A Bipolar Mother talks about her experience with losing her children, the Courts & Mental Health Discrimination

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A Mum First and Foremost
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The Story:

This is a story of a Bipolar mother who has been in a custody battle over her three children due to her Bipolar. This is the result of my ex-husband’s application to the Court for an Sole Residency Order seeking an Order that he alone should look after the children with me only having supervised “contact” with them. The reason cited for his application is that I am “incapable” of looking after the children due to my Bipolar.His application asked for me to only have supervised contact with them.

A 17 month battle ensued resulting in a 10 day hearing in the High Court in the Royal Courts of Justice. Despite hearing evidence from 3 experts in psychiatry and psychology  all of whom gave evidence to the Judge that I am perfectly capable of looking after the children, the Judge decided that, because of my Bipolar, I should not be allowed to be the main carer of the children. She ordered that the children should be the subject of a Shared Residency Order ie that their care should be shared between me and their father with  them having homes with both of us. Legally, that puts us both on equal footing when it comes to our legal parenting rights. However, the Judge decided that their main carer should be their father on the basis that he doesn’t have the illness and can therefore provide greater stability than I can. He was not put through any psychological or psychiatric assessment to determine whether he was capable, despite the fact that he has been violent to both me and the children. The children’s nanny has had not psychiatric or psychological testing and yet has been allowed to take over their care in preference to me. Their main carer is therefore my husband’s nanny as, the reality is, that he is at work most of the time that he should be there looking after them. He heads up a City law firm litigation department (he’s an ex barrister) and is therefore rarely at home before their bed time.

I was thrown out of our marital home by my Husband who succesfully applied for an Occupation Order, claiming that my presence in the house was causing “significant harm” to the children. The Judge who heard this application was the same judge who heard the Children’s Act custody dispute. She came into court saying that she hadn’t had time to read the papers for the application but that she didn’t need to as it was obvious that my staying at the home would damage the children. She sought to evict me without consideration as to my financial means. I had no capital with which to buy or rent another home until the matrimonial home was sold. My husband was fighting my maintenance claim saying he couldn’t afford to pay me any maintenance out of his £450,000 earnings. My work was not producing enough income to fund a rented property. She gave no consideration for the effect that evicting me from my home was going to have on me and my mental health.

I was given 2 days to pack all my stuff and leave. I had nowhere to go other than to my brother’s house. I have been living there for 18 months in his spare bedroom where me and my three children have to share a bed when they come to stay with me. Yet the Shared Residency Order means that the children are to have HOMES with both me and my husband. I was specifically advised that, under the Matrimonial Homes Act, there would be no inequality between my financial situation for me and the kids when they are with me and those of my husband when the kids are with him.

The reality is stark. I am without my own home at all whilst my husband continues to live in our 7 bedroomed matrimonial home. He has been left with 80% of his salary whilst I have been awarded 20% of his salary as maintenance for me and the children. This maintenance will stop in 5 years time. I have incurred debts of £450,000 which has now bankrupted me given the fall in the housing market. I have no capital left with which to buy a home for the children.

The judge considers all this to be a fair outcome!

My children’s thoughts and feelings:

The children’s thoughts and feelings were simply not taken into account. They did not give direct evidence to the Judge either orally or verbally – a point I discuss further below. They are devastated by the decision and miss me terribly. They do not understand the Judge’s contention that I am not well enough to look after them nor do they agree – they all think that I am a good mother who is perfectly able to parent them and indeed they desperately want me to be parenting them far more regularly. My daughter wants to come and live with me and yet no-one is listening to her; she has resigned herself to the fact that, eventually, she will be able to “vote with her feet” and that eventually her view will count.

