Life & Faith

Peter Hughes shares his experience of mental illness, and explains why it doesn’t define him. --- "When I was a teenager, I’d go through different bouts of being in a fog, so to speak. I just thought it was part of adolescence, I thought that’s what everyone went through. It wasn’t until university that somebody said, 'hey that’s not normal and you should go and see someone.'" Peter Hughes is a minister at St Stephens Anglican Church in Sydney’s northern suburbs. He holds degrees in theology and neuropsychology - and he has a mental illness. "So I went and saw someone, to prove this person wrong, but the counselor quickly diagnosed me with a form of high frequency bipolar disorder." One in five Australians will experience mental illness every year. Internationally, the World Health Organisation reports that one in four people will be affected by mental disorders at some point in their lives. In this episode, we look beyond the statistics and explore what it’s like to live with a mental illness. "Through the y