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Mad for Music - Helen 
Helen's choice of music is Thank You for the Days by Kirsty MacColl. “For me, the song is a hymn of thanks for everything my daughter has given me.”
Helen's Story
Struggling with a stressful job, Helen was prescribed antidepressants and, on the day she took them, started to hallucinate huge metal spiders that threatened her beloved daughter Daisy.
Believing she was saving her daughter from the spiders, she took an overdose. She ended up in hospital, where she was diagnosed with severe depression with psychotic symptoms.
Helen’s daughter became her main reason for staying alive. Kirsty MacColl’s version of the bittersweet song acts as a coping mechanism for Helen by reminding her that she has this ‘amazing, fantastic, incredible child’.
Eight years on, Helen says she can now ‘manage all her symptoms’. As the song goes, she’s no longer ‘frightened of this world’.
 Helen - Thank You for the Days
Thank You for the Days was written by Ray Davies and first recorded by The Kinks in 1968. Kirsty MacColl’s cover, from her album Kite, became the singer’s biggest chart success.
Highly respected by fellow musicians from Bono to Billy Bragg, MacColl said of her own reputation: ‘I've never been fashionable, but I've never been unfashionable either’.
She suffered from intense periods of anxiety, eventually recognised as glossophobia, or a fear of being in the public spotlight, which affected her ability to perform. MacColl died in 2000, the victim of a powerboat accident.
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Last Updated ( Monday, 28 January 2008 )
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Mad for Music 
