and it’s time for this to change.
As told to Miranda Levy
For support and information visit bipolaruk.org
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