Scripts on the theme of mental health have always been a part of Doctors, both in ongoing serial strands and standalone stories focusing on patients. The idea of a run of six episodes to tie in with national mental health awareness week (14th-20th May) started back in 2016. I’d had an episode broadcast where the story of the day concerned , and I wanted to explore this further. Comprehensive research and support from the organisation left me realising I’d barely scratched the surface of the subject, and I wanted to take it further with a possible two-part script. This led to a meeting between me, (script editor) and (series producer). What did we want to say and how would we go about saying it? Nasreen and Peter quickly identified that what I’d set out to do would take more than a couple of eps if we were to do it well – we rapidly went from two to three, then five, and finally arrived at six episodes at the commissioning stage late last year.
It seemed counter-productive and unrealistic to have a set of episodes where we dropped our regular characters into the full throttle of several mental health stories at the same time. Some narratives had to be set up and seeded in – we wanted to take our time so we could reflect the development of some issues and their long term impact. This isn’t just about the people coping with their issues, but how the people around them cope as well. Over the last year we’ve had dealing with , and the impact of this on his marriage and career. Alongside this, has had to deal with his mother’s diagnosis of dementia, which has given us a chance to look at the conflict this creates for him as a doctor and son. This is on top of the conflicts created by the fact that he is Al Haskey, dealing with it in a very Al Haskey way (which we wouldn’t have any other way).
Watch an introduction to the Doctors episodes for Mental Health Awareness Week.
Some of our storylines are intended to hit and hit hard with the beginning of mental health awareness week, and – spoilers – we’ll be seeing some of our regulars in a new light. On top of which individual writers have pitched their own story of the day. I’ve been greedy and written two episodes (8th May & 11th May) - I would have written more but I’ve run out of blackmail material on both Peter and Naz.) One script looks at how mental health issues are impacting on public services. The second explores how our regulars are dealing with what has happened to them in various stories.
I have been asked why this subject draws me so much. There are two answers:
Apparently I very grandly announced to my parents around the time of my fifth birthday that I was going to be either a doctor or psychiatrist. There is no way I could have known what a psychiatrist was at that age, it must have sounded very impressive to me so I used it to impress them. It was a little ray of hope my father clung to until he had to accept I am academically useless, totally hopeless at taking written exams, and there was no way I would ever have either as my career. But being reminded of the story years later by him, I tried to understand what made me latch onto such an idea at that age, and stories concerning this far-ranging subject – from family therapy to case studies of multiple personality disorders – have always intrigued and informed me. They all come back to the same question, whatever the circumstances: who are we? What makes us, us?
The second reason? Whilst researching the stories for mental health week, I found this quote online: “What mental health needs is more sunlight, more candour, more unashamed conversation.”
I could not agree more, and I hope the conversation continues long after the stories we’ve told.
Special mental health episodes of Doctors will air on ±«Óãtv One at 1.45pm from the 8-15 May 2018 and on ±«Óãtv iPlayer