They cannot understand why they are not allowed to see their mummy very often and don’t understand why nobody has listened to what they want. They keep telling me that they want to live with me and that they are heartbroken without me. My youngest said “Mummy, there’s no love in my heart when you’re not here with me”. She is regularly having nightmares and is wetting and soiling herself regularly. She is convinced that I no longer love her despite all my assurances that I do. She’s clingy and demands my constant attention when I am with her. Relatives observing her say that she is clearly suffering. My son (8) tells me he is often crying himself to sleep and now talks to me and others through his favourite soft toy. He follows me everywhere, (even into the loo!), not letting me out of his sight. I have nicknamed him “my little shadow”. He cries on the car journey to drop him back to his father, pleading with me not to let him take him away from me. My eldest child, 10 , still asks to sleep in bed with me when she is with me and cuddles me for dear life. She keeps asking when the Court will listen to her views and when she is allowed to “vote with her feet”. She has asked me to get her her own solicitor so that she can be listened to.

They all need their mummy – that much is clear. They love me regardless of my condition and tell me that they don’t believe that I am doing anything wrong to them or harming them in any way. They simply cannot understand it all.

Me and my Bipolar:

I was the children’s main carer for the 9 years leading up to this Judgement, some of this time I was the sole carer at home, some of the time I had nanny help.

I suffer from Bipolar 2 and have therefore never experienced a manic episode. I do not suffer from delusions,nor have I ever been psychotic. I am told that I have the mildest form of Bipolar and it is on the borderline of a diagnosis which is why it went undiagnosed for 16 years!

I have only been in hospital twice, both of which were voluntary admissions – I have never been sectioned. The first admission was for depression, during which time I was diagnosed with depression only. The second time was because the psychiatrist changed his diagnosis to Bipolar and wanted me to be in hospital for the introduction of Lamotrigine and because he was concerned that I might be going hypomanic on the anti-depressants. I was not manic according to me and to the admission notes.

I have never abused the children. I have no substance abuse problems, nor have I ever had any substance abuse problems) and don’t even smoke. I have no criminal record. I have a full, clean driving licence and have never been convicted of any driving offences.

I am fully medication compliant and my condition is fully stable with no relapses since I started on medication 4 years ago. I have been through 2 years of intensive Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (the recommended treatment for Bipolar). During the 6 years leading up to my hospitalisation and diagnosis, I was the children’s main carer and was being their mum without being on any medication or treatment as I hadn’t yet been diagnosed. Yet, I was still managing to look after them. The children were thriving at school with good school reports and the schools reported them to be well-adjusted, highly intelligent, popular, lovely children.

I have experienced 4 depressive episodes (no manic ones) since I was 22 (I’m now in my 40s), each of which followed a major life trauma. I experienced the first during my degree – I still graduated with an honours degree, went through my military training at Sandhurst, became an Army officer and rowed for my university, winning the National Polytechnic rowing regatta, so the depression didn’t hamper my functioning. I experienced my second episode at Law school, but still graduated and became a lawyer. I experienced my 3rd after the birth of my second child, but still carried on parenting my two children (aged 2 and newborn) whilst managing my third pregnancy whilst my son was only 6 months old. During this time, I oversaw the building works in our house and worked part-time.

My fourth episode resulted in my (voluntary) admission to hospital. I had three children in three years, my two year old son developed diabetes, I was working and we had knocked down our house and I was overseeing the rebuilding works. My husband had become physically violent towards me and our marriage was crumbling and high in conflict with a husband who was rarely at home. When he was at home, he was emotionally and psychologically abusive for quite a lot of the time. He was highly critical of my parenting and of my abilities as a wife and housewife – I rarely got anything right in his eyes. I collapsed from the pressure of it all.

I tell you the following about myself only to give you an idea of what I have managed to achieve during my illness when I wasn’t even diagnosed and was on no medication. These achievements did not seem to carry much weight for the Judge and did not convince her that I was able to lead a full, productive life and be competent.

I am a qualified lawyer and still manage to work. I am a regular speaker at conferences, have been a speaker on the Radio, and have had many articles published in both the broadsheets and journals. I am an ex Territorial Army officer, having passed through Sandhurst military academy and was in the TA for over 9 years, both in command roles and in organisational roles. I am a qualified mountain expedition leader, have won sailing races with the Army, ski, run, cycle and have led an expedition team across the Yukon in Canada, leading them through 5 weeks of arduous terrain on a 250 mile trek. I gained my legal qualifications by doing a distance learning course of a law degree whilst working full time.

