A significant proportion discover that unlike Mr Campbell who was nurtured by his partner

A significant proportion discover that, unlike Mr Campbell, who was nurtured by his partner, family and friends are scared, not remotely sympathetic. They fear taint by association and wish that the sick one really was suffering from a slipped disc. Mr Campbell’s breakdown appears to have been entirely of the situational variety He was stressed by a very high-pressure job. He had been promoted rather faster than he felt able to handle. He consumed potentially liver-crippling draughts of alcohol to dull the pain He fell apart. The nice thing about such episodes is that the treatment is obvious.

Remove the pressure, stop the drinking and normality will soon re-establish itself One might even say that Mr Campbell was not mad. His reaction to unpleasant circumstances was understandable.No great surprise that he soon felt well enough to return to the fray. But, believe me, I know even when the circumstances are analogous, the breakdown is less severe, and the recovery takes weeks not months, many employers are almost superstitiously hostile to the sufferer.Good advice to those who have experienced depression or breakdown omits any suggestion of parading the truth in public. Wise doctors and contented veterans of Alastair-like experience know that wisdom dictates: listen to your GP, avoid the drugs unless you are absolutely clear about what they do, get some rest, get fit and tell the world it was amoebic dysentery.Sadly, on one occasion when his legendary talent for spin could have served a really useful purpose, Mr Campbell has come over all honest and transparent. Sure, depression is surmountable and breakdown can be temporary. But if the Downing Street guru’s public soul-searching encourages others to be open about their experiences it will do more harm than good.

Elements in the medical profession are already too keen to diagnose breakdown when all that is required is rest. The last thing their patients need is top-level encouragement to suicidal candour.TimLckhrst aol . Who cares who the next Archbishop of Canterbury is going to be? To ask that is more than a rhetorical flourish. Now that George Carey is about to step down, the jockeying for the succession has begun. Is the Bishop of Liverpool clever enough? Is the Bishop of Rochester manoeuvring too hard? Is it too late for the Bishop of London to ditch his dislike of women priests? And yet the real question may well prove the one that springs first to the lips of the rest of the nation: who cares?The Church of England that Dr Carey leaves behind is an organisation of considerably less significance than the one he inherited. This is not just because the decline in churchgoing has reached the point where baptised Anglicans are thought to have become a minority in England for the first time since the Reformation.

(Though there are still 23.94 million of them, of whom a million go to church every week, which ought to constitute a critical mass in anybody’s book, whether the tome is holy, sociological or political.)It is not just a question of numbers. Something more profound has happened to the Church of England. Put it on a therapist’s couch and the diagnosis might be that it is suffering from low self-esteem Its psyche has been battered and bruised. Most seriously, it does not seem part of the cultural mainstream or the ground for high moral debate.