Once out, there was no chance of returning to neurosurgery, or to her home in Edinburgh, so she went back to live with her parents in Bedford and started doing locums. "You can't go back to the neighbourhood from which the police have taken you. Everyone knows. It totally destroys your place in the environment. Giving up neurosurgery was both a public humiliation and a personal wrench. One of the problems with mental illness is the shame that goes with it. I'd always prided myself on my brain [she is the author of a dozen research papers]. Stigma isn't just what other people think about you: it's what you feel about yourself."