Swimming For Joy!

Depression is one of the UK’s biggest mental health issues, but Amy Dunkinfield found a unique way of battling hers by getting back in the water, as Faith Eckersall discovers

- Faith Eckersall

HUDDLED against the wind in her black thermal beach robe, a hot flask to hand, Amy Dukinfield’s eyes are sparkling. She’s just spent half an hour battling through cold, fast flowing waters and the effect is amazing. “You feel so bright and alive and calm,” she says, of her tri-weekly swims. Amy started them in July last year, but it was 12 months ago that she took the decision that was to change not only her life, but those of others in Dorset who suffer mental health issues, by initially setting up her Facebook group, Swimming Against Depression.

The bracing swims are attended by anything from four to 20 people and the camaraderie and laughter belie the difficulties that bring many of the bathers there. Certainly it’s hard to equate the Amy of this crisp winter day in 2017 to the person she describes from just two years ago, when she was so ill that on some days she could not speak.

“Between June 2015 and July 2016 I suffered a severe bout of depression,” she says. ‘‘I was tired, couldn’t sleep, and I developed what I can only describe as this innate terror of doing normal tasks; I’d come to do the washing up and just couldn’t because of this overwhelming, inexplicable fear. Or I’d be sitting in the garden watching my two little boys running around in the sunshine and feeling as if I wanted to die.”

Previously so close to her sister, who lives in Australia, Amy found herself unable to contact her – despite the fact that her sister was expecting a baby. “I was so ill I couldn’t even speak to her for 10 months,” she says.