Police Sergeant Nigel Miller has come under fire for officiating at a Premiership football match while on the sick through stress, but sometimes keeping busy can be the best therapy.

Nick Morrison reports.

STANDING in front of a class of seven-year-olds, Geoff Hetherington felt his world crashing down around him. After suffering for nine months he knew he couldn't take any more, and the only solution was to get out.

"I just felt the tears welling up inside me. I had to call a colleague to take over and I left the classroom so I could compose myself for a couple of minutes. I went back, but I felt dreadful," says the 51-year-old.

"I realised this was not on so I went to the doctor and I was immediately signed off with depression. It was three-and-a-half years before I felt I could go back again."

Geoff, a deputy head teacher for 13 years, says he suffered a nine-month campaign of bullying at the hands of his head teacher, eventually forcing him to take stress-related sick leave. When he was ready to return, he was told he had been sacked. He later won £15,000 compensation from Darlington Borough Council after an industrial tribunal ruled he had been unfairly dismissed from his job at Bishopton and Redmarshall Primary School.

For Geoff, his experience of stress was a debilitating ordeal, both mentally and physically. But what made it worse is that the nature of his illness meant few people showed any sympathy.

"I lost three stone in weight - I couldn't eat, my stomach was churning all the time, I was having palpitations, panic attacks, hot and cold flushes. I was given anti-depressants, but they didn't do me a lot of good.

'You realise as well that the only people who can understand are people who have suffered themselves. If you have got a broken arm or leg, they can see it, but if you just look like a miserable sod, they say 'buck your ideas up - get on with your life' and you just can't.

"It's very frustrating but my wife was absolutely fantastic. Without her I would not have got through it and I don't think I would be here today. You have got to have people who understand what you're going through," he says.

Geoff is one of a growing number of people who have been forced to take time off work as a result of stress-related illness. According to a study by the Health and Safety Executive earlier this year, one in five employees say their work is very or extremely stressful, and half a million people say they are suffering from work-related stress, anxiety or depression.

Research carried out for the International Stress Management Association (UK) suggests that almost three quarters of those who say they are suffering from stress at work blame long hours, and one fifth have sought professional help.

The problem of stress at work received national headlines this week after The Northern Echo exclusively revealed that a police sergeant who had been signed off work through stress had officiated at a Premiership football game.

Nigel Miller, 42, based at Bishop Auckland, had been a linesman at last Saturday's Leeds v Manchester United game, a role he performed with the approval of his doctors and Durham Police.

A Home Office spokesman says it is working to reduce levels of sickness due to stress among police officers, establishing a national occupational health strategy to prevent them becoming ill in the first place, and offering psychological support for officers suffering from long-term stress.

But criticism of Sgt Miller's decision to run the line at the high-pressure game ignores the fact that taking part in activities outside work can be therapeutic for people suffering from stress, according to psychologist Alastair Robertson.

"It really does depend on the origins of the stress, but if there are things that you can do, rather than sitting at home all the time, that can be quite good for you.

"It is often reported by people who are under stress that they have a sense of not being in control of their lives, that things are being done to them, so if you are in a situation where you feel you have got it taped you may be able to restore your self-confidence," says Alastair, a senior educational psychologist for Redcar and Cleveland Council.

This view is supported by Stuart Biddle, professor of exercise and sport at Loughborough University, who says: "Certainly there's evidence that exercise is a stress reducer. Stress is about perception, and perceptions of threat. If you don't perceive a threat in this situation, you see a positive challenge.

"We may see it as stress - like refereeing a game - but it's not. What you may find stressful, I may not. That's where the individual differences come in."

Psychologist Alastair Robertson says stress can be brought on by a one-off event or by an accumulation of pressures. "The same kind of events can affect different people differently, but they can also affect the same person differently at different times.

"If you are geared up for it mentally, you can often cope with it, but if it comes out of the blue or it is something you feel you have no control over, or you are in a vulnerable state of mind because of other stresses in your life, then an additional stress can make it seem worse," he says.

As well as depression and anxiety, it is common for people suffering from stress to experience physical symptoms, from a weakened immune system and increased vulnerability to infections, to an increased risk of heart attacks. "The physiological reaction can be enough to tip people over the edge," he says. But although stress is seen as more widespread, much of this is due to people being more willing to admit they have a problem.

"I suspect it is not as new as people might think. I think there would have been other ways people would have had time off work in the past, when they were happier to attribute it to a physical illness rather than just desperately needing a day off to recuperate," he says.

Six years after his ordeal started, Geoff Hetherington has now been back at work for the last two years, this time as a supply teacher at schools across the North-East. But, although he has come through the other side, it has left him scarred.

"I'm really enjoying it now, and it is strange how you go full circle," he says. "You go through the depths of depression and eventually you say 'I'm not going to let them win'.

"I went to a counsellor who said that before I move on I would have to forgive and forget, but I will never do that. I will never forgive and I cannot forget, but at the same time I'm not going to let those feelings get on top of me."