HE WAS hearing voices, believed that thoughts were being put into his head and that he was under constant surveillance.

Nathan Clifford from Whiteley was diagnosed with schizophrenic affective disorder at 19, following two serious suicide attempts.

Needing intensive treatment and heavily medicated, it would have been easy to assume that his future was bleak.

It would be almost impossible to have imagined that he would go on to work in mental health services, helping those who are currently struggling with the dark places that he is only too familiar with.

But here he is today, a charming and friendly 26-year-old, full of enthusiasm for his job as a peer support worker for Solent Mind and Southern Health NHS Trust.

The peer support worker programme employs people who have personal experience of mental health problems to use this experience to support others.

Nathan works on an acute inpatient unit in Winchester for people experiencing a crisis as a result of severe mental health issues.

His story could so easily have been a tragic one.

He was severely bullied at school from the age of just six. Ashamed of what was happening to him, he hid it from his family. He became more exposed, and when he was in Year 9 he suffered a life-threatening assault, which he hid again.

“I knew the bullying was bad, but I didn’t know there were ways out of it,” he says the 26-year-old from Whiteley.

“In time, it changed my brain processes, the way I’m wired. When I went to college, I reinvented myself a bit. I became more sociable and started playing basketball. But when I left college, everything spiralled away from me.”

Before he received treatment, Nathan had spent around three weeks sitting and sleeping on the same computer chair in his flat.

Luckily, he was put under the care of Southern Health’s early intervention team, and thanks to the support of his parents and the team’s healthcare professionals, he began to get better.

Years of therapy and hard graft on his part have got him to the place where he is today – in a valuable job, in a relationship, and working hard to maintain his recovery.

He is living with his mental health issues – “I’ve found myself a new normal,” he says.

The hallucinations have gone but he still hears voices, and accepts that they will probably be with him for the rest of his life.

“I hear the voices all the time,” he says.

“They’re all negative. When I first stopped seeing the man in my mind, I was quite lonely because I’d had him in my head for so long.

“He did used to say horrible things to me but we also used to do things like sit and watch TV together – that sounds funny, doesn’t it?”

Nathan is passionate about helping others recover and draws on his experience to do so.

“There are young people on the mental health wards who hear voices and it’s encouraging for them to see that they can manage them,” he says.

Like other peer support workers, Nathan is able to offer people hope in their darkest times, not from a position of an expert, but as someone who has been there too, who knows how tough it is and who has come back from the brink.

He is passionate about helping people to turn their lives around and live goal-based, recovery-orientated lives.

As well as working in the mental health service, Nathan has also become an advocate for service users.

He has managed his hyper-vigilance and negative voices and spoken at the Labour Party conference and House of Commons about access to mental health services.

“I love my job,” he says. “I’m so passionate about what we do.”

l “When I tell patients I’ve got experience of mental health difficulties, they usually say that I’ve never been as low as them,” says VALERIE WALSH from Netley.

“I say, ‘Actually, in 2012 I spent 14 weeks in an acute mental health unit, completely hopeless and despairing. I couldn’t have gone down any further than I had, and I managed to come up. I believe there is hope for everyone.’ “Suddenly they become interested in what I have to say.”

Valerie works with Nathan on an acute mental health unit.

“People have told me I’ve been their inspiration,” adds the 52-year-old. “Speaking from personal experience is very powerful.”

Valerie notes that this isn’t the first time she has been in the Echo. In 2012 the paper carried a police appeal to help find her. She had spiralled into depression, made several suicide attempts and felt utterly hopeless.

“The police were preparing a coroner’s report on me,” she says. “I’m grateful to be alive – I should be dead.”

Valerie says that on the surface, her life seemed perfect, but she had buried feelings about abuse she suffered as a child, which came to a head as she approached 40.

“I had three or four very serious suicide attempts and I lost count of the number of times I was sectioned (detained under the Mental Health Act),” she says.

Recovery was not an easy path for Valerie.

“Initially I had pills poured into me and I had electric convulsion therapy. This helped in little ways but it didn’t address the underlying issues.

"Then I had intensive psychological therapy. I had a fantastic therapist who had hope in me when I had none for myself. She saved my life.”

Valerie was discharged by mental health services around two years ago.

“I’m in a better place than I’ve ever been in my life,” she says. “I’m where I’m meant to be now. I’ve addressed the issues from my childhood.

“I can talk about it without getting hurt now. I feel fulfilled, I feel whole as a person and I feel I’m making a difference to people who are in despair.

“I don’t think people had a lot of hope for me.

“My psychologist made me feel I wasn’t some lunatic. I was just going through a crisis and needed help. It was nothing to be ashamed of. If she had given up hope for me I wouldn’t be here. I never give up hope for anyone.”

l JANE COLLARD has been managing mental health issues since she was a child. Her mother suffered a stroke when Jane was just ten and died when she 16.

Her mother’s illness saw the onset of Jane’s obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), which manifested in her compulsively stepping on cigarettes, tapping walls and performing rituals due to fearing contamination from the floor.

“I learnt that your life can fall apart at any moment,” says the 54-year-old, who is a peer support worker on a psychiatric intensive care unit in Southampton.

“In those days, there was nothing about mental health. I didn’t know why I was doing what I was doing and I was told off for it.

“Partly my feelings about contamination were down to having to change my mother’s bed linen and empty her commode.

“I was washing and washing, to try to wash the feelings away, but I couldn’t get rid of the horrible anxiety I was feeling. I had no-one to talk to about it, so I carried on these rituals.”

Jane says that her mother’s death taught her a lot.

“I learnt very young that you must make the most of your life,” she says. “I think people with mental health issues can build huge resilience because you’re battling every day.

“I feel very strong on the inside. The way I carried on was just to keep going.”

Jane continues to work with her OCD on a daily basis.

“My rituals take up a huge amount of time but I don’t let them get in the way of me living my daily life,” she says.

Like Nathan and Valerie, working as a peer support worker seems like the natural place for her mental health journey to have brought her to.

“I feel validated for all the pain I’ve been through,” she explains. “It makes me feel that I had to go through all of that to be where I am today. I’m doing a job that I absolutely love and I feel I’m making a difference in people’s lives and learning from them at the same time.”

WHAT IS PEER SUPPORT Southern Health, which provides mental health services for Hampshire, in partnership with Solent Mind, has recently begun a programme of employing staff who have lived experience of mental ill health.

The peer support worker programme employs people who have personal experience of mental health problems and are willing to use this experience to support others.

Sue Forber, head of peer support at Solent Mind, described the peer supporters as: “beacons of recovery for other people in similar situations, showing that recovery is possible.”

They are also recruiting volunteers who have experience of mental health issues for their Side by Side peer support programme.

Volunteers will be trained to develop opportunities such as support and social groups for people who are struggling.

Both initiatives are part of a pilot scheme exploring the benefits of peer support for people with mental health issues.

l For more information contact Lesley Herbert: 02380 874436 (lesley.herbert@southernhealth.nhs.uk) or Clare Grant: 02382 027831 (cgrant@solentmind.org.uk).