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EMMA- Hey, Access Allers, it’s Emma Tracey here bringing you a very, very special bank holiday weekend extra episode of Access All. It’s courtesy of our friends at our sister pod Ukrainecast. It’s presented by Vitaly Shevchenko and Lyse Doucet, and they have been speaking to the incredible Stephen Fry about mental health when it comes to conflict. I hope you enjoy this amazing conversation:

LYSE- It’s 912 days since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Today we’re speaking with the actor, writer and broadcaster, Stephen Fry.

[Clip]

VITALY- Nice to meet you.Ìý

STEPHEN- Nice to meet you too.Ìý

LYSE- Stephen Fry.

STEPHEN- Hi Lyse, very nice to meet you.Ìý

LYSE- What an honour to meet you.Ìý

STEPHEN- And you. I’ve sat in the audience…

[End of clip]

VITALY- Stephen is a prominent mental health awareness campaigner, and he co-hosted a conference in Ukraine on mental health in the time of war last year. And now has a documentary out about this subject:

STEPHEN- It became so apparent that what was being fought for was much more than territory, or if it was a territory it was a territory of the mind and the spirit of a freedom and an openness and a desire to be able to talk openly. And talking about mental health is a very, very healthy, ironically [laughs], sign of that openness.Ìý

LYSE- It’s really remarkable, Vitaly, to see in the documentary Stephen Fry going to Ukraine. And he makes it clear he doesn’t normally go to war zones, but this issue of mental health is so important to him that he accepted the invitation to go and be part of a conference on mental health. I never knew just how well known Stephen Fry is in Ukraine.

VITALY- He’s huge. He’s a proper celebrity there. People listen to what he does and listen to him and his thoughts on mental health.Ìý

LYSE- So, in this episode of Ukrainecast we’ll explore the mental scars of conflict in Ukraine with Stephen, and ask what can be done to address it.Ìý

VITALY- This is Ukrainecast.Ìý

MUSIC- Ukraine cast from Â鶹Éç News. Theme music.Ìý

LYSE- Hello, this is Lyse Doucet and I’m in the Ukrainecast studio.Ìý

VITALY- And I’m Vitaly Shevchenko and I’m also in the Ukrainecast studio.

STEPHEN- And I’m Stephen Fry and I’m honoured to be here as well.Ìý

VITALY- Welcome to Ukrainecast.Ìý

STEPHEN- I’m thrilled to be here. It was extraordinary to visit Ukraine almost a year ago, and I still think about it almost every day and follow what’s going on in the news with puzzlement, hope, sometimes despair, and often bafflement. Wars are such complex machines, beast, whatever we want to call them, aren’t they, and it’s very hard to understand them. And, you know, you’re journalists, you both have every right to visit and to be embedded amongst military and to describe the theatre and the home front and all the elements of war. But I was very worried whether I would come across as some kind of creepy tourist who was just kind of feasting on the unusual sight and ticking it off on a weird bucket list. That wasn’t my intention, I was invited there, but I’m aware that it’s a sensitive area, isn’t it? 

LYSE- Oh, but you can see, I mean, Vitaly I’m sure agrees with me, that the reaction of Ukrainians that you were there, they were very honoured, they were so pleased because they know you. And also because you have become a well-known advocate of what is a growing issue for Ukraine, and that is how to deal with mental health.Ìý

STEPHEN- Yeah.Ìý

LYSE- That’s it about the Ukraine war, it harkens back to the trench warfare of the First World War, and then the most modern of warfare in drone warfare. But it is also one of the elements, the way we cover wars now and conflicts, we also have to look at the impact of war.

STEPHEN- Uh-huh.