I have many long-standing friends, all of whom say that I have never exhibited any form of mania, nor any substantial depressive symptoms. None of them could believe that I have been given this diagnosis.

Discrimination, prejudice, ignorance and Human Rights and the Law

I will write separately in detail about the law on the Children’s Act,the Disability Discrimination Act, the Human Rights Act, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the other pieces of legislation. Being a lawyer I can strive to effect a change in the legislation. This will take a great deal of time and energy but I feel strongly that the law is not serving the interests of the children where a parent suffering from an illness is deemed incapable. The law I discuss here is my understanding and interpretation of it; I may be challenged on this but it is my view currently.

I believe that this whole situation and judgement is as a result of ignorance and a misunderstanding of the complexities of the condition; in particular the fact that there is an entire spectrum of manifestations of the condition from the extremely mild (as in my case) to the extremely severe. There is also an ignorance of the fact that there are two types of Bipolar: Bipolar 1 which is a mix of mania and mild depression compared to Bipolar 2 which is only hypomania but more severe depression. Clearly, the manifestations of these two types of the illness are very different and result in very different sets of behaviours of the individual sufferer and therefore the effect that this has on the family and especially the children.

Discrimination:

I also think that this case falls within the realm of mental health discrimination, prejudice and stigma by the Judge, my exhusband and his witnesses. There is still a high level of prejudice surrounding mental health conditions which is pervasive throughout our society and I aim, through this blog and my legal background and skills (I am a qualified lawyer), to fight it and challenge it through both the court system and the media.

I am fighting this issue as I now know that I am, unfortunately, one of many parents with this condition who is suffering from this kind of prejudice and losing custody of their children as a result. There are now many stories both on this blog and sent to me through my private email, which are heart-rending stories of parents having their children taken away from them as a result of their mental illness. Clearly, some parents are not well and struggle to find the right medication to stabilise their condition, some have substance abuse problems and some have such a severe form of the illness that they would find it very difficult to be a full time parent. However, there are many, many others who have managed to stabilise their condition such that it no longer impacts their day to day life in a debilitating way and these parents should not have their children taken away from them simply because they have a diagnosis of a condition which is not of their making, is not “their attitude, fault or fundamental flaw of personality” but is simply a disease which they are extremely unfortunate to have got.

There are parents with epilepsy, diabetes, cancer, alzheimers, paralysis, Down’s syndrome, Autism or any other illness which can be debilitating either physically hampering the way that they can parent their children or emotionally/psychologically debilitating, yet do these parents have their children taken away from them because they are ill? There are parents who have alcohol and drug problems yet these parents don’t usually have their children taken away from them. Why should people with mental health problems be deemed to be automatically more incapable of parenting their children than these other sufferers?

My son has Type 1 diabetes (a form which is NOT the result of a poor diet), and I witness his extreme fluctuations in mood and functioning. When his blood sugar levels fluctuate, his mood fluctuates: he can become aggressive, irritable, bad-tempered, very fatigued, have headaches, feels nauseus, can’t concentrate, and at times can’t function at all. All this happens on a daily basis and yet how many diabetics have their children taken away from them on the basis that they are “incapable” of looking after their children?

They don’t, because every one would argue that that would be discriminatory and unnecessary. And yet it is allowed to happen to the mentally ill.

The United Nations Convention for the Rights of A Child.

This states clearly that all children have the right to be have their voice heard. Yet the Judge did not hear my children’s opinions at all. They did not give evidence either orally or in writing. They were deemed to be “too young” and yet there is no age stipulation in the legislation. It simply gives guidance that evidence of children will be taken into account if they are deemed to be sufficiently mature enough to understand the issues involved. What does that mean? Who makes that assessment? Who funds the children’s separate legal representation? A CAFCASS officer was the only person who heard what the children had to say.

