Tag: mentalhealth

Mental Health awareness week 2021

A cartoon of an outdoor setting. There is a cloud with the word nature in it and a tree with a small bird flying towards in. On the ground is a hedgehog ontop of grass where the words mental health awareness week 10-16 May 2021 are written. In the top righthand corner is the logo for the charity Mental health foundation.

I am aware of mental health. I’m aware of Eating disorders, I’m aware of Autism and Tourette’s and Fibromyalgia, I’m even aware of Goths (yes, there is a Goth awareness day), and I’m very aware of how tired of awareness days I am. At the moment, there is (rightfully) a lot of focus on the mental health effects of the pandemic and lockdown; however, those of us who struggled before feel like we’ve been yelling about social isolation and the 9-5 lifestyle being detrimental to our mental health for years, but no one listened.

The thing about gaining awareness is that it’s meaningless. How do you quantify awareness? How do you evidence it? What exactly is the aim?. People with mental health problems are aware of helplines and Time to Talk campaigns, we’ve heard all the talk to someone messages, but who do we talk to? And what happens when talking isn’t enough? Or when no one listens?.

We’ve tried talking, we’ve asked for and begged for help, we’ve called the helplines, the crisis lines, we’ve been to A&E, walked until our shoes wore out, coloured in our colouring books, we’ve drunk more tea than we can count, and we’ve had a fucking bath. We do all the things we’re told because otherwise we get labelled as difficult or told we don’t really want help; since the pandemic started, the already stretched services are at breaking point. There is no one to talk to.

The messages are well-meaning, but there is a limit to what helplines can do, and even being in contact with services doesn’t guarantee support. In the last two years, three people I know have taken their lives, and all three were known to services. Being told to talk didn’t help them; awareness couldn’t save them. They had all tried talking; they had all tried reaching out.

In less than two weeks, it’ll be two years since Juliette died.

This is why I don’t like awareness campaigns; they’re meaningless, hollow gestures with no real purpose or motive that don’t address the real problems or try to change the systemic problems with mental health services.

Please don’t tell me to reach out, talk or ask for help. I’ve done it for so long, and I’m tired now.

For Nancy, for Juliette, for Ella.

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Bee for bee 🐝

In my last post, I talked about Juliette and what a caring, fun, creative, loving, colourful person she was. When she died, I said I’d get a bee tattoo, not a worker bee. I wasn’t looking to copy her, but a bumblebee to remind me of her and our friendship, which started from matching underwear, a reminder of the memes and pictures of bees with fuzzy butts we used to share. On Monday, I got my tattoo of my own fuzzy butt bumble bee with a purple watercolour background to match Juliette’s hair. I know she’d approve of this.

A bumblebee tattoo on my wrist with a purple watercolour-style background.

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Suicide is pants

Long time no blog.

This post is about suicide, though there is no mention of methods.

A bee on pink flowers at the station on the day of Juliette’s funeral

I’ve been wanting to write this for 6 months, but it was too hard. A potentially creepy comment about owning the same underwear on a drunken toilet selfie did not get me blocked, but instead was the start of our friendship. We met through an internet mental health ‘Community’, and there were many eye rolls about such places and some of the people in them (though we were aware that we were far from perfect ourselves).

I soon found that Juliette had a wicked sense of humour, she was attractive and creative and had various different hair colours in the time I knew her. She loved animals and owned four gorgeous rats. She had an accidental memorial leg of tattoos for people in life who’d died. Despite her intolerance to bullshit (and lactose), she was loyal and supportive to those she cared about. Hummus memes were frequently shared and still pop up on my Facebook notifications. Some of the jokes we shared were truly terrible.

Living in Manchester, she got a worker bee tattoo with ‘Don’t look back in anger’ going around it after the Manchester bombing, and bees became her ‘Thing’ online. A gif of a cat dressed up as a bee (creatively dubbed beecat) falling slowly off a sofa became our way of conveying frustration/ crap day/ crap mental health, and often summed up how we felt. Her mandala cat tattoo was also dubbed beecat.

We had a group chat with three of us in it, which was 90% complaining about life, mental health and the internet and the rest was probably random memes and beecat gifs.

