There is real Grade-A idiocy at work here  – not just cos anyone who writes ‘methinks’ and isn’t a 16th Century dramatist really needs to have a word with themselves.Look, we know Piers doesn’t care if he’s liked, thinks PC has gone mad and does these things purely to gain notoriety. We know he’s the centre of his own little universe who he’s perfection despite his failures in newspapers, serious TV news and allegedly insider dealing, phone hacking and making us admire a git like Jeremy Clarkson for punching him in the face. He’s an odious worm who used his newspaper editorship to settle personal scores and harass anyone who crossed him – granted but his attitude is fairly common and brings nothing but suffering and scorn in it’s wake.

Of course he’s since back-peddled like Sir Chris Hoy being pursued by angry bears, keen to mention he didn’t mean Princes William & Harry and their recent comments about dealing with the death of their mother. Just those pesky “celebrities” who wear it as a badge of honour to be bi-polar or have a spell in The Priory. As if fame somehow takes away all your vulnerability with money, cars, drugs and so on and that similarly makes them fair game for ridicule from celebrity culture leeches like himself.

People who suffer from depression don’t need telling that they are weak – they know it every time they look in the mirror, are out in the street, are in the midst of a panic attack, lying on the bathroom floor crippled with nerves, awake in the small hours with head spinning, when they wish they could just disappear. Weakness is at the heart of the problem and we are surrounded by signs that ‘manning up’ or being more of an Alpha male. At the centre of it all – we keep all this pushed down – it’s secret, safe as our dirty little lie, we don’t want to parade it or use it to make us out as special. We want to be just like the “normal” people who are able to cope and seem happy and content so we admit nothing. So the stigma and the inability to express the realities of depression and anxiety continue.I myself have recently had a particularly bad period where I think if I had the bravery to disappear from life that I would have.

I fear my friends have stopped taking me seriously and see it as something that I will just ride out and feel better soon. I’m scared that they are wrong.

And I’m not the only one – that oft quoted stat of suicide being the biggest killer of young men at the rate of three a day – is showing no sign of falling any time soon with 30-44 as the most dangerous age.When I was at school and my problems began the school welfare guidelines had no way of dealing with what I was going through. Today might have been a different matter with emphasis being put on the mental and physical welfare of students. The Tory party’s announcement to place the mental health of young adults t the heart of a new Mental Health bill is encouraging but it’s a fucking wreck.

So few beds, so few facilities, so few professionals lead to children in wards sometimes hundreds of miles away from their parents. The Conservative’s root and branch destruction of the NHS is only going to make that worse. Decent treatment will be pushed further to just being available to those who can afford private care. Continual cuts and pay freezes will not attract new blood to the organisations, however much your election promises wish it to be so.

However, perhaps the recognition of mental problems from an early age and that speaking out, sharing them with others and recognising that they are not bad, strange, weird or unmanageable will create the cultural change that we need. It’s only through blowing apart this idiotic notion that to speak about your inner life is as important to your health as the pills and medicine we would take for any other ailment. Such dinosaur viewpoints like Piers Moron holds should be allowed to die with him. Then perhaps people won’t have to suffer literally in silence.