CAFCASS: The Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service

Apparently, the Court case was all about what was in the best interests of the children. Yet my children were interviewed by CAFCASS on only 1 occasion for approximately 50 minutes. They gave evidence to the CAFCASS officer that they want their mummy. My youngest daughter told CAFCASS that she wanted to live with me, my son said he wanted to live with both of us and my eldest daughter said she wanted to live with me but see a lot of her father. CAFCASS did not report this properly and there is no transcript taken of the interview so I cannot prove what I heard the children say when I was in the room with them when they said it. It is my word against the CAFCASS officer’s report.

The CAFCASS report was, in the judge’s own words “appalling” and highly deficient in its thoroughness and findings yet the proceedings continued, despite the fact that the Report was the only truly objective evidence on what the children wanted. The judge told the CAFCASS officer that it was the most depressing example of how badly a CAFCASS investigation could go, yet it was still admitted as evidence. He didn’t even interview the schools or my new partner or come to the home to see if the allegations of my disgusting housewifery were true.

The Judge, accountability and Appeals

Astonishingly, a Judge is exempt from the provisions of the Disability Discrimination Act when acting in their judicial capacity! I simply do not understand why a Judge should be exempt from being held to be potentially discriminatory and held accountable for that bias. I am told also that I cannot appeal this decision as there are only 2 grounds for appeal:

1. That the Judge misapplied the law: well, she didn’t because the Children’s Act is entirely silent on the point of how a Judge should assess a parent’s capability or indeed a parent suffering with mental health issues.

2. That the Judge exercised her “judicial discretion” in such a way that no other judge would have exercised it in that way!. Clearly, an individual’s subjective discretion is such a nebulous concept that it is extremely difficult to criticise it. I was also advised that judges very rarely criticise another judge’s exercise of this judicial discretion. I find this an extraordinary protection to afford judges.

You also have to have leave to appeal and this leave has to be sought from the Judge herself. In other words, the judge who made the decision that you wish to appeal, has to agree that you can appeal it! She has reserved the case to herself too, which means that if I wish to bring a fresh application under the Children’s Act for the residency issue to be re-evaluated, I will get the same Judge!

I simply fail to see how this is justice or how it prevents miscarriages of justice from happening as there seems to be little room for challenging the decisions of the judges.

Human Rights

There are also Human Rights issues in all of this. There has, in my view, been a breach of various articles in the Human Rights Act including a breach of privacy, a breach of my right to a family life and a unfair trial.

Breach of privacy:

I was ordered to make a full disclosure of ALL my medical notes, both in patient and out patient and regardless of whether they pertained to my condition. They were also allowed to see ALL my psychology session notes. My computer was gone through by my husband as were all my mobile phone calls and texts and he was permitted to give evidence on the findings of his investigations. He had me followed by a private investigator.

Right to a fair trail

Whilst all of my medical history was obtained and given in evidence, none of his medical notes had to be disclosed, nor his notes from his psychology sessions that he had been having. No medical reports were conducted on him. This meant that the Judge heard all about my medical history and nothing about his.

I spent a week listening to my medical notes being taken to pieces by his barrister: excerpts from my psychology sessions, from my psychiatric assessments, from my previous medical history.I was absolutely destroyed as a person and as a mother by my husband, his witnesses and his barrister. I spent an entire week not being allowed to speak at all but having to  listen to my exhusband’s barrister ask his witnesses to explain certain behaviours and thoughts and emotions that I had as though I was completely invisible and as though they were able to understand what was going on in my head. It was deeply humiliating and degrading and very largely untrue and exaggerated. I then endured 3 days of cross-examination by a barrister who bullied and humiliated and taunted me in the most disgraceful manner about my illness, my behaviour and my emotional and psychological state. His entire aim was to make me seem like a complete danger to myself, to my children, to claim that I had a fundamental personality disorder despite having been told by the experts that I did not suffer from any personality disorder. My whole inside of my mind was taken to pieces by people who knew nothing about my illness and yet claimed that they “knew” me well enough to give evidence about my condition.

