How this A Place In The Sun presenter had to be talked out of a building after doctors misdiagnosed her and gave her antidepressants

Crying silent tears and shaking, Leah Charles-King stood in line at her doctor’s office, holding a handwritten message.

It said: ‘If you send me home, I will kill myself. I’m suicidal and need help now.’

“It was that blunt,” recalls the TV presenter, best known for Channel 4’s A Place In The Sun.

Just two days earlier, Leah, then 30, had given a vibrant performance on a live ITV show, but it masked a mental health crisis that had been brewing for several years. She had experienced periods of manic highs, where she became impulsive and barely stopped to rest, followed by crushing lows since her early twenties.

“I didn’t want to sleep or eat for days, but I was full of energy, racing thoughts and very impulsive,” Leah recalls.

‘I also had periods of feeling suicidal and depressed.

“I could tell something was wrong because I was very erratic.”

Her doctor diagnosed depression and prescribed her antidepressants, but they didn’t seem to help, and there was a reason for that: she didn’t have depression.

The day she handed her desperate note to staff at her GP practice, an ambulance was called to take her to hospital, where a specialist diagnosed Leah with bipolar disorder. In addition, she was told that the antidepressants she had been taking for years might be making her symptoms worse.

While depression typically leads to intense sadness, pessimism, and low energy, bipolar disorder can lead to periods of these symptoms but alternating with episodes of mania when people become intensely energetic.

Those affected may also engage in impulsive and potentially harmful behavior, such as spending irrational amounts of money.

Despite the two conditions being “very different” and requiring different treatment, “almost 70 percent of people with bipolar disorder tell us they have previously been diagnosed with depression,” Simon Kitchen, CEO of the charity Bipolar UK, told me , to Good Health. .

The diagnosis for bipolar disorder depends on a doctor’s assessment; The problem is that if someone with bipolar disorder is misdiagnosed with depression, he or she may be given medications that can worsen the mood swings.

‘Antidepressants have proven useful for some bipolar patients, but for the majority antidepressants are ineffective and can cause mood instability,’ says Guy Goodwin, emeritus professor of psychiatry at the University of Oxford.

They do this by “activating brain networks that are susceptible to switching from a normal mood to hypomania (a less extreme form of mania, which does not cause psychosis but can cause risky and reckless behavior) – the drug causes the switch,” explains he out.

But in a 2022 survey for Bipolar UK, 55 percent of 2,458 people with bipolar disorder surveyed reported being given antidepressants.

The charity is also aware of cases where patients have been wrongly diagnosed with treatment-resistant depression when antidepressants have had no effect, in some cases requiring them to be given stronger drugs.

Bipolar UK is now campaigning to encourage GPs to ‘think bipolar before prescribing antidepressants for the first time’, says spokesman Mark Hayward.

The charity says it takes on average almost a decade for a correct bipolar diagnosis to be made after symptoms first appear, despite it being very common, with more than a million people in Britain living with the condition.

“GPs (are) under pressure and assessing patients’ experiences and backgrounds takes time,” says Professor Goodwin.

‘Patients with bipolar disorder don’t get the medical attention they need from mental health specialists and that’s a big problem: it’s actually a scandal.’

Leah spent nearly a decade going back and forth to her doctor before receiving her correct diagnosis. This is despite fearing she might have the condition, after noticing a 2009 EastEnders storyline featuring a character with bipolar disorder and identifying with her erratic behaviour. But her doctor rejected the idea.

“My doctor said, ‘You can’t possibly be bipolar; you are too articulate,” Leah recalls. ‘You’re too self-conscious. You are too aware of your feelings and emotions and the state you are in. People with bipolar disorder are crazy and you don’t seem crazy right now.” ‘

Professor Goodwin, who is also medical adviser to Bipolar UK, dismissed this as a ‘completely ridiculous’ position.

“Bipolar disorder is somewhat associated with a higher IQ and better verbal skills,” he says.

However, Leah says she was told, “You’re just depressed, keep taking these antidepressants.”

After first being prescribed them in her 20s, she did so, but all the while her symptoms “just got worse and worse and worse.”

Bipolar disorder can be difficult to diagnose, says Professor Goodwin, because feelings of ‘worthlessness’ can be easily recognized as depression by healthcare professionals, but the manic symptoms also experienced by people with bipolar disorder are ‘difficult to identify as an illness’. be recognised’.

‘That’s because they often look like good health – more energy, more enthusiasm, greater commitment – ​​and it’s only when that turns into something more toxic, when it turns into irritability, aggression, not being able to sleep or concentrate, that it becomes it is becoming increasingly recognizable as a disease,” he explains. This side can also manifest as impulsiveness, hypersexuality (having many sexual partners) and spending large sums of money.

Patients are also less likely to seek help when they are manic, meaning doctors will not see their mood swings. In some cases, people experience mania characterized by psychosis and hallucinations, completely losing touch with reality.

At its worst, Leah went from feeling so depressed that she could barely get out of bed and “couldn’t even brush my teeth,” to suddenly changing “overnight” and beginning to exhibit “full mania.” (something that happened before). she received proper treatment).

In those moments, friends even praised her for being “super hyper and energetic,” believing that she had been lifted out of her depression and was back “on top form.”

Yet she was able to dart in the other direction with alarming speed. Two days before her desperate note to the GP surgery, Leah had donned a sunshine yellow dress and made her live TV appearance – just two hours later a terrified friend had to talk her down from the top of a building.

“I couldn’t bear the mental torture,” says Leah. “My boyfriend talked me down and then I wrote that goodbye note to my doctor.

‘I just felt “this is my last chance”. If I didn’t get help today, I knew what I was going to do, so I mustered up the last bit of strength I had left.

“I was so impulsive during this mania and fed up with all the pain and fear I was fed up with,” she recalls.

After being seen by a specialist, Leah was given a combination of bipolar medication and talk therapy and her mental wellbeing improved dramatically: in 2021 she landed her dream job, presenting on A Place In The Sun.

But now in her 40s, she is still angry that she spent so many years misdiagnosed and treated: “Antidepressants can make a person’s illness a lot worse,” she says.

But experts warn that people should not suddenly stop taking antidepressants without first discussing their treatment plan with their doctor, as this can lead to serious side effects.

Professor Goodwin says official guidelines recommend that treatment for bipolar disorder consists of ‘medication that is not just antidepressants, but also includes an element of mood stabilization.

‘Lithium appears to be most effective against all manifestations of bipolar disorder – depression, mania and mixed states – (and) appears to be effective in a way that other medications are not.’

For more information about bipolar visit: bipolaruk.org. If you need urgent assistance, you can contact Samaritans for free on 116 123; email: jo@samaritans.org; or visitsamaritans.org to find your nearest location.