LYSE- And it’s not just physical, it is mental. And let’s listen to some of the people that we’ve heard from on this programme, very powerful testimonies of how they deal with mental health:

[Clip]

VALERIA- I am struggling with depression, with depressive episodes and sometimes I just cannot get up from my bed and I spend days just crying.Ìý

LYSE- God, I’m so sorry to hear that.Ìý

VALERIA- It’s mental health issues, and it’s okay to talk about them to make them visible.Ìý

LYSE- Absolutely.Ìý

MAXIM- Everyone has a friend who died. Everyone already saw some destruction. So, when you live with this for two and a half years it became easier for you to cope with it, maybe because it is hard to cry on every death for a long time.Ìý

VIKTORIA- You never know what triggers the bout of grief. Sometimes you can go about your life and all of a sudden something brings back memories and you start crying. The help I would probably appreciate and need eventually, it’s to treat my depression, because I sometimes get depressed over the fact that I don’t live my life to the full. But it’s not a priority right now.Ìý

[End of clip]

VITALY- I’ll tell you they are, Stephen. One of these voices belongs to Valeria who’s a choir singer who lives in London now. Maxim is a soldier fighting on the frontline. And the third one is Viktoria, who’s also now moved to the UK, but she lost her husband and her daughter in the early days of the war. They were killed right in front of her as they were leaving Chernihiv. Can I ask you why you are taking an interest in Ukraine in the first place? 

STEPHEN- Well, I myself have a condition and it’s bipolar disorder, which was finally diagnosed I suppose I was in my 30s. But I’d had a very troubled childhood building up into expulsions and then prison, and a very tormented and stressful time that I kind of overcame. But I was always aware that I had this issue.Ìý

LYSE- Explain to us because maybe some of our listeners won’t know it.Ìý

STEPHEN- Bipolar disorder, yes, it used to be called manic depression. And the bipolar, there’s literally two poles, north and south, if you like: the north being a swing to elevated moods, known sometimes as mania or hypomania, and then there can be a swing, it can happen suddenly, it can happen over a period of days, down to the south pole, as it were, of depression, blackness. And they’re absolute opposites, which is why bipolar is called because one, you’re constantly making plans for the future, thinking about things, having crazy schemes, and the other is as there is no future, everything is darkness and there is no energy and you just close down. And in the case of the body you can have a chronic condition which you were born with, as I think my bipolar is. But then there is traumatic, physical illness which can be caused by a gunshot wound or a car crash or falling. It’s serious and it’s a trauma. And it’s the same with mental health: there are all kinds of people who are not born with a mental health condition, but under traumatic circumstances, either in childhood or indeed war, where these happen to people who have never otherwise had to consider that their mind might lose its focus, its equanimity, its contentment, its peace, its reliability – all kinds of aspects of our minds become contingent and unhappy.Ìý

And it’s extraordinary to me that in Ukraine this is being talked about. When I went there for this conference there was an openness, not complete, there were plenty of soldiers, I spoke to some boys who had lost limbs and were joking and whatever, and when I asked them if they ever felt low about it they just went, [dismissive voice] nah, like that. Then when the camera was off they went up to me and said of course I cry, my mother cries and I cry when I see her cry, I see my sister and I worry, and then I see my brother with both his legs. And I said, it's okay to talk about that; don’t feel you have to be…that it’s somehow more of a soldier not to. Great human beings are great human beings in the round, all aspects of their weakness as well as their strength. And often their weakness is their strength.Ìý

And it’s certainly a strength of Ukraine. The day Russians start talking about the mental health of their soldiers and the crisis amongst them would be a day that it has moved away from some of the totalitarian horror in which it seems to be mired at the moment. It became so apparent that what was being fought for was much more than territory, of it is was a territory it was a territory of the mind and the spirit, of a freedom and an openness and a desire to be able to talk openly. And talking about mental health is a very, very healthy [laughs] ironically sign of that openness.Ìý

LYSE- And you heard that from this neurosurgeon you met, Andrei. Let’s just listen to it again:

[Clip]

ANDREI- Mental health is a complete novelty for Ukrainian society. Even 10, 15 years ago we never even dared to discuss mental issues or…

STEPHEN- Because it seemed like weakness? 

ANDREI- Because it seemed like a taboo, a weakness, you’re not masculine enough, you’re not tough enough.Ìý

[End of clip]

VITALY- It’s so true that there’s an engrained culture of, you know, tight-lipped stoicism, if you like…

STEPHEN- Yeah.