I knew Juliette had attempted suicide previously, but part of you doesn’t want to accept that it could happen, and when it did, I didn’t want it to be real. It felt like someone had punched me in the chest; a feeling that’s come and gone for the last 6 months. I cried for hours and have cried for many more since.

Her funeral especially broke me. When many of the people who cared about her had mental health issues and were scattered around not only the country but also the world, only a few of us were able to go, but a request for people to change their profile pictures to bees spread and on the day of her funeral, my social media was full of different types of bees. I’ve never been to a funeral full of people wearing cat ears before, but as soon as we arrived, we knew it was the right place.

People talk about grief and stages as if it’s linear and as if it doesn’t come out of nowhere and punch you in the stomach; it’s not that simple or straightforward. Oasis makes me cry, pictures of furry bumblebee butts hanging out of flowers make me smile, and part of me still expects her to be online.

Sometimes I’ll make a really inappropriate joke, and I know she’d have laughed and we’d both joke that we were the worst. I thought the 6-month anniversary of her death yesterday would be hard, but instead I was caught out on Friday crying for several hours (the ugly, snotty, puffy face version).

Tomorrow I’m going for a consultation for a bee tattoo, so I’ll always have a reminder of our friendship.

I miss you

Beecat loves you x

Helplines aren’t a replacement for proper mental health care, but if you’re in distress and need someone to talk to, you can contact the Samaritans or, if you’re under 35 Papyrus. Text support is available from Shout.

If you’ve been bereaved by suicide SOBS can give you support and advice

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Release

A countdown for the number of days I’ve been self harm free

I was trying to explain to someone recently the conflicting feelings that come into my head around self-harm. I want to self-harm, but really, I don’t. I keep thinking how much better it was to have an outlet for the way I feel, but really, I know that it wouldn’t help, it didn’t help, not really, not properly. But that doesn’t stop my mind jumping to it when I’m stressed, anxious or overwhelmed.

I haven’t self-harmed in 391 days, but I self-harmed from the age of 17 to 32 and intermittently before that. It’s not that I want to self-harm, it’s just that I want to breathe and not feel like I’m suffocating. I want to stop feeling like I’m dragging a weight around with me or wading through custard, and when it’s been something I’ve done for so long, it’s an immediate thought, an ingrained reaction that my mind jumps to when I feel bad.

I’m not naive, I know that just because I haven’t self-harmed in a long time, it doesn’t mean I won’t ever do it again. I can’t say for sure that I know I’ll never self-harm again, and even now, it’s not that I never do anything unhealthy/ potentially harmful or things that could be seen as negative ways of managing things, they’re just less destructive and don’t involve me ending up in A&E. The longer time goes on the bigger the stakes, once I was past 6 months I’d beat my previous longest time, then it was 7 months, 9 months and finally a year.

Sometimes people ask what they can do to help or make things easier, but I don’t always want them to do anything other than listen or try to see things from my position. I know some people are more practical than others, and their reaction is to look for a solution, but sometimes the solution is just to please listen to me and hear what I’m saying when I say how overwhelmed and stressed I feel. That I miss people I was close to, how alone I feel, how the light at the end of the tunnel feels very dim and distant right now, that’s what can be done to help.

Sometimes I just want someone to take me down to the car park and let me cry

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Sing little darling

Sing with me

Blue, green, red and white laser beams pointing in all directions around s concert venue

I love live music. I love going to gigs, even though I don’t do it that often; it’s something I really enjoy. As a rather emo teenager, I’d queue up in the cold wearing just jeans and a t-shirt, arriving several hours early to guarantee a place at the front by the stage with only the bare minimum of possessions with me to avoid the need for a bag. I would far rather be crushed and sweaty in the mosh pit than sensibly seated or in the less crowded areas at the back.

My first and only festival experience was not something I’m keen to revisit. Between the lack of sleep, disrupted medication schedule, and discomfort of camping, day festivals and open-air gigs are more my thing with a comfortable bed to return to

The days of post-gig highs from adrenaline and lack of sleep have been replaced by planned annual leave the day after a night out to recover. I can’t stand for anywhere near the length of time a gig lasts, and the crowds bumping and pushing me not only increase my anxiety but also cause physical pain and rock my already shaky balance.

