IT'S not every day that someone tells you they used to be the Virgin Mary. But Irene Whitehill, an engaging, sober, professional woman who has suffered bouts of manic depression for 20 years seems to have a remarkably laid-back attitude towards an illness which affects around half a million Britons.

"I'm not saying it's a bad thing, I regard the episodes of manic depression as a spiritual experience when I discover more about who I am, when I develop a new self," says Irene, 48, who works closely with Newcastle University's Department of Psychiatry as a volunteer.

Remarkably, she has turned her experience to her advantage, becoming a nationally known activist within the mental health charity Mind, obtaining a Masters degree in Health Promotion and managing projects in the voluntary sector.

Latterly Dr Whitehill - to use her Sunday best title - has run her own mental health-related training and research company, called Section 36 and she is also the star of a training video called Irene's Story which sets out to reassure viewers that being a manic depressive is really rather normal - provided you have the support and medication you need to keep on an even keel.

She is also featured in a second video, introduced by Dr Phil Barker, Professor of Psychiatric Nursing Practice at Newcastle University, called The Scary Face of Madness.

The premise of the second video is that manic depressives through the ages have often been highly creative people, reinforcing the old clich about genius and madness being closely related.

Dr Barker mentions creative giants such as Virginia Woolf and Van Gogh among a long list of artists and writers who suffered from manic depressive illnesses.

While Irene stresses that her life is usually staggeringly normal, she refuses to play down the disruptive effect her illness has on her, from time to time.

The first video was launched in 1998 but a severe bout of illness which hospitalised her for several months persuaded her to take some time out.

"I was probably doing to much so I decided that I would have to put my work on the back burner for a while," says Irene, who reluctantly decided to give away her beloved cats because she felt it wasn't fair on them during her absences in hospital.

Currently, she is not working and concentrating on promoting her video. There are hopes that the new video might be screened on television.

So what is manic depression, anyway? According to the Manic Depression Fellowship the illness can be defined as a serious but episodic mental health problem, involving extreme swings of mood between highs and lows. Men and women, of any age from adolescence onwards and from any background, can develop the condition. It often first occurs when work, study, family or emotional pressures are at the greatest. Some research suggests there may be a genetic link.

Irene can certainly relate to the classic description of manic depression.

Her mother was a long-stay patient in a psychiatric hospital, falling prey to clinical depression after losing a baby.

Irene's grandmother was also a long-term psychiatric patient after a troubled marriage to an alcoholic. "I suppose it is in the blood. That's why I don't regard what I do as a job, I think of it as a vocation," says Irene.

She was a "workaholic" 28-year-old postgraduate biology student when her illness first manifested itself. Working alone on a very tough dissertation, she became depressed and increasingly emotional.

"I was going to church a lot at that time with one of my flat-mates. I had this vision that I could hear voices telling me I was the Virgin Mary. I really thought that's who I was," recalls Irene, who lives in neat flat in Seaton Delaval, in Northumberland.

Confused and unstable, Irene sought refuge at the church where she had been spending more and more time.

"I went to the church because I thought they could help me. The vicar just turned me away, he obviously thought I was crazy," says Irene, still harbouring a faint grudge against the hard-hearted Surrey cleric.

Apart from thinking she was the Virgin Mary - an identity popular with manic depressive women in the same way as Jesus Christ is often chosen by men undergoing an acute attack - she was also convinced that her three flatmates were her sisters and they had all spent some time together in a prison camp.

She laughed when I suggested she might have got the idea from watching the Japanese POW series Tenko which was popular at the time.

"Oh, and I also thought the television was talking to me, which is another common symptom," says Irene, matter-of-factly.

Her friends, who have been a huge source of strength for Irene over the years, called in a GP who decided she needed to be admitted to the psychiatric wing of the local hospital.

That was the first in 15 separate admissions to hospital during the last 20 years.

She jokes that she has been back to the same North-East psychiatric units so often that she now knows the nurses.

What may be difficult to understand is Irene's laid-back attitude to something which has dominated her life for two decades. It reflects her deep interest in mental illness in general and manic depression in particular and her view that it is a fact of life that brings benefits, as well as a negative side.

"I know it sounds silly but I'm glad I've got this condition. I'm a richer person because of it. I've met so many different people because of it. I don't feel it is madness, when it happens it is a spiritual experience" she says.

During the acute bouts, Irene says she has experienced something she mysteriously describes as "altered states".

One of the advantages of manic depression is that, generally speaking, once you know the symptoms you can predict when you are having an attack. Irene carries a list of symptoms in her handbag which will alert her to an impending crisis.

Some of the signs include an increasing preoccupation with religious, spiritual or sexual thoughts, increasingly impulsive behaviour, tearfulness, reduced concentration and disturbed sleep.

"My voice also changes, the volume and pitch increases," says Irene.

Depending on the severity of the bout, Irene can control her illness with medication, but sometimes the only way is to be admitted to hospital.

"When I'm in hospital, I put aside all the specialist knowledge I have and become just someone trying to get better. I try to adopt a kind of Buddhist view and just be."

Anyone seeing Irene's Story would have difficulty in linking the calm, cultured woman seen attending choir practice and having coffee at Newcastle's arty Tyneside Coffee Rooms with a psychiatric ward. But that is the idea, says Irene.

"It's aimed at getting over the point that we are not all brandishing machetes. We do in fact have ordinary lives outside of the stigmatising labels we are given. It just shows a positive image of someone going about their daily business," she says. "I live from day to day. If I can get up in the morning and be well that is the most important thing to me."

l The 17-minute video Irene's Story is available for £22.99. It can also be hired for £19.99. Irene is also very happy to speak to groups who might want to meet her and see her video. For more details ring 0191-266 5445.

The Manic Depressive Fellowship can be contacted on 020 7793 2600. The Newcastle-based regional Manic Depression Awareness Group can be reached on 0191-267 0272.