VITALY- …in Ukraine, like boys don’t cry. It’s changing slowly. And to give you an idea of the scale of the crisis, I’ve got some figures here, it’s a massive problem for Ukraine, especially after the start of the full-scale invasion. The WHO, the World Health Organisation says that 9.6 million Ukrainians may have a mental health condition. Of them, 3.9 million may have conditions which are moderate or severe, and various researchers have found that between a third and a half of Ukrainians are going through mental health problems such as severe distress, anxiety and depression. And clearly there’s a huge need to help them, to treat them.Ìý

STEPHEN- Yes. And an urgent crisis too really happens when it isn’t… Because there is such a thing as it’s known in the trade as transgenerational trauma. That if a soldier is returning injured or with a prosthetic or something, if they’re turning so often, and understandably they might, to drink or drugs to control the raging inside them or misery inside them, they pass on this trauma to their children, who are already of course having to undergo these air raid drills or no news of mummy or daddy who might be away fighting somewhere, or someone in the family has been injured. And we know…

VITALY- It outputs of happy childhood memories as well.Ìý

STEPHEN- Exactly. And we know that children turn to things like self-harm, cutting and so on, it becomes a huge problem. It is in Britain, it’s an epidemic in our schools. I talk at schools, literally Eton College as well as a Brent Cross school in an area of great deprivation in London; both seem to have the same problem. It isn’t traceable necessarily to bad lifestyle of parents and so on, but it seems to be deep in the culture. In Ukraine it’s obviously more urgent and more noticeable because of its traumatic source very often. But underneath it there is a less obvious trauma which is the day-to-day worry and anxiety that the war occasions.Ìý

LYSE- You don’t have to be on the frontline. I mean, even here in London we’ve had help for people who are working in newsrooms, far away from the frontline, because they’re impacted by the images that they see. When you were in Ukraine you met people from different walks of life, not just those who had gone to the frontline. Did you find that everyone at some point in the conversation said to you, well, you know, it’s affecting me too?

STEPHEN- Yes. It starts with what I suppose you might almost call the theological seven deadly sins, as it were, the dark side of our emotions. Fear is very strong, and anger, they are so angry at Russia and what Russia is doing; there’s this real visceral fear. I tried to talk, it’s there in the documentary about whether or not it was somehow wrong to cast aside Pushkin and Chekhov and say that we’re not going to have Russian authors. And I said, but these are geniuses who contributed to the world in such a magnificent way. And they said no…

LYSE- Not just they, the President.Ìý

STEPHEN- The President said it.Ìý

LYSE- You said this to the President, Zelenskyy.Ìý

STEPHEN- Yeah, another day he said, not now, now is not the time to speak Russian, to think of Russia, to read Russians. And goodness me, I had no right to doubt that, because of that anger. And anger is such a powerful emotion, especially if it can’t be exorcised, if it can’t be got out of the body through either some physical effort or through defeating some giant in your mind that needs to be felled. And that giant is of course the one who must not be named, it is a Voldemort quality to the leader of Russia. I’m not going to say his name either. They don’t want to say his name; they don’t want to say the name of any of them. There is this fury, and underneath a fear.Ìý

LYSE- You mentioned earlier how for example young people may deal with stress, anxiety by self-harm. But there was a very moving interview that you did with a widow, and she explained to you how her daughter was coping with her father’s death:

[Clip]

STEPHEN- So, you have a daughter. How old is she?

MOTHER- She’s 11.

STEPHEN- So, old enough to be distraught by it.Ìý

MOTHER- She was, she is actually, even now she’s very close with him.Ìý

STEPHEN- I know it’s still so recent, but do you try to talk about him and keep him alive in conversation? 

MOTHER- She keeps texting him in WhatsApp.

STEPHEN- Oh my goodness.Ìý

MOTHER- And actually what she said to me about five days ago that she misses him and she really doesn’t want him to come in her dreams, but she wants him to reply on her messages.Ìý

STEPHEN- Of course, god.Ìý

MOTHER- Or to call her back.Ìý

[End of clip]

LYSE- But it’s so hard to deal with death, inexplicable. And for an 11-year-old. But were you thinking well, mother should at some point say let’s accept that daddy is dead? What were you thinking? 

