She was the teenage girl with courage in her heartand voices in her headwho rose from obscurity to lead the French army to important victories during the Hundred Years’ War.
Almost 600 years after Joan of Arc was burnt at the stake, some doctors and scholars have “diagnosed” the historical figure with disorders ranging from epilepsy to schizophrenia.
During her trial, she testified that voices in her head instructed her to deliver France from the invading English and establish Charles VII, the uncrowned heir to the French throne, as the country’s rightful king.
But whether or not she was mentally ill, the debate about ‘hearing voices’ is as relevant now as it was then.
With mental health charities suggesting that one in 20 of the population regularly ‘hears voices’, research suggests that at least 70% of voice-hearers are thought to have experienced some sort of trauma.
The characteristics of voices vary widely from person-to-person but they often mimic the sound and language of abusers or their victims, demonic and frightening or angelic and friendly.
It comes as the latest statistics from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) suggest that suicides among British men are at their highest level for more than a decade.
Some 6,233 suicides were recorded in 2013 among people aged 15 and over, up by 252 or 4% on the previous year.
In 2013, some 4,858 male suicides were recorded at a rate of 19 deaths per 100,000 men, which is the highest level since 2001.
The Samaritans said the increase in people killing themselves was “sadly not surprising” in the context of a “challenging economic environment”.
According to the ONS report research showed unemployment, lack of close social and family relationships and divorce were among the factors which resulted in suicidal behaviour.
Men were more at risk because they are reluctant to seek help, use self-harm methods that are often fatal and are more likely to drink heavily.
However, the suicide rate in Scotland has fallen by almost a fifth in the past decade with 795 probable suicides reported in 2013, 35 fewer than the previous year and a 19% drop since 2002.
The falling numbers of suicides in Scotland have been credited to the Scottish Government’s Choose Life suicide prevention strategy which ran from 2002 to 2013.
Dundee charity Hearing Voices Network (HVN), based on the Hilltown, is one project which aims to erase the stigma.
And in the wake of Suicide Prevention Week, a Dundee-based suicide survivor has given The Courier an insight into his battle with mental illness
Douglas (not his real name), a member of the Dundee HVN user-led network, was seven-years-old in 1977 when he became aware that he ‘heard voices’, and had suicidal thoughts.
Douglas remembers hearing at least four distinct voices, one of which was much stronger than the others.
His parents were both registered general nurses who worked in a local mental hospital, referred to by locals as a ‘loony bin’.
To a seven-year-old boy the idea that he suffered from a mental illness was scary and confusing, so he kept it quiet.
What no-one knew was that he was hiding depression, anxiety, including fleeting suicidal thoughts, and the older he became the better at hiding the symptoms of mental illness he became.
In 2000, aged 30, he suffered a severe panic attack during a poster presentation in his third year at Abertay University Dundee.
He was prescribed an SSRI (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor) antidepressant.
Douglas suffered severe adverse drug reactions to this antidepressant from the outset.
The suicidal symptoms eventually went away and the symptoms of anxiety and depression seemed to ebb away, but this was short lived.
His GP increased the dose of the antidepressant, and did so increasingly until Douglas was on the maximum dose of 60mg which caused severe headaches, night sweats, and weird dreams that he could control, something he had never had the ability to do before.
Douglas was referred to a psychiatrist who thought that he would be able to withdraw from the addictive antidepressant by prescribing the short acting Benzodiazepine Lorazepam at a dose of 1mg.
After various drug switches, his GP eventually told him that he needed to withdraw from the drug because Benzodiazepines were very addictive.
By May 2005 and with little medical support, Douglas started entertaining the idea that he wouldn’t be missed.
The suicidal dark impulses grew to such an extent that all he could think about was the negative voices instructing him to kill himself, and that he wouldn’t be missed if he did kill himself.
But then Douglas heard a positive voice which told him of the impact his suicide would have on family, much like the impact his cousin’s suicide had on family the year before.
Douglas discussed with a psychiatrist that he had become suicidal due to Benzodiazepine withdrawal symptoms.
To this day, 10 years on Douglas is still acutely addicted to Benzodiazepines and remains at risk from further suffering suicidal thoughts.
However, with support, he is determined not to become another government suicide statistic.