Anecdotally, it seems to me that the way mental illness is dealt with in this country is that people are left to get sicker and sicker, until their originally treatable conditions have snow balled into something mammoth, unmanageable and a lot more costly, both to the NHS and themselves.
Where there’s an university research team who are ‘worldleaders’ in the treatment of BPD, she had medication therapy weekly for over four years, when Alex was lucky enough to live in the Netherlands. Because mental illness is an illness like any other, they did MRI scans of her brain.
Depression Awareness Week -coverage that should have been unthinkable even five years ago. On Thought for the Day yesterday, the writer Rhidian Brook articulated brilliantly the complexities of depression -the way it feels, and the way it often doesn’t look. Psychiatrist told Alex she spoke in a clinical manner, and told her to buy a book about depression from Amazon. This is the case. Alex told the psychiatrist that she had researched how to kill herself. NHS psychiatrist who asked if she had suicidal thoughts. Earlier in the week, a nine year old boy had appeared on very similar programme talking of his own depression and suicidal thoughts. That said, the boy suffered from acute anxiety and autism and had experienced long waits to see professionals.
By the way I was, strangely, glad to hear it -because the more these stories are told, the less likely they are to happen, so this was not an uplifting story.
The more people shout and scream and tell people about their conditions and the injustices they face because of them, the more we have to sit up and listen and, more importantly, in fact do something for a while being that only by telling someone can things start to get better. They can get better, and they will. One in four people will experience mental illness at some point in their lives -but that means four in four of us know someone who will. So this weekend, be like Alex and that nineyearold boy and tell someone, if you are struggling at the moment -if it feels like the light is extinguished and all hope is lost -please.
this week is Depression Awareness for a while being that, unbelievably, Alex’s story isn’t for a while because it shows how desperately we need to be talking about allforms of mental illness, bPD was not. Form of depression -though hundreds of sufferers experience major episodes of it. Now. Also, this week is Depression Awareness week. Nonetheless, for a while because it shows how desperately we need to be talking about allforms of mental illness, bPD was not. Did you know that a form of depression -though quite a few sufferers experience major episodes of it. Now, 90 of the time. For ages being that, unbelievably, Alex’s story ain’t that unusual.