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Mental health: ethnic minority experiencesArrow
Aged 60 - 69
Mae - Interview 04  

Mae - Interview 04

Age at Interview: 62
Sex: Female
Age at Diagnosis: 45
Background: Retired cook, divorced with 2 surviving adult children. Ethnic background/nationality: Mixed race (Black/white) (UK born).
Brief outline:This 62 year old woman has manic depression and describes herself as mixed race. She enjoys life now and is glad to be alive. She thinks going to groups is important and says black families sometimes push away relatives with mental health problems.

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Mae describes being "high as a kite" and says her unpredictable behaviour meant people were afraid of her. (Played by an actor).

 



Yeah because I used to have really violent bouts, I didn't know that I was manic depressive, I know I was, it was diagnosed on paper but I wasn't actually told by the, anybody outright that I was a manic depressive. And to me that was a big word when I did find out. But yeah completely, you know, I could be as high, like as high as a kite at one moment and then the next moment totally down so, you know, and very, very violent with it, you know. So it wasn't advisable for anybody to kind of get near me when I started feeling low so that is one of the reasons why I used to lock myself away because then I wouldn't have to deal with the outside world and they wouldn't have to deal with me. And that was really basically the only way to keep myself at a certain level…

But my, my behaviour was so erratic, you know, people were actually frightened of me, yeah that's why they used to call me Mad Max, yeah they were frightened of me.
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