Today I’m paying for last night, although the pain and exhaustion are worth it for such a good time seeing First Aid Kit, a band that, although I haven’t been following for long, I’m now a big fan of and really love the music of. They’re also amazing live, but despite some of the perks of going to a gig as a disabled person, such as queue jumping or getting a carers ticket for free, I do wish I could still be near the front and not forced to be seated out of necessity.

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Fake it till you make it

Tonight* my brain is spiralling down into doom and failure. It’s convincing me that I’m a fraud just waiting to be caught out, and that I’ve convinced people into believing I’m something I’m not. People will soon realise this and see right through me, that giving me a job, responsibility and letting me run a service is a mistake.

I’ve had the talk about imposter syndrome with someone before, someone I respect, who to most people would never appear to feel this way. I even bought myself a print of the picture used in this blog to try and convince myself that, actually, I’m not the imposter I think I am.

The feelings of responsibility and expectation are once again terrifying me. For a long time, I’ve believed that if I never try, I can’t fail, and I can’t screw things up, but I’m restless, and I wasn’t feeling stretched any more by the things I was doing.

I’ve spent a large amount of this evening crying as my thoughts continue to spiral and snowball, collecting more and more until it becomes an avalanche (sorry for the naff metaphor). Anxiety has been creeping in recently, and I’m trying to tell myself that it’s normal to feel some anxiety about a new job.

It doesn’t really matter what people say because my brain won’t listen. I know I’m not the only one who feels this way, and I also know that I did well in my interview, but facts and emotions don’t mix, and the fear is strong. I wanted this job so much, and I still do, but the loss of security and increased responsibility and the worry of everything going wrong are very much on my mind (and in my dreams).

Today I have my induction with two other new members of staff, and I’m hoping that I’ll just be treated like any other member of staff and not have to hear everyone say I know everything and that I’ve been here forever, because this is still new to me and there’s a lot I’m going to have to learn.

*I started writing this last night

Image credit to People I Loved screenshot from Blurt Foundation on Instagram

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Part of the problem?

Dinos back
A green background with a pink dinosaur cartoon carrying a black briefcase and a pink walking stick. The words dinos back are at the top in black

Guess who’s back? Back again, dinos back, please like and share.

So it’s been a while, I’ve had to do lots of writing for work recently, which hasn’t left me with much brain capacity to write for enjoyment, but I’m back and return with a rant.

This week is Mental Health Awareness Week, and the theme is stress, which is ironic as stress and work are the reasons I haven’t blogged recently. It often feels like a week can’t go by without there being some kind of awareness day/ week/ month. So far this year, we’ve had time to talk day, self-injury awareness day, university mental health day, eating disorders awareness week and no doubt many others.

This month is borderline personality disorder awareness month. Normally, I’d write something about these or use them as a springboard to write about a related subject, but this time I’m writing about other people’s way of promoting these awareness days.

I know that I often use these awareness days and campaigns to promote my blog, and that’s not what I have an issue with, but people using it to promote their illness or compete over who is the sickest, especially on social media.

Mental health problems and chronic illness already have so much stigma attached, and there are so many misconceptions around them. The biggest areas of stigma I’ve found are within the medical system, from doctors and medical staff. I’ve had several occasions where I’ve been poorly treated and discriminated against due to my mental health, and especially self-harm. So why, when there is already stigma attached, do people within the mental health and chronic illness “communities” claim to be “raising awareness” by glorifying their illness or posting things that just add to the misconceptions?

Posting pictures of your self-harm as part of an awareness day isn’t going to reduce stigma, posting pictures of your face scratched up or countless pictures of your starved body is shocking and attention grabbing but ultimately adds to the idea that self harm is purely graphic and bloody, that personality disorders are all about self harm or that eating disorders are about being thin and fragile.

Mental illness is complex, and it’s often not pretty. We don’t need more images of fragile, delicate white girls or bloody and bruised bodies in the name of raising awareness. If I had £1 for every time a health professional made a throwaway comment about people with personality disorders or treated someone’s self-harm in an unprofessional or even cruel way, I would be a wealthy Dino.

