Notts charity Framework supports vulnerable people via a network of floating support workers, who travel out to people's homes and talk through their concerns. Some, like Framework trainee Sorcha Whitehouse, can empathise with clients because they have been through the mill themselves, as JENNIFER SCOTT hears.

ONE day, in June 2002, Sorcha Whitehouse sat down at her desk at work, put her head in her hands and began to cry.

This kind of racking despair wasn't like Sorcha at all. She'd been a high-achiever, a crutch for others to lean on, her whole life.

As a child, she had been motivated by her ex-Army dad. Aged about 12, she had brought home a spelling test in which she'd correctly remembered 99 out of 100 words. "What happened to the other one?" he'd asked. He was only half-teasing.

She'd graduated with a biology degree from Derby University and began work as a lab assistant for a utilities company. She spent four years doing work that involved testing for bacteria levels and algae.

But life at the company was stressful. There were redundancies and morale was poor. At home, Sorcha's husband Ray had been out of work for six months.

One week, each small chord of pressure grew to a deafening roar. The result was the meltdown at her desk.

"I blew up like a pressure cooker," she says. "I thought I was in control and coping with things."

In the week before the episode, Sorcha had all the classic signs of manic behaviour – but nobody to recognise them. She had whistled around shops, making illogical purchases. "I once came home with three mood lamps," she recalls. "What was I thinking?! I had extreme highs and lows. I went three days without sleeping at all. You have all this energy; you think you're superwoman."

She was left weeping, shaking, shouting in front of her work colleagues.

"I remember saying I just wanted a thatched roof cottage or something," she recalls. "It was just all that striving to get somewhere. I had lost all rationality. I did my own, personal Stacey Slater off EastEnders act. In fact, she wasn't a patch on me."

What Sorcha calls her "pressure cooker" episodes were, in fact, a form of psychosis – a term used to describe a temporary incident when a person experiences a loss of contact with reality. "I don't use that word because people think, 'psycho'," she explains.

For Sorcha, 33, it was the start of a long battle against the prejudices that surround mental health issues.

Her colleagues helped her home and the police were called. She wasn't sectioned but she was put in an ambulance ("It took a few people to persuade me to get in there") and taken to the Queen's Medical Centre.

She spent a fortnight in hospital and was given anti-psychosis pills. She also left her job when her employers tried to move her to another department following the incident.

Over the next 18 months, she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Sorcha's mum had also suffered with depression. She went back into hospital and was given anti-depressants and electric convulsive therapy – or electric shock treatment – to help her.

She suffered from what she describes as "racing, black thoughts about suicide". She felt isolated and couldn't settle. She feared she might never get better.

Throughout this period, Sorcha's husband Ray was her rock. He took time off work to act as her personal carer.

"You see people in the hospital who have no family, no friends, their partners have left them..." she says. "You think, 'God, I wouldn't be without him'."

As she began to get better, Ray began working as a lorry driver but, without a regular income, they had had to put their mortgage payments on a credit card. It took a long time to get their finances in order.

Sorcha who describes herself as "quite a determined woman – even when I'm ill" came off her medication for a while, two years after the first episode.

"I didn't trust the doctors' opinion," she says, ruefully.

But, after suffering a relapse, she went back on the medication. She takes lithium, a mood stabiliser, every day. She has been told she has to remain on them for the rest of her life but she can, at least, look forward to a stable future.

"I dealt with the depression better the second time because I was aware of the symptoms and I knew I would get better again," she says.

In the past four years, since the second spell of illness, she has taken things steadily.

"When you get a high, you make sure you get the medication and you tell people about it. You nip it in the bud because you don't want the months of severe depression."

She decided to volunteer as a support worker so she could help people who had been through similar experiences.

"I wish I had been supported by Framework, to be honest," she says.

Sorcha embarked on Framework's WiSE (Working into Sustainable Employment) programme. It's an eight-week course that teaches its trainees communication, health and safety, volunteering and, should you need them, basic maths and English skills.

"It's a great transition programme to coming off benefits. It gives you more skills. It's easy to fall into a benefits trap – you feel in a safe zone. But they offer you so much support."

Since completing the programme, Sorcha has started a nine-month traineeship within Framework to get a job as a floating support workers.

One major reason people approach the charity is because their debts have spiralled out of control. Sorcha is able to sort out payment plans and make sure people are claiming their benefit entitlements.

"I can empathise with people," she says. "I really love the work. It's a bit more interesting than counting bacteria!"

She also feels that she can be honest about her illness with Framework. Unfortunately, she fears mental health discrimination is rife around Britain's workplaces. "Framework are not shocked – they work with people with similar problems all the time," she says. "I'm not sure I would feel comfortable about being totally honest about my illness in any other company. There is so much discrimination around."

And psychosis is more common that most people realise. The NHS estimates that one in every 200 people in the UK has experienced psychosis.

"It can happen to the most unlikely people," Sorcha points out. "I was always the strong one, keeping people together – and it happened to me."