My husband’s legal team knew that the only way to ‘convince the Judge that I was the incapable, “mad” wife and mother that he said I was, was to try to focus on the period running up to and following on from my hospital admission and to assert that this was the norm. This he did with devastating success. He was able to focus the Judges attention away from all the years of my parenting prior to admission (ie 6 years) and only focus on the 4 months leading up to my admission and the 12 months following it.

I asked my legal team to include all his own bad behaviour but I was advised that we shouldn’t “sink to his level”.His violence towards me resulted in the police being called out to our home, yet no police records were brought into the trial. His drug taking in the past was not brought up, nor was his visits to places he shouldn’t have been visiting. None of this was considered important in terms of assessing his own personality and fitness to parent.

The witnesses were allowed to give evidence which was outside their realm of expertise ie they were not psychiatrists or psychologists and yet they were allowed to give evidence on my state of mind, on my personality and behaviour and were allowed to contend that I was mentally ill and that I had a personality disorder.

Law on expert evidence

The law on evidence is usually that no witness is allowed to give “expert evidence” ie evidence which should only be given by an expert in their field. So, for example, in a hearing on negligence of a construction of a building, a lay person cannot give evidence on whether or not the building had been constructed properly or not as they are not experts in construction. Yet, in a case involving Bipolar, the witnesses were allowed to give evidence on my state of mind, on my emotional background and on my thoughts. The Judge stated in her Judgement that the evidence of my neighbour was “particularly persuasive” yet my neighbour knows nothing about my condition.

This was therefore not a fair trial in my view. There was a huge disadvantage to me and none to him as he did not undergo any of the same scrutiny into his personality, his thoughts, behaviours etc yet mine were gone through in minute detail.

The Children’s Act – guidance on mentally ill parents

The Children’s Act is totally silent on the issue of parent’s with mental health conditions. It gives no guidance whatsoever to either the Judge or to CAFCASS on how to assess a parent’s capabilities when they are suffering from a mental health problem.

The Judge is given the sole responsibility for assessing any evidence. This is despite the fact that the Judge has no psychiatric or psychology training. They are given the jurisdiction to decide on issues which are beyond their training and experience.  Neither are they qualified in child psychology yet they are allowed to adjudicate on the effects of a particular parent’s illness on a child.

There is no panel of judges and experts; simply one judge.

How is this a “fair trial” and how is it justice?

“Personality v symptoms”

Because many of the symptoms of the illness can be mistaken for inherent personality traits, this is the main barrier to people being able to see the person for who they are rather than as a cluster of mistaken personality traits. The fatigue associated with depression is perceived as “laziness”, the lack of communication as “being anti-social”, the anxiety as being “over-sensitive” etc.

The mainstay of therapy for Bipolar consists of helping the sufferer develop “coping strategies” to stave off depression and minimise stress. Each sufferer has their own “triggers” ie stimuli, which will bring on either an episode of depression or an episode of mania/hypomania. During my therapy, I recognised that stress was a major trigger for me so I learnt to avoid taking on too much eg too much work, too much housework, too much organising social activities etc. I also learnt that a coping mechanism for stress was to go running, listen to music and do other pleasurable activities to bring balance back into my life.

During my recovery from my admission to hospital with depression, I was advised to “put my recovery first” for a while. This was interpretated by my husband and others as me being “selfish”, “self-absorbed” and not interested in being a wife and mother. I was “lazy”. On the one hand I was being advised by my medical team to put my recovery as the highest priority, on the other hand I was being criticised roundly by my husband and others for being “selfish” and “lazy”.  This contradiction was causing even further stress and was making my recovery harder. To have a husband who says, on the one hand that he understood and supported me and yet was highly critical when I implemented my coping strategies, was very difficult to cope with.