We need to change how we raise awareness and avoid glorifying mental health problems as a way to show the reality of living with mental health issues, because the reality isn’t just what’s visible, and just showing that side of things not only gives a very narrow view but also undermines people who don’t experience mental illness this way.

It’s a broad spectrum, and everyone is different. We all have different experiences; everyone has different symptoms and lifestyles. Mental illness is invisible. Not everyone has scars (at least not physical ones), and that should be the message we send: mental health problems aren’t uncommon, they’re increasing, and you can’t always tell just by looking at someone.

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Body and mind

Shark bag
A picture of a shark rucksack looking anxious wih the caption “my face when people ask what happened to my arms”

*For the purpose of this post, I’ll be using the word disabled to mean people with a physical impairment. I do consider mental health problems to be a disability, but for clarity, I’ll refer to mental health separately.

So my brain whirred into action last night, thanks to an Instagram post by the amazing feeding of the fox. There’s a type of self-harm that’s rarely mentioned; self-neglect comes up in the context of depression.

I’ve never seen a discussion around the connection between disability or chronic illness and self-harm or disabled people deliberately not taking care of their physical needs as a way of self-harming. There are times when I say yes when I should say no, times when I will push myself because I don’t feel I deserve to rest. And times when I don’t take painkillers because it’s an indirect way of inflicting pain on myself, or going to places that aren’t accessible and doing things when I’m not well enough.

Any disabled person will also tell you there is a big divide in the treatment of physical and mental health problems, the two rarely mix, and the mental health services are not always good at recognising the impact that physical disability or chronic illness can have on mental health.

They don’t understand that the things that could benefit you mentally aren’t always possible physically (like going for a walk or having a bath). Being told I should do more exercise after I’ve explained that I have chronic pain and chronic fatigue can result in me feeling lazy and making myself do things that result in pain or injury and an increase in fatigue and related symptoms.

This is where the lack of understanding or knowledge of the connections between mental health and physical impairments is such a problem. For me, it can be an increase in symptoms, but for others, it can be much worse.

Then there’s the other side. Health services that treat your body as if your mind isn’t a part of it. Although I’ve always been disabled to some extent, in the last couple of years, my mobility has got worse, and I’ve been using mobility aids and dealing with more pain and fatigue.

At the beginning of 2017, I tried to access psychological therapy for long-term health problems. I wanted help accepting my chronic illness and dealing with no longer being able to do the things I used to and things people my age can do. I wanted some support in balancing my physical and mental health.

It took several months for them to tell me that they don’t offer support for chronic pain, between that they rejected me because I was under mental health services (I was in the process of being discharged and they were completely different services), they then said my self-harm made me too much of a risk and they said they didn’t think I’d be able to manage classroom based psychoeducation (thanks for that).

Last time I checked, neither my body nor my brain can function without the other, yet services treating each are still very separate and mental health services are often not accommodating for people with physical impairments. They often aren’t accessible, and there’s also an assumption that if you’re disabled and have mental health problems, then of course you’re depressed because you’re disabled, because who wouldn’t be?

Ableism, unfortunately, is still well-rooted within the medical profession and even within the disability communities, there is still too much separation of physical impairment and mental health issues.

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Cost and sustainability

rant1
A blackboard with “rant of the day” printed at the top and the letters NHS with pound signs drawn in white chalk

I had a list of things I wanted to blog about, so instead I’m going to write about something completely different which came up a few days ago.

I’ve been trying to get more into doing activities outside of volunteering, which uses my lived experience of having mental health problems. Last week, I attended a workshop on Outcomes-Based Commissioning (OBC). I’ve learnt that mental health meetings and groups love acronyms, an alphabet soup of conditions, job roles, legislation and projects.

I’d like to tell you more about exactly what that is, but honestly, I’m not entirely sure myself. I can tell you that 8 organisations, some statutory such as the NHS and some charities are working together to change the delivery of mental health services in the area, and somewhere in all this, they’re looking for contributions and input from service users, carers and people with lived experience of mental distress.

