Bella Mackie: ‘I was completely convinced that I was schizophrenic’

When author and columnist Bella Mackie was just 18-years-old, she was diagnosed with anxiety and OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder). The diagnosis, she says, came as “a relief in a sense”, but also as a total surprise.
“I was completely convinced that I was schizophrenic… and I kind of went to see the doctor in great distress, thinking that that’s what was going on,” she explains.
Speaking to The Irish Times Women’s Podcast, Mackie says that an OCD diagnosis was never on her radar: “I just thought OCD was like, you know, touching the lights 15 times and washing your hands, so I really had no idea about it”.
The mental health condition can manifest in many ways, but for Mackie it sometimes took the form of “bizarre, weird or distressing” thoughts. “Wondering if I was real, if the world was a simulation. Were my parents robots? And that’s why I thought I had schizophrenia, because I thought this is psychotic,” she tells podcast presenter Róisín Ingle.
“The problem with OCD is that then you get into a cycle where you’re trying to argue with the thought, but your brain is then giving you more evidence, and then you’re arguing again and again. So you’re just in this 24 hour cycle,” she adds.
So what helps Mackie in managing her mental health? We know from her 2018 memoir Jog On: How Running Saved My Life, that exercise plays a key role in her wellbeing. “I guess running has been really helpful. Therapy was good. Medications, very good. People laughing about it is also good for me, because it makes it less scary,” she says.
Following the success of Jog On, Mackie left her career in journalism to take up writing books full time. It was a gamble that paid off, as her debut fiction novel, How to Kill Your Family, became an international hit, selling more than a million copies after its release in 2021.
Now the author is back with her second book, What a Way to Go. It’s a hilariously dark ‘whodunnit’ that centres on the death of an extremely rich, extremely unpleasant man, Anthony Wistern. It’s not a follow up to How to Kill Your Family, but it’s set within the “same multiverse”, says Mackie.
In this wide-ranging conversation, we also hear about Mackie’s interest in online sleuths and armchair detectives; regular people who try to solve crimes, ahead of the authorities. “People want likes, they want followers, they are exploiting tragedy for entertainment,” she says, explaining how this growing phenomenon inspired one of her main characters.
Later on, we also hear about her quick proposal to her “current husband”, BBC’s Greg James, about the upcoming Netflix adaptation of her first novel and she tells of her traumatic experience being stalked.
You can listen to this episode in the player above or search The Women’s Podcast wherever you get your podcasts.