More than a game: Football, friendship and mental health recovery
When Tarik Kaidi was sectioned in 2013, he couldn't understand why; he had felt like he was on top of the world. For months, his
When Tarik Kaidi was sectioned in 2013, he couldn't understand why; he had felt like he was on top of the world. For months, his mind had been racing with new ideas. He was constantly on the move, meeting friends, networking and making plans. He felt energetic, confident, sociable and unstoppable. His music business was thriving, he was the father of a young daughter, and he was preparing to get married. To Kaidi, life had never looked brighter. But while he felt invincible, his family saw something else. What he saw as creative energy, they recognised as increasingly erratic behaviour and reached out to the mental health services. When police officers stopped him shortly after he had received an immunisation shot ahead of his honeymoon to Mexico, the intervention came as a shock. Kaidi had been detained under the UK's Mental Health Act, allowing doctors to keep him in hospital against his will for assessment and treatment.
More than a decade later, standing on a spiral staircase in London's Earl's Court district, Kaidi cuts a distinctive figure in dark sunglasses, a matching blue tracksuit and a flat-brim baseball cap. He takes a long drag on a cigarette and shakes his head as he recalls being taken to St Charles Mental Health Centre in west London, an imposing 19th-century honey-coloured brick building whose main entrance archway is crowned by the remains of a former hospital chapel. In the months leading up to his detention, he says he had been experiencing a manic episode, a period of elevated mood and high energy associated with bipolar disorder, a condition he would later be diagnosed with. "I was in denial at the time," he said, describing the impulsivity and hyperactivity he experienced as resembling symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) - "but times a thousand". Although he now accepts the diagnosis, he remains critical of the way he was detained and of some of his experiences in hospital.
Tilting his head back and pressing his tongue to the roof of his mouth, Kaidi demonstrated how he would pretend to swallow the medication prescribed to him during his 28-day stay at the centre and a subsequent two-week night-time admission. He recalls being surrounded by patients who moved through the centre’s corridors in what appeared to him to be a medicated haze, their slumped postures and blank expressions reinforcing his fear of treatment. In the weeks that followed, however, the euphoria that had sustained him for months gave way to a deep and painful depression; a common phase of bipolar disorder that can follow a manic episode. His wedding, which had been due to take place a week after the intervention, was called off, and his relationship with his partner ended. After being discharged, Kaidi said he felt all his energy leave his body; “It felt like hell; all interests gone, all hobbies gone, I felt like a waste of space”, he said.
The BriefWire