STEPHEN- It was still only two weeks, and I can understand why she was allowing this one-sided, this heartrending one-sided WhatsApp conversation to carry on, and that slowly she would have to introduce – I mean, I didn’t tell her because it’s not my place to and I don’t know what the rules of grief are. I forget what the seven stages are. Is it seven? One just knows that actually, like love, every grief is unique; it’s never happened before in the world, you’re grieving someone who’s never had to be grieved for before. It’s unique, and it must be respected as such. She was an extraordinary, articulate and remarkable woman. Her husband was an early casualty, reasonably, I mean it was a year ago. But he was not a military figure; he was an intellectual, a philosopher.

LYSE- A philosopher, oh [sighs].

STEPHEN- I mean, it’s just extraordinary to see that. And she said, we were sitting in a park actually, and she actually referenced it, she said, ‘It’s so that people can walk round freely in this park with their children’. And we watched and we saw yeah, exactly, that an average evening, a reasonably sunny day, in a park. And that is what you fight for. It’s very beautiful, but also it’s harrowing because it isn’t a flag you can easily muster under.

LYSE- One thing which really struck me about your documentary is that this universality of some of the most profound of human emotions, which must of course include grief and how do you deal with grief and loss? And when you were discussing about enjoying a comedy club and how Ukrainians were using laughter, black humour we sometimes call it, dark humour to deal with very tragic circumstances, and the importance of hope. And it brought me back to wars in Afghanistan, wars in the Middle East and how when I would sometimes, people say oh, Afghans have such a wicked sense of humour. And people say really, they have a sense of humour? And I said, of course. I mean, how do you get up out of bed every day if you don’t have something, I always say a bit of hope, a bit of humour and a great dose of humanity? My three Hs.

STEPHEN- Yeah.

LYSE- I’m just wondering, you’re saying your first time in Ukraine, but did you find that you touched something essential about how we deal with these worst of times, we find the best in ourselves? 

STEPHEN- I did feel that. All those commonalities that you mentioned, particularly humour, struck me as so identifiable and natural. The humour, I mean Vasyl who I spoke to, he goes to the front and does performances for the troops. Which is of course an old tradition, we think of, I don’t why…

LYSE- Vera Lynn and…

STEPHEN- Vera Lynn singing and Tony Hancock’s generation ENSA I think it was called, the Entertainment division of the British Army, and Bob Hope and others. It’s a very important part of it because it not only adds a bit of sunshine and smiling and all the rest of it in otherwise extremely grim circumstances, but it’s also a bonding of one’s nationhood. Because humour really is I think primus inter pares when it comes to the three elements that define a people: food, music and humour I think. I suppose in some way clothes, but that’s no longer the case; it used to be perhaps.Ìý

LYSE- What do you think, Vitaly, humour, hope, what do you think? 

VITALY- You can’t live with it. If it’s pretty bleak and it’s been going on for two and a half years now, how do you get out of bed? Exactly. How do you keep on going? And sometimes the only way of dealing with it is make a joke. Even if you lose a leg. I’ve got a question on that point. Obviously you and President Zelensky share a bit of a background in common.Ìý

STEPHEN- Yes.

VITALY- Does that help or hinder him in his role as a Commander in Chief, as President? 

LYSE- Yeah, how does he deal with it? 

STEPHEN- I think it helps. I think the nature of comedy is always you distrust and mock the abstract, the grand, the grandiose, and you seek to find the reality. So, when someone says, ‘People are feeling this’ you say, ‘What people?’ And that’s the point, comedians are always distrustful of the general and want the particular. And so yeah, you say that but what’s the real truth. Well, it’s down in the mud, that’s where… They used to have in the Norse times they’d have a grand battle and after the battle there’d be the saga maker who told of how glorious the soldier was and how he killed ten men, and how the King was a genius and this. And then they had on the other mountain, much more popular, the gleeman; and the gleeman would say that the King fell of his horse and accidentally squashed a soldier and [laughingly] he didn’t kill anybody, tried to pick up his spear and put out the eye of an enemy and bang. And it makes it all, because that’s the reality of the world. And the gleeman, the comedian is closer in touch to the truth of what it is to be human.Ìý

LYSE- But it’s interesting because Zelenska is the one who has taken on the issue of mental health. Has the President ever talked about it himself? Did he ever send a message to the troops? I know he praises their bravery, their determination, he honours their loss, but has he ever said…

STEPHEN- That’s the focus.Ìý

LYSE- Has he ever raised issues of mental? Did you say to him, Mr President? 

