ONE day last year, the Rev Scott McCrum says, things got on top of him. Sat on the sofa with tears running down his face, his father’s dog cuddled up to him, he took a selfie and posted it on Facebook, the social media site.

“I got loads and loads of comments on it, loads of messages saying it was great that a minister could be so open about how they feel,” he says.

Scott, who is 34 and 15 months into his first charge at Christ’s Kirk, Glenrothes, was first diagnosed with depression when he was 16. Although he says some in the church would rather he was more guarded about how he presents himself, he is determined to help lessen the stigma which prevents people seeking help for mental illness.

“I don’t feel any worse about the fact that I used to suffer from depression than the fact that I’ve had a broken bone or that I suffered from migraines,” he says. “I want to speak openly about it, to help other people and let people know they shouldn’t be afraid to seek help.

“It’s an illness, and you shouldn’t be ashamed to be ill. People are scared to get help and it’s sad to think of how many people take their own lives, who could have been helped if they’d felt able to ask.”

Scott is a son of the manse, but otherwise an unconventional figure for a minister – and not just because he’s young. He left school at 16 and went on to be a serial entrepreneur: selling cars, running a tooth-whitening company, becoming a hair-transplant consultant. He’s also worked as a DJ, having started with Chill, the youth nightclub he set up at his father’s church in Ayr (Chill featured in Life and Work in 2007).

He ran his business throughout university and, after graduating, worked full-time as an entrepreneur for three years before feeling ready to enter his probation. Now, in his spare time he is running a company providing audio/visual systems for churches.

But, even while he was DJ-ing regularly, the picture he paints is of the stereotypical man who laughs to hide the tears. “I became a very good actor,” he says.

“Although I felt rubbish, I was out at night entertaining people, and you really can’t turn up to the gig as a DJ and depress everyone. It was probably a shock to a lot of people when I did come out about it.

“It’s different for everyone, but depression for me felt like the world would be better off without me – although I knew I was loved, I didn’t feel loved, and I felt lonely a lot of the time although I was rarely alone.

“You feel more dead than alive. You have no motivation, even doing small things like emptying a dishwasher feels more like climbing Mount Everest. You’re caught up in negative thinking; you don’t enjoy things you used to enjoy; you feel trapped, like there’s no way out. It’s not a nice place to be.

“I didn’t think I had a bad life, and I could think of lots of ways in which I was a fortunate person: I could tell myself I had a family that loved me, and had had some success at business, and achieved the target of getting my first supercar. I could look at my life and say ‘I’ve got a good life’, but the way I felt didn’t marry up with how I felt somebody should feel in that situation.”

With hindsight, he says, he was probably depressed from his early teens. After the first diagnosis when he was 16 he was on antidepressants for a few months before what he describes as ‘an evangelical conversion experience’, after which he ‘decided I wouldn’t be depressed again’.

He continued with that mindset, which he admits was ‘in denial’, until 2010. Then, he was diagnosed – wrongly, he now thinks - with ME (chronic fatigue syndrome) and reluctantly agreed to go on the pills again. After four weeks, he says, “I felt ‘wow’,

I felt alive, and it was only really when I felt happy again that I realised how unhappy I’d been for so long.”

The determination to be open about the condition came after a couple of young men from one of the towns he DJ’d in committed suicide. “One guy that I knew, from one of the pubs where I used to play, outwardly looked like a happy guy – he had a beautiful girlfriend, he’d just become a dad. I was very emotionally affected by that, and it stirred me to saying people have got to be open about it, and nothing’s going to change unless people are brave enough to say ‘this is what I’m going through and I’m not crazy’.

“I put a massive post on Facebook, admitting I had depression, that I wasn’t going to keep it secret any more and people needed to talk about it and remove the stigma, and maybe if that happened people who need help wouldn’t feel ashamed to seek help. So that was a real turning point for me.”

Now that he has somewhat unexpectedly (“I thought I was going into hospital chaplaincy”) been called to a parish, he has set up a Depression and Anxiety Support Group (DASG) for local sufferers.

“I was going right back to basics with my church. I see it as my job as a minister to look at ways we as a church can serve our community and further afield. Jesus served people no matter who they were, what they’d done, or what they were going through. He didn’t count anyone unworthy of his time or his love, and that’s what we should be doing today as churches.

“I knew this was something lots of people were struggling with and it’s an increasing problem, and it was also something I knew a fair bit about from personal experience.

I was also fortunate to find some mentors who could help.”

The group meets weekly, throughout the year including the Christmas period. Up to a dozen people attend each week, of whom only one is a church member and many aren’t even from Glenrothes – demonstrating the shortage of support available for people with depression and anxiety. Scott has made contact with local GP surgeries and counsellors, and says some people have been referred to the group by counsellors after their mandatory 10 sessions provided on the NHS have run out.

“It’s an illness, and you shouldn’t be ashamed to be ill. People are scared to get help and it’s sad to think of how many people take their own lives, who could have been helped if they’d felt able to ask.

The Rev Scott McCrum with crime writer Val McDermid at a church event.

“There are people who‘ve been there nearly every week and it’s an important part of their support system. It’s a real mixture – men and women, professionals, people who aren’t working because they’re not able to, people who are still in work but need the support we can offer.”

While, he says, slow progress is being made, we are still a long way from losing the stigma around mental illness – and he thinks the Church should be doing more to help. “I’ve noticed there have been more campaigns lately, which is good. The first one I heard was Prince Harry talking about it, which was great. But I think it’ll be a long time before the efforts that are being made turn into people feeling able to get help, and lots more needs to be done.

“It was mentioned in last year’s General Assembly that churches should have better awareness of people struggling with mental illness, and I stood up and said the Church should do more than be aware of it, the Church should be helping with it.

I’m not sure my comments were really taken on board apart from a couple of ministers who have expressed interest in running a DASG.”

He adds that he would be ‘delighted’ to work with anyone who is interested: “If I’m fortunate enough to set up things that work, I’d like to help other churches that want to replicate them – and I’m equally eager to learn from what other churches are doing.”

Contact Scott on smccrum@churchofscotland.org.uk