'It's time we left the dark ages'

Lord Stevenson, a high-profile adviser to Tony Blair, today backs The Independent on Sunday's mental health campaign. In doing so the Labour peer reveals his own battle with clinical depression.

The revelation makes Dennis Stevenson, 57, who is also the chairman of Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS) and Pearson, probably the highest profile industrialist to talk openly about suffering from mental illness.

"I'm completely on your side," he said, referring to the IoS campaign. "It's very difficult to describe depression to someone who hasn't endured it, but it is a normal human condition. I wish more people understood. It's about trying to translate the message, increase the resources and remove the stigma." Lord Stevenson, who also chairs the House of Lords appointments commission, added: "I had clinical depression for six months in my mid-40s. I just felt very odd and miserable."

The peer, who was Mr Blair's special adviser on IT in education, believes schools have a crucial role in altering attitudes. "Children need to realise that mental illness is like physical illness. I think we are at the start of understanding and dealing with mental health as a society, but we still have a long way to go. I hope, in 10 years' time, we'll be able to look back on this time as the last decade of the dark ages."

Professor Arthur Crisp, of the Royal College of Psychiatry, one of the country's leading mental illness experts, also backs our campaign. "There's a tendency to stigmatise people with mental illness. You have to keep up the message, we need to inform and empower each new generation."

Professor Crisp, who chairs the Royal College's Changing Minds campaign to de-stigmatise mental illness, said there was no easy solution. "It needs to be tackled on philosophical, political and professional levels. The more you adopt a competitive, materialistic approach to society, the more the vulnerable are going to suffer."

Supporters of the IoS campaign include Marjorie Wallace (Sane's chief executive), Baroness Kennedy QC, the human rights lawyer Rebecca Fitzpatrick, Claire Rayner, Melvyn Bragg, A S Byatt, and the comedian Jo Brand.