STEPHEN- I suspect. Oh, he thanked me for coming for that purpose and said how important it was, what an incredibly important issue it was to him and to Madame Zelenska. I mean, my guess is that when messaging the troops he would pass it in front of a few advisors, one of whom would say it’s a hostage to fortune to say, you know, we know that you are suffering mentally with this. You do it in other ways, maybe in personal visits and so on, and you let it be known through the structure of your army and through your medical corps and so on that there is help there.

LYSE- So, it’s for private.Ìý

STEPHEN- But if you sort of make a big statement of it it is a hostage to fortune to the other side who are able to say and Putin is able to say, look he is admitting that they…

VITALY- In fact there was a fake frontpage circulating online claiming that top Ukrainian generals are suffering from depression, so clearly…

STEPHEN- You see.Ìý

LYSE- Interesting.Ìý

VITALY- …propaganda is exploiting it. But do you get a sense that the Ukrainian government is doing more to help people going through difficult mental health issues?

STEPHEN- Yes, I do get a sense of that. I mean, also as Andrei, the neurosurgeon that I spoke to whose phrases you just played, there are a lot of professionals who wish it was more and who wish that it was pushed through the schools and education and TV, and that it was part of the general conversation of Ukraine. But it’s only just happened in this country in the last 15 or 20 years have people started talking more and more about their mental health, about the mental health of their children, and about the mental health of the nation, if you like, and the urgency of the problem. I think it will take time. And because there is this really strong issue with what you do for wounded soldiers from the front, wounded physically, I mean the number of prosthetics around is thousands. It’s unbelievable. And you see it wherever you go, as I suppose my grandparents’ generation did after the First World War, just endless people with missing legs and limbs and so on. And the mental equivalent, the urgent case of what used to be called shellshock and is now PTSD and various other names are given to that, and the ripples spread outwards, as I say, trans-generationally and across the nation. But the urgency I suppose is with those who have served on the front and are injured in the mind as well as in the body.Ìý

It was one of the things we discussed at the conference last year was how the message gets through to schools, and it’s taught in a way that isn’t sort of panic-inducing, that is open and allows people to talk freely. And you take the cruel jokes out of the playground if you can, but without being too starchy about it.Ìý

LYSE- Just one last comment about Zelenska. One thing which really struck me when I met her in Kyiv and she talked about mental health, she talked about for her it was a journey of discovery too to find out about it, and that she had been informed by experts in the area that actually stress and trauma, loss can turn into a strength.Ìý

STEPHEN- Yeah.

LYSE- That it can ironically, instead of making you weaker, make you stronger.Ìý

STEPHEN- Hmm.

LYSE- And the way she said it it was clear that she was fastening onto this as perhaps some hope in this situation. Did you discuss with her? 

STEPHEN- Yes. I mean, the strongest part of my leg is the part that has knitted up from being broken. It is the healing; but it has to heal first to be a strength, if you know what I mean. It has to be confronted and in some way you must be helped or find a way of helping yourself to get to that stage where you’re stronger. The Nietzschean phrase what doesn’t kill us only makes us stronger is all very easy to say, but when you’re in the depths of misery and despair through grief through or the loss of a limb or whatever it might be, the loss of a child for heaven’s sake, I mean all the different possibilities are so horrific. But she is right, and so one has to have that point of hope. And societies that deal with mental health are happier societies generally than ones that hide it away.Ìý

VITALY- I know for a fact, Stephen, that people affected by this war they know you, they listen to you, they appreciate what you do. I’ve got a friend who really likes your audio books, Harry Potter.Ìý

STEPHEN- Oh right? Yeah.Ìý

VITALY- What would you say to people who are grieving, anxious, depressed, what would your message to them be? What do you think they should do to survive? 

