Mental Health

Any long-standing readers who still dip into my Blog  will remember that I created Poppyposts to discuss my experiences of mental illness, depression and anxiety. This was 5 years ago, when not many people spoke openly about their mental health issues. Since then I have been through a number of phases. I have been featured in the National Press, Sky News, I was my employers mental health Champion, I am now a mental health first aider and am often my friends and colleagues first “port of call” when they are struggling with their mood.

Whilst I enjoy helping others, I have to manage my chronic fatigue symptoms alongside my desire to help everyone, campaign for better mental health care and awareness, argue that medication is a vital consideration when dealing with mental illness and keep a full-time job. This has proved difficult at times and I took the decision 18 months ago to take a back seat and let others do the campaigning. It was taking too much of my emotional energy to keep up the effort and was making me ill.

I am therefore pleased that our National Institution, the BBC, has made mental illness a focus of their schedule in the next two weeks,“In The Mind” will cover a number of illnesses across its media. This is unheard of but very welcome and the BBC has already broadcast some great stuff highlighting the problems encountered by people of all ages suffering from a variety of mental illnesses.

I’m looking forward to seeing what the next two weeks brings.