2009-12-05 17:02
'Joining a choir helped me break free from depression,' says Anna Benfield
After the birth of her son Ollie, now nearly three, 32-year-old Anna Benfield developed severe postnatal depression and was admitted to the Priory. In September 2007, shortly after going home, she joined Guildford’s Rock Choir™, which has been instrumental in her recovery. A full-time mother, she lives in Guildford with her husband Lee, an IT analyst, and Ollie.
‘I had a difficult pregnancy: I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes and had to inject myself with insulin. At 33 weeks I started bleeding and Ollie was born weighing just four pounds. He spent three and a half weeks in special care and I had to go home without him.
'To compound that, we’d recently moved to Guildford so I didn’t have friends in the area and I felt really isolated. When Ollie came home I was like an automaton; I fed him, I changed his nappy, I looked after him but my feelings for him were totally locked away. If I felt anything it was resentment. I rushed back to my job as a marketing manager when he was six months old because at least at work I knew people, I knew what I was doing, I was competent.
‘The crunch came when he was ten months old. He was crying and I couldn’t respond. I lay in bed in the foetal position with my hands over my ears. The mental health crisis team was called and I was admitted to the Priory. I was still insisting I was fine: not enjoying your baby is taboo, you feel such a failure that it’s really hard to admit it. The turning point came after ten days when another in-patient asked to see a picture of Ollie; that somehow unlocked something inside me and I began to recover. When I got home I gave up work and focused on being a mum.
‘I loved it from the start. Singing is such a release
and the songs we sing are all feel-good’
‘I heard about the Rock Choir™ on local radio and it sounded like a good way to meet people. Rock Choir™ has 60 choirs in the south of England, all dedicated to singing and performing pop, gospel and Motown music. You don’t have to audition, you just turn up for rehearsal. I was still in recovery, still very vulnerable, so I persuaded Lee to come with me the first couple of times, but I loved it from the start.
Singing is a great way to break out of the world of depression. It’s such a release and the songs we sing, by artists such as Annie Lennox, Queen and Aretha Franklin, are all feel-good. As soon as the warm-up starts I can feel any tension draining away.
‘Rehearsals are once a week and I also have an individual singing lesson with one of the Rock Choir™ tutors; I look forward to them, they break up the week. And singing has boosted my confidence massively. There’s a show at the end of each term: I never thought I’d be able to sing on stage, let alone with the choreographed routines we learn. Lee stopped coming after a while, but I’d made my friends by then; the choir has quite an active social life. I love it.’
rockchoir.com