STEPHEN- If I could say something that would allow them to step out of that feeling I would be the greatest mental health doctor who ever lived. The important thing I often say is while it is true that a mental health condition and a mental health crisis can be immensely serious, it can lead to physical ill health, it can lead to reaching out for drugs and alcohol to try and quell the storm in the head, it can lead to outbursts of violence, your family can lose faith in you, it can be terribly serious. But also it is worth remembering that some of the finest and best people in the world, some of the greatest artists and creators and inventors, and indeed soldiers, leaders, Winston Churchill being one example, suffered from severe mental health crises in their lives. You can have this and be a great human being with a fulfilled life, life of love and hope.Ìý

And think of it if you can as being like the weather, which is to say it’s real. When it’s pouring with rain it’s no good saying oh it isn’t really raining. It is raining. But also you didn’t cause that rain, the rain isn’t your fault. And you can be dammed certain, even if you live in Manchester [laughs] that the rain will go away, that it may be sunny, not tomorrow, not the day after. You won’t make it sunny, there’s nothing you can do to make the rain go away, except recognise that it’s real and that it isn’t your fault. It’s not something that’s a weakness in you, it’s an external thing, it’s a thing that’s happening to you. And it will go away. And then it’ll come back – you’ve got to be realistic about it. But if you can have that sort of attitude to it then you start, as you do with terrible weather, to find ways of coping with it: oh it’s going to come back, what’s my mental umbrella for when it comes back as it were. Those are, I mean they’re not answers, as I say the tears still roll, the body still trembles with unhappiness and people one loves are upset with one too, but it is a sort of way of beginning to cope I think.Ìý

And the clichés are true as well, nature, green spaces, springtime watching the birds arrive and nest, whatever it might be. I mean, doing something external to what’s going on inside you. For example, I remember when I was in a terrible state about 10 years ago, and I was going for walks because I knew that they were sort of good for me. They didn’t solve the problem, but I remember thinking I’m really bad at trees, I must know the name of every sort of tree.

LYSE- Ah.Ìý

STEPHEN- So, every time I passed a tree I thought now, what is that, that’s a London plane, which is a type of tree, that’s a lime. And I would get to them, and I’d look up online and find out the leaf and I’d try and find out as much about each tree. It was just a way of taking my mind outside of myself and into the world around me, a very beautiful part of the world around me. And then you can move on from trees to flowers and to birds and other things that are around us. It’s that taking yourself to an outside place and showing your mind can master it.Ìý

VITALY- My recipe is cycling.Ìý

STEPHEN- Perfect, absolutely, absolutely.Ìý

LYSE- Stephen Fry you’ve taken all of us, and I think we can speak, Vitaly, for our Ukrainecast listeners, you’ve taken all of us to a different place. Thank you so much for sharing.Ìý

STEPHEN- Thank you, you’ll start making me cry [laughs].Ìý

LYSE- Yes, I notice you said that everywhere you went.

STEPHEN- Well, I just feel it is.

LYSE- Glory to Ukraine, glory to the heroes.

STEPHEN- It’s like Churchill doing that I suppose, isn’t it, the V-sign.Ìý

VITALY- Thanks for coming today.Ìý

STEPHEN- It’s a real pleasure. And all power to you, it’s a wonderful podcast and I’ve listened before, and I will carry on listening. As David Frost, the great broadcaster used to say, he was the son of a preacher, you are doing the Lord’s work.Ìý

LYSE- [Laughs] well, we should say to our Ukrainecast listeners as well that if you’ve been intrigued, and I’m sure you have been, by Stephen Fry’s journey to Ukraine, you can find it on YouTube. And it’s called Stephen Fry goes to Ukraine.Ìý

STEPHEN- That’s right.Ìý

LYSE- Thank you for listening to our conversation. And thanks to everyone for getting in touch. We’ll try and answer some of your questions in the coming episodes.Ìý

VITALY- And if any of you have been affected by any of the issues discussed in this episode of Ukrainecast you can visit the Â鶹Éç’s action line on .Ìý

LYSE- And wherever you’re listening in the world take care, and keep listening.Ìý

VITALY- Goodbye.Ìý

EMMA- That was the incomparable. fabulous Stephen Fry there. What a man. If you want to hear more of where that came from you can find Ukrainecast on Â鶹Éç Sounds. And you can find us on Â鶹Éç Sounds as well. If you want to get in touch with us you can email accessall@bbc.co.uk, or find us on the socials @Â鶹ÉçAccessAll. Thank for listening and I’ll see you next week for another episode of Access All.Ìý

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