Campaigner's call stands to reason

Jonathan Naess has taken time out of his high-powered job in the City to tackle the challenge of making mental illness sociably acceptable, says Sunil Peck

Jonathan Naess vowed to tackle the stigma and discrimination facing mental health service users while he was locked up in hospital in Lewisham under the Mental Health Act.

He is now taking a year's sabbatical from his job as a corporate financier to launch Stand to Reason, an organisation he hopes will help make mental illness socially acceptable.

Naess is striving to mobilise people who he says have traditionally been reluctant to be open about their mental illness because of the fear of stigma and discrimination. Stand to Reason’s members already include the finance director of a retail chain, an investment banker, a senior policy adviser to the Department of Health and a BBC producer.

“So often the focus is on what does not go well and a cycle of negativity whereby a psychiatrist will encourage a client to be realistic and not expect to get back into work,” he says. “What we are trying to do is inject some hope and positive stories into the mix and the coverage of mental health.

“People who have been diagnosed with a serious mental illness who have gone on to have kids and be in work do not typically go back and check in with psychiatric services. So there's a prejudice that perpetuates itself because of the focus on people who are socially excluded.”

Naess says that there are lots of people with mental ill-health who do not identify themselves as being socially excluded. But he has spoken privately to MPs, company executives and successful businessmen who are terrified to disclose their mental illness because of the “discriminatory attitudes” among employers. Naess has worked in the City for over 10 years and thinks it could be some years before employees can safely disclose their mental ill-health in the workplace.

“The City is a particularly difficult place to raise issues of mental ill-health,” he says. “There is a preference to talk about executive stress. There is a real culture of being able to take all the work that is thrown at you. If you have to take time off with executive stress that is almost a badge of honour because it shows how important you are.”

Naess has been detained under the Mental Health Act twice. The first time was when he was in his early 20s, not long after he graduated from Oxford.

“I was very worried about what implications it had for the rest of my career. I thought I needed to get professional training because I felt unemployable. I got through law school and went into the City but at that point I more or less went into denial for more than 10years while I ran my career and had a good life.”

At that time, Naess had no treatment or access to information on how to manage his condition. It was “good fortune” that prevented him from becoming ill for another 10 years.

So when the symptoms of his illness began to set in, he was unable to spot them. He ended up going through “quite a serious psychotic episode” and found himself in hospital for a second time.

“It seemed to me that there were lots of people in psychiatric hospitals with less resources [than I had], less of a network of friends and family supporting them, who were on a revolving door, going in and out of hospital.”

Like many other campaigners, Naess is concerned about plans in the Mental Health Act to allow the treatment of patients against their will via community treatment orders (CTOs).

He thinks that people will shy away from seeking help, for fear of a CTO being imposed on them.

“From a viewpoint of stigma and discrimination, CTOs are a real concern.

“The problem is that we would like people to have a healthy approach to psychiatric services, rather than one which is shrouded in fear.”

Despite his own professional background and the corporate identity of Stand to Reason, Naess stresses that he wants the organisation to be an inclusive one. Although he has only required intensive treatment for his mental health for “three or four per cent of my life”, he sees himself as a disabled person and thinks it is important to have “solidarity” with people with different degrees of mental ill-health and people within the broader disability movement.

Paul Farmer, chief executive of the mental health charity Mind, says there has already been a positive shift in the public and media attitude towards mental illness.

But he says that Naess’s passion and professional background can bring an added dimension to the fight against stigma and discrimination.

Farmer has met Naess several times and detects a willingness to work with other charities and organisations already established in the field.

“His experience of working in business with direct personal experience [of stigma] is something that often many people [with a mental illness] have not had,” he says, mainly because of the discrimination faced by people with mental health problems in the workplace.

“I think his particular take on understanding the way that employers think is going to be very important in the future.”

But Naess insists that Stand to Reason is about more than tackling discrimination in the workplace. When the organisation is up and running, he is planning to broaden Stand to Reason’s work to tackle discrimination faced by people with a mental illness in the NHS and in the education system. He says he wants to build up a social justice “brand”.

“We will be informed by the issues that our members tell us are important. We are a service user-led organisation that wants to campaign on national issues.”

Naess thinks he has set himself a “daunting” but “exciting” task by trying to change the public perception of people with a mental illness, but he says he would not have founded Stand to Reason if he did not think he could succeed.

“I am very tenacious and stubborn and that is a key characteristic for succeeding in something, whether you are in business or in charity.”

WHO IS HE?

Jonathan Naess has taken a year’s sabbatical to found Stand to Reason, an organisation tackling the discrimination and stigma facing people with mental illness.

He is going through the process of registering Stand to Reason as a charity.

He studied politics, philosophy and economics at Oxford, and worked in the City for 12 years.

Jonathan lives in south London and is married with a six-year-old son. He enjoys foreign travel, visiting Norway and Spain regularly.