Noise is another trigger for me and London is extremely noisy and crowded. I therefore sought to regularly escape from the noise and crowds and travelled down to the seaside to get away. This was considered “unnecessary”, “self indulgent” “putting my own needs before my children’s”, “irresponsible”. The Judge decided that my reasons for doing this were “disingenous – as it was really for my socialising”. Yet this need to escape the noise and stress of my town was highlighted as a positive coping strategy by my psychologist.

All these symptoms and coping strategies were misinterpreted and I was condemned as a result.

My Bipolar Partner

My new partner has Bipolar 2 – a mild form like mine with no mania, delusions or psychosis but depressive episodes and anxiety. We met in hospital and formed a close bond as a result of our mutual understanding and empathy of our respective suffering and struggles to come to terms with our condition. He was diagnosed at the same time as me and he and I were the only people we each knew with the condition. We relied on each other during the first year of diagnosis to support, inform and listen to each other. He was discharged after the first week of my admission yet he came back to visit me, take me for walks and to the cinema, send me encouraging texts and so on. My husband visited me twice during my 5 weeks of hospitalisation, saying that he was “too busy” looking after the children and working to find the time to come and visit me. Not surprisingly, I came to rely increasingly on my new found fellow sufferer for support rather than my husband. After a year, I decided I wanted to leave my husband and be with someone who understood me and my condition and be fully accepting of the limitations it might impose on me.

My husband immediately issued proceedings against my new partner for a Prohibited Steps Order ie an application to the Court to prohibit my partner from seeing the children claiming that he was a danger to himself and a potential danger to the children. No supporting evidence was submitted with this application – it was based purely on my husband’s contention. This application was in place for 17 months before Judgement was handed down by the Judge.

My partner was prevented from seeing the children for this entire time simply based on  my exhusband’s  assertion that my partner had Bipolar and therefore shouldn’t be exposed to the children. He has no criminal record, no alcohol or drug abuse and has never hurt or threatened the children in any way. But he was still not allowed to see them until the Judge ruled that he could.  Unlike criminal law “innocent until proved guilty”, in these proceedings my partner was “ill and dangerous, until proved otherwise”.  This is despite the fact that the children adore him and kept asking why they couldn’t see him.

He went through hell in those 17 months; having been made a party to the proceedings he was required to be a witness and therefore be interviewed by my lawyer and prepare witness statements. He had to be examined by a psychiatrist to prepare an expert witness report, he was in the witness box for 2 days and his medical notes were trawled through in court. Unsurprisingly, he found this deeply humiliating, insulting and degrading. My husband’s barrister did everything he possibly could to depict him as unstable and incapable of being a parent.

When the Judge did hear the application, she threw it out on the basis that it was unfounded. Yet, during this 18 month period awaiting judgement, my partner was forbidden to see the children. This also meant that he was brought to trial where full disclosure of his own medical notes were ordered and he was cross examined for 2 days. He was again bullied and humiliated by the barrister cross examining him, and being told repeatedly that he was “unstable” and clearly not capable of parenting.

This was also used as a reason for my children not coming to live with me: the two of us together are clearly unable to care for children, according to the judge. But why?

• Neither of us has a criminal record.
• Neither of us has a drug or alcohol problem and never have had.
• Neither of us have abused the children in any way, nor threatened them.

Yet we are considered to not be capable of looking after the children, based on our mental health condition.

Kids need mums:

The vast majority of people believe that children need their mothers and not just on an ad hoc basis, but on a regular one with a great deal of love, nurturing and understanding of their needs on the mother’s part. The mother-child bond is fundamental, deep and irreplaceable. All the psychological studies into the importance of the role of the mother bears testament to my contentions. My children desperately want me; they are unutterably sad that I am forced to see them so rarely and are emotionally and psychologically suffering as a result.

This blog is my attempt to highlight that all parents, regardless of their illness, are needed by their children and that discrimination, ignorance, stigma and a lack of empathy is are all in the way of blocking those children from their parents.

Any comments, or offers of support would be greatly appreciated.

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