One of the aims of the mental health service is to ensure sustainability and deliver cost-effective treatment. I have a couple of issues with this. 1) you cannot guarantee sustainability, you can do your best the make services sustainable but don’t make false promises especially to vulnerable people, 2) cost, now unless you’ve been living under a rock you’ll know that the NHS is chronically underfunded and overstretched; mental health has always been refereed to as the Cinderella service and when the going gets tough the tough gets cutting and mental health is often one of the first areas to feel these cuts.

So what’s the problem with pointing this out or looking to save money? well mental health already comes with a nice big serving of guilt for many people, guilt for putting pressure on loved ones, guilt for not working, guilt for being unreliable and it’s hard not to feel the need to justify the cost of treatment as I wrote in my last post I’ve been told by doctors in A&E to consider how long it took to treat me compared to the time it took me to cut myself, I’ve been questioned on why I called an ambulance despite feeling faint from blood loss. I didn’t choose to have mental health problems; my actions may be my choice, but having these issues is something beyond my control.

Having the cost of treatment pointed out or hearing the providers talk about services being cost-effective makes people feel guilty for something they can’t help and even puts people off seeking treatment, whether that’s for self-harm (I know people who will suture or glue themselves) or more long-term treatment like psychotherapy or counselling.

The financial situation with the health service is complex, but nobody should be made to feel guilty for needing healthcare or social care or feel they don’t deserve the help they need.

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Dear Dr (a message to Healthcare professionals treating self harmers in hospital)

I’m a regular at my local, which probably doesn’t sound unusual or uncommon, except that I don’t mean my local pub; I mean my local A&E department. Like around 1 in 4 people in the U.K. I have mental health problems and often require medical attention for self-harm. I decided to write a post about my experiences in A&E as an open letter to medical professionals.

Dear Dr or health care professional

The NHS is underfunded and over stretched, you work long hours in challenging conditions, often with little thanks or support; it’s impossible to be oblivious to the current state of our health care system. When you’re juggling patients and trying to be in 3 places at once it’s not hard to understand why you might not want to spend an hour or more treating someone for self inflicted injuries especially when you’re coming to the end of a long shift; however you chose a career helping people and taking care of their medical needs and I am a person in need of medical attention.

If you’ve never experienced a mental health problem or felt a need to harm yourself, then I don’t expect you to understand how I feel or why I do what I do, but the way I got my injuries doesn’t change the way they should be treated. I’ve been treated in ways I can’t imagine people who are there after an accident would be.

I’ve had wounds washed out in a sink in front of all the other cubicles and taken from one part of the department to another with nothing covering my arm while people stare at me, often horrified. On one occasion, my arm was covered so it wouldn’t scare the children in the paediatric A&E.

I’ve been stapled with no local anaesthetic and told it’s fine because it doesn’t hurt (it does), I know this is in partly due to guidelines but I’ve also had malicious treatment where one doctor repeatedly pulled the staples out and re did them all the while telling me if I didn’t stop I’d lose my arm while I sat in bed crying. I’ve had doctors tell me to think about how long it took them to treat me compared to the time it took me to hurt myself, and when I’ve felt faint from blood loss and said I need to sit down, I’ve been told I can wait a couple of minutes.

In my A&E notes, it says most of the time that I’m not distressed or that I was making eye contact; apparently, that means I’m fine. My mental state is frequently judged as fine because I’m not shouting or being abusive or absconding; however, at times when I have been visibly upset, I’m ignored.

I know accident and emergency staff are there to treat my physical injuries and leave the psychological side of things to the psych liaison but please remember that attached to the arm you’re treating is a person, I know my cuts can be deep and you may need another opinion but I’m not an exhibition for everyone to come and have a good look and discuss the damaged I’ve done, I see the signs that talk about dignity privacy and respect yet that doesn’t seem to apply if you’re a mental health patient; a little discretion wouldn’t hurt.

This isn’t intended as a criticism of the NHS; I know I’d be dead without it, but I didn’t choose to be this way; it’s something I’ve not been able to break away from despite treatment, and no amount of snapping elastic bands or holding ice cubes has ever replaced it as a coping mechanism.

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