With his soulful ballads and chronically online sense of humour, I\u2019ve always felt an affinity with Lewis Capaldi. Little did I know that I had a lot more in common with the musician than I realised. <\/p>\n
He recently made a triumphant return to Glastonbury<\/a>, two years after his meltdown on that very stage, and needless to say, we\u2019re all happy to see him back. But how did he get to this point? Capaldi opened up about his mental health struggles during an interview on This Past Weekend with Theo Von<\/a>, where he revealed that, as part of his mental health treatment, he was prescribed antipsychotics.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was really scary when they offered it,\u201d he admitted. \u201cAnti-psychotic? I\u2019m like, \u2018I\u2019m not psychotic.\u2019 But it\u2019s changed my life. My anxiety levels are so low these days. I don\u2019t feel the stress.\u201d<\/p>\n A total of 1 in 69<\/a> people in the UK take anti-psychotics long-term, but we never hear anybody talking about it. And Capaldi encapsulated the exact reason why: anti-psychotics are scary. Terrifying, even. The word \u201cpsychotic\u201d instantly conjures up images of violent, erratic caricatures like Norman Bates or Jack Nicholson in The Shining. <\/p>\n The truth is a lot more boring. Many mental health conditions, including anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and, yes, psychosis, are affected by the levels of dopamine in the brain<\/a>. While dopamine is often thought of as the brain\u2019s reward centre, dysregulation in that part of the brain can lead to several mental health issues.<\/p>\n I was diagnosed with OCD nearly eight years ago, and needless to say, I felt that dysregulation hard. OCD gets its name from the two components of the illness: the obsessions and the compulsions. There are a lot of different types of OCD, but they\u2019re all underpinned by intrusive thoughts \u2014 which, to be clear, are a lot more complex than deciding to give yourself a wacky haircut. These thoughts can be so frightening that you\u2019ll literally do anything to stop them, and that\u2019s where the compulsions come in. They\u2019re are repetitive actions you take to make yourself feel safe. <\/p>\n