96 ·^ COSMOPOLITAN
without telling me who, exactly,
it was. It seems as though it had
shocked him, that he’d had no idea
how low that person was feeling –
and Dan wasn’t ready to face up
to that just yet. “Round here, the
attitude to coping is just ‘have a drink
and a line and then you’ll be alright’,”
he says, avoiding eye contact. That’s
how he was expected to cope after
losing his job and finding that life
just fell away from him.
Talking to friends, Dan says, isn’t
really an option, “They’d probably just
take the mick, people don’t know I’m
getting help.” For a long time, Tia felt
the same: “During one of my worst
episodes, I remember crying, hiding
in the bedroom from my husband.
I couldn’t get up or go to work. He
wanted me to get help, but all I knew
was that I couldn’t speak about it.”
It was Teamwork Trust who stepped
in when Tia needed it most, offering
her counselling when she came to
them after months of torment. This
local mental health charity rallies
round to pick up the slack of
underfunded, overworked local
services. “Increasingly we see people
who have suffered with trauma and
abuse and those with chronic mental
ill-health and mental illness,” says
Jackie Sawford, a counsellor for the
charity. “Previously that would have
been looked after by the NHS but, as
their resources decrease, the number
of people coming to us rises.”
Jackie typifies the ethos of this and
many other charities in the area: never-
endingly kind with a palpable desire
to show this community that someone
is there for them. But the
charity is also under strain,
with money from grants
covering just a proportion
of the counselling costs. It
scrapes together support
from sources like the
National Lottery and local
supermarkets donating
profits from the plastic bag
charge. There is a constant
pressure hanging over them to find
funds to keep the free and critically
important counselling service buoyant.
Because if not them, then who?
After just three days here, anxiety is
curling its claws around my own mind.I feel isolated; abandoned at the end
of the line in a town without a pulse.
For Dan, Tia and many others in
Corby, a sense of security is not
just about having a job, home or
community. It’s also about having
room for loss or mistake. The sense
that there is no margin
for error hangs over this
town like a fog. It has
created a feedback loop of
unpredictability that leaves
many in a constant state of
hypervigilance; the ideal
breeding ground for
familiar villains – anxiety
and depression – to thrive.
Problems in Corby
continue because they can’t be boiled
down to a single factor. From the lack
of secure employment to the squeezed
resources and political neglect, Corby
is being suffocated by pressure from
all directions, gradually cutting off the“‘Have a drink
and a line’ is
the attitude
to coping”Support group
Men’s Shed