On television, he was a placid, easy-going ambulance driver who took the ups and downs of life in his stride. But in real life, Shortland Street actor Shaun Edwards-Brown has struggled with an illness that left him completely panic-stricken.

Shaun, whose character Ben Goodall died last week of a brain haemorrhage, has had depression manifesting as panic disorder and anxiety for nearly two years and is thankfully now over the worst of it. But throughout the year he worked on Shortland Street, he was on medication to help him deal with panic attacks.

Dad-of-two Shaun never had an attack on set but admits there were times when he turned up at work exhausted because anxiety had kept him awake at night. “One of the actors once found me curled up on a couch and said I looked like I needed someone to hold me. I was so tired, but I couldn’t explain why. You think nobody else is going through it.”

Shaun is speaking about his experience as part of Men’s Health Week, which is aimed at encouraging men to take control of their health. He wants other men with depression and anxiety disorders to know they’re not alone and they can get better.

“I haven’t spoken about it much,” he says. “You don’t go around saying, ‘Hi, my name is Shaun and sometimes I freak out.’ You feel really alone, but it’s important that people start talking about it.”

Shaun (33) experienced his first panic attack in September 2008, when he woke up feeling sick in the middle of the night after a birthday celebration. It wasn’t due to too much alcohol – he’d only had a couple of drinks – but he felt so bad, he wondered if his drinks had been spiked.

“I was nauseous but there was also this terrible feeling of needing to get away. There were huge amounts of adrenaline running through my body and I was pacing the hall. I was shaking and breaking into sweats – it was very frightening.”

He was fine again by the following day so he didn’t do anything about what he hoped was just a one-off incident. But over the next few months, he noticed he was short-tempered with his children Lane (7) and Neeve (5), and having trouble sleeping. It wasn’t until he and his wife Vicki took the kids away over Christmas that things came to a head. “I couldn’t sleep and I was so tired, I just cracked,” remembers Shaun. “I was lying on a bed shaking, with tears pouring down my face.

“My wife took me to the doctor. It was so bad I would’ve been happy for somebody to knock me out so I didn’t
have to deal with it.” Shaun says as awful as it was, breaking down was the best thing that could have happened to him. He learned he was suffering from panic attacks and needed to start taking steps to stop his body becoming overwhelmed by anxiety.

It appears panic attacks may be caused by a prolonged build-up of stress. The constant release of stress hormones, such as cortisol, can lead to the body becoming over-stimulated and then overreacting to situations that wouldn’t normally cause full-on panic.

Shaun realised that he’d been feeling extremely stressed for some time due to a combination of factors, including issues to do with his being adopted. Plus, Vicki suffered ongoing back pain after being in a car crushed by a tree and Shaun wanted to do everything he could to help her.

“I was so busy looking after everybody else that I wasn’t looking after myself.” After seeing the doctor, Shaun tried medication, eventually finding a mild antidepressant that helped. When the opportunity arose last year to audition for Shortland Street, high school drama teacher Shaun initially didn’t want to do it. “I was too scared – I didn’t think I could handle it.”

But he did the audition and got the part of Ben, then bravely made the move from Christchurch to Auckland. “It makes me feel good, knowing I did the job despite having panic attacks,” he says.

Now back in Christchurch and teaching again, Shaun is no longer on medication and only has occasional panic attacks. And when they do strike, he now knows how to lessen their severity by practising breathing exercises and talking about what he’s going through.

He has made changes that have helped to decrease his stress levels, such as trying not to do everything for everybody. “I’m better at prioritising and deciding what’s worth worrying about and what isn’t.”

He hopes this campaign will mean there will be greater awareness of panic attacks and people will feel more comfortable talking about having them.“When men get stressed, we tend to bottle things up and not deal with it, but that just makes things worse. It always comes out eventually – often as violence.

“Some people get so desperate they see suicide as the only answer. I never contemplated ending my life, but I can understand why people might feel that way. I think it’s important to know that things can better and you’re not the only one going through it.”