John Priestland

It's about people.

It's about conversations and it's about care.

That's where we are.

There's a few things to unpack and it's great to have a doctor in the conversation in case I misspeak.

I think we need to draw an important distinction between mental health and well-being and we're all on some sort of a spectrum there.

We have good days and bad days and things go well and things go less well.

We cope and we don't cope.

to different extents.

That's very different to a mental illness, a formal diagnosis of a psychosis, let's say.

And there's a French academic, a French psychologist academic called Professor Thomas Rabeiron, and he talks about the pathologisation of the exceptional experience.

And what he means by that is that people who have a strange encounter, something that might be frightening, something that's unusual, but there's nothing wrong with them at all, it just seems something odd and unusual,

they can get pulled into a formal diagnosis of mental illness that that experience is pathologised and that was the danger that Paul was facing and his strategy was to lie to avoid that.

So in a way there are three levels of trauma that the experiencer has.

The first is they see something frightening in the sky that may be traumatic, may cause alarm, may be a positive experience, some of them are, but that's the first one.

The second trauma

is when they try and share that with friends and family.

And instead of being given compassion and care, oh, you poor chap, you know, do you want to go for coffee?

Do you want to go for a pint?

It's like, no, you are a liar.

You know, you are shaming our family.