by BEN PLATTS-MILLS
‘Why do different cultures respond differently to depression?’ The question is typical of Matthew. The assumption embedded in it creates rhetorical tension, pulling you on to his intellectual territory, forcing you to take a position. At the same time, it sounds like the beginning of a joke.
‘Go on,’ I say.
We are on the 242 bus heading south on Kingsland Road in the East End of London. We are on the top deck, towards the back. A man sitting across the aisle is talking on his phone in a clipped language I can’t understand. It crosses my mind that he might be speaking Yoruba but Matthew doesn’t seem to have noticed, so perhaps not.
‘I mean,’ says Matthew, ‘I watch all these people going to see Lisa, and I just think: “What the fuck are you doing?”’
Lisa is the psychotherapist at Headway, the brain injury charity where Matthew and I work, he as a volunteer, I on the management team. Lisa offers counselling to the people who attend the centre – people who, like Matthew, are living with neurological disabilities. In most cases, their injuries are caused by strokes, road traffic accidents or violent assaults. Matthew’s injury is unusual in having been the result of surgery. It happened in 2005 when he was admitted to hospital with acute hydrocephalus – a dangerous build-up of cerebrospinal fluid in the brain.
Matthew had a cyst growing in the system of ventricles that carry the cerebrospinal fluid. When the cyst got big enough, it blocked off the ventricles, turning them into water balloons that began crushing his brain against the inside of his skull. By the time he reached hospital, Matthew was in a critical condition. The surgery to remove the cyst saved his life, but it also caused damage to the surrounding tissue, leaving him with significant fatigue and memory problems. This kind of surgical injury is rare, but for Matthew it has had life-changing consequences.
Matthew is also unusual in his outright rejection of therapy.
‘I just can’t understand why people find it psychologically useful,’ he continues. ‘People like that are just reading from a script.’
‘Psychotherapists, you mean?’
‘Yes. It’s a professionalised script.’
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