Self-harming and suicide attempts dominated Kate Stevenson’s life, until she got her bipolar disorder under control. She talks to EMMA DUNN

I WANTED to die. I was only 12 years old, but I just couldn’t change how I felt.

I first started feeling low when I was 11. I thought I was a horrible, worthless person and it had escalated since then. I loathed myself.

Just after I started feeling this way, when I was 11, I wanted to go out but my mum said no and I got really upset. I went to the bathroom and picked up a razor and cut myself to bits. I hadn’t ever seen it or read anything about self-harm, it just came out of nowhere and I liked it.

It was a release of all the pent up frustration. It felt like all the self-loathing just went away the instant the blade touched me and I felt pain and saw blood.

It became a regular occurrence. I managed to hide it for a year and a bit, but my mum found out one day when I was having a bath and she came in to get something. I leaned over to get a towel and she saw my arm.

She was in shock and didn’t know what to do.

She took me to the family doctor and I was referred for counselling. At that point though, I wasn’t ready. When they asked what was bothering me I didn’t know what to say. The only thing I knew was that I hated myself.

When I look back on my time at school now, I can see I was being bullied. At the time though I just accepted it and thought they were treating me like that because I was such a bad person.

I told a girl who I thought was my friend that I was self-harming. She told everybody and it became a bit of a joke to some people.

My school set me up with a counsellor and she was lovely but it made no difference. No matter who I spoke to or what I did I couldn’t shift how I felt. I was 12 and I just wanted to die.

The self-harming continued and I was very obsessed with depressing songs. I kept my suicidal thoughts hidden though. I wanted to kill myself and I didn’t want anyone to stop me.

When I was 13, I planned it out. There was a train track at the back of my school and I researched the times the trains came and when I could sneak off.

I wrote it all in a note to my mum, which I hid in a book in my bedroom.

Now, when I look back on what happened next, I think it was a miracle but at the time I was filled with anger. My mum was tidying my room and the note dropped out of the book. The suicide was planned for the next day. The next thing I knew, my school pulled me out of my lesson and told me my mum was on the way.

Mum took me to our family doctor and from there I went to The Priory Hospital in Bristol. I was annoyed that they were interfering with my plan. I was really angry and I felt like they were trapping me.

When I got to The Priory, the psychiatrist said he wanted to admit me that day, and if I didn’t agree then he would section me. After much deliberation, I agreed to go in.

While I was in there I rebelled. I didn’t want to get better, I didn’t even think I was ill. I thought I was just horrible.

I started seeing a psychologist, and she turned out to be one of the therapists who changed my life. She was amazing and she knew how to get through to me. I was put on anti-depressants as well.

I was at The Priory for 10 months and changed schools. I gradually started going in for lessons and was getting better. But the depression was still there, I wasn’t cured.

When I was on leave from hospital one day I tried to kill myself by taking an overdose. I had made a comment to a friend which indicated what I was going to do. He rang my mum and she called an ambulance. I had already taken the overdose by then and I tried to run so they couldn’t make me better, but eventually I was taken to hospital to have my stomach pumped.

I was surprised because it hit my friends hard. That’s the first time I thought to myself that maybe people did care about me. My whole attitude had always been that people would be better off without me, but my friends got really upset when I did what I did.

I eventually got discharged from The Priory, but the self-harming continued all the way through. There were always ways of finding stuff to harm myself with. I was addicted to the feeling it gave me and addicted to the scars.

I used to get jealous of people who hurt themselves because I wanted that pain. I felt like I deserved it.

I got on well at school, but then I got into my first serious relationship when I was 15. It wasn’t a good relationship and it added to the problems I already had.

I continued self-harming and then a friend of mine died after being hit by a car. I spiralled after that and was admitted to The Priory again. I was 16 at this point and stayed there for a month.

I just plodded along, but I had a miscarriage when I was 18. I was four months gone and that was the beginning of the proper downward spiral for me.

The relationship I was in broke down and I was self-harming a lot. We still weren’t really sure what was wrong. It didn’t feel like depression. I just felt like I couldn’t cope with my life, how I felt about myself.

I went back to hospital but was back out after six weeks. I ended the relationship a few months later and then met Justin, who is now my husband.

I met him at the point where I was starting to get severely ill. The relationship was great for the first three months but then my head started to go. It had never been that bad before. I started to hear two male voices and they backed up the way I felt about myself. They would say ‘you’re worthless, nobody likes you and nobody would miss you if you died’.

Then they started telling me everyone around me was going to die. I became anxious and would phone Justin every 10 minutes. It was a lot of pressure for him to deal with as we had only been together for a few months.

It got really bad and I couldn’t go to work. I wasn’t sleeping or eating but I didn’t tell anyone about the voices at first. I later told the people closest to me because it was so frightening.

I went back to hospital for another month but I knew what to say to get out again.

When I came out I declined even more. I tried to kill myself with another overdose in September 2009, and there are three months at the end of that year that I can’t remember at all. I now know that I had slipped into a state of psychosis and wasn’t aware of anything.

In the following months the voices got worse, I continued self-harming and I wasn’t eating, drinking or sleeping. That’s when we all started to notice the mood swings. One day I would be high as a kite and the next I would be really depressed. I went back into The Priory and luckily that was the last time. That was the beginning of the recovery period.

I was diagnosed with bipolar and borderline personality disorder, and I then felt like I had an answer.

I researched it and began to think that maybe I wasn’t such a horrible person and maybe it wasn’t my fault I am the way I am.

I started taking anti-psychotic medication, which I still take today. With hard work from me, it works. I also went for cognitive behavioural therapy to change the way I think.

Now, I can recognise what is me and what is my illness thinking. My husband has been so supportive and without him I don’t believe I would be who I am now.

I have started to change the way I think about things and my illness is slowly getting easier to manage.

I feel good about the future. I know I will always have these problems and I will always have anxiety but it is manageable.

I want people to know that it can get better.

When you’re going through mental illness it really feels like nothing will ever change. It can change and you can live a relatively normal life.

I have got strong foundations now – my husband is amazing. For the first time in my adult life I don’t want to kill myself either.