It's Sunny Outside But Not In My Head

It's 3pm in the afternoon on a gloriously sunny April day and I have only just got up. I am still in my pyjamas and probably still will be by this evening until I convince myself I need to shower. I am currently suffering from a depressive episode and everything feels pointless. Really, what is the point in anything? I went to bed last night at 9pm because I didn't know what else to do and my ongoing severe anxiety is preventing me from watching TV or reading. I am living in my own kind of hell.
The guilt is pressing down on me. What have I got to be sad about? Nothing in particular. A break up that happened six months ago that I still haven't processed, but other than that, nothing. I have a holiday booked for 3 month's time. I have a new job I start next week. I have a family who love me, yet I still can't stop thinking the world would be a better place if I wasn't in it.
I'm no stranger to suicidal thoughts and attempts and the only thing stopping me is the impact it would have on my family. But I thought I would write an article about how it feels to be depressed, these are the thoughts and emotions going through my head:

• Guilt, why am I feeling low? What have I got to be low about? People are worse off than me.
• Shame, I should be out functioning in society
• Suicidal thoughts, I should just die. Everyone's better off without me.
• Anger, why do I have to suffer this? Why aren't my anti-depressants working?
• Frustration, why am I in this episode? When will it end?
• Anxiety. I can't read or watch TV? What can I do?

I will probably end up going back to bed after writing this article. My family encourage me to go for a walk or sit in the sun but it doesn't help and even if it does it is only for five or ten minutes. The root cause of this depression is unknown so I am waiting and hoping it will lift.

This is what it is like to be depressed, not fun, not glamorous and not easy.

BPD Patients Are Being Let Down By Services

Mental health services in the U.K are failing patients. Southern Health and Sussex Partnership both had to apologise for failing patients on multiple occasions, leading to deaths of both patients and members of the public.
It is a vicious circle if you need mental health help. You tell the service that you feel suicidal but they dismiss it and tell you to 'have a bath' or 'light some candles.' THIS DOES NOT HELP. I don't even have a bath!!!
They don't believe you when you say you are suicidal, then you attempt it and they are sorry but not sorry enough and they send you home, back to danger, back to being unsafe, scared, alone and depressed.
It feels like you have to be half dead to get help. It has got the stage where you have to harm yourself to get the help!
Don't even get me started on Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) stigma in mental health services, The amount of professionals I've seen who, the second they walk in the door I can see in their eyes they are already writing me off, as an attention seeker, drama queen. They don't take me seriously.
According to the NICE guidelines for BPD (that don't sound very nice!) patients with BPD don't benefit from hospital admissions as their condition cannot be resolved with medication and they need to learn to live in the community. That is all well and good but when you are suicidal you can't even get out of bed, let alone live or function in the community and the majority of people with BPD suffer from depressive episodes. Apparently (according to an old psychiatrist I saw in one of my admissions) "People with BPD like the attention and like being in hospital."
Yes, I love it! I love being shut away from my family and friends, having to ask for my tweezers or plug my phone in to charge at the nursing station. I love being sat on a hospital bed looking outside and wishing I was hanging from one of the trees.
Apparently we also get attached to members of staff, but quite frankly we can get attached to anyone very quickly and very intensely as it is a symptom of the disorder.
BPD often comes with other mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, eating disorders and OCD, so if we are not hospitalised for our BPD we could be hospitalised for a different condition. Also, the medication we take is often for the depression or the anxiety, not the BPD itself.
Due to the high impulses of BPD sufferers we are at risk of dying from impulsive self-harm or accidental death. And we often abuse alcohol and substances which puts us even more at risk.
To conclude this rant I would like to express that BPD is a serious mental illness and at least 70 per cent of people with BPD will attempt suicide in their lifetime and between 8 and 10 per cent of people with BPD with complete suicide which is more than 50 times the rate of suicide in the general population.
to point out that
So yeah, don't take us seriously, we are just attention seekers!

Common Myths About The Mentally Disordered

• They're all killers
• They're all rapists
• They're rapists and killers
• They're paedophiles
• They are murderers
• It's contagious
• They were abused as a child
• They're dangerous
• Schizophrenics are killers
• Depressives are having a bad day
• Anorexics are looking for attention
• Self-harm is a trend
• Those with OCD all wash their hands too much
• Suicide is the coward's way out

The truth is: 'Depression isn't an act. Self harm isn't a trend. Anorexia isn't a phase. Homosexuality isn't a choice and suicide isn't cowardly.'

Lack Of Mental Health Awareness And Support

There is a serious lack of support for people suffering with psychiatric illnesses.
There is little awareness too, for the conditions which affect millions of people around the world.
Discrimination should not exist in the year 2013. Or even in the year 1913 or 1813.
Mental illness is just a core part of being a human. It is hereditary, it runs in families.
I heard the awful story of a poor 21 year-old woman who suffered from depression and was feeling suicidal, so told her college who rang the police. The police found no-where safe and secure for her to go other than the police station, so she spent the night in a cell.
Mental illness is not a crime and therefore the poor woman should NOT have been treated like a criminal and put anywhere near criminals.
People NEED to be educated on mental illness...

Sylvia Plath

Sylvia, Sylvia, Sylvia. What can I say?
Sylvia Plath was an amazing woman and after watching the film 'Sylvia', my admiration of her just grew. I was appalled at the way Ted Hughes treated her: affairs, infidelity and broken promises. She needed love and security.
I was bewitched by the film 'Sylvia' and saw it twice in one day. Partly because I love Gwyneth Paltrow but mainly because it's an amazing film portraying an even more amazing woman.
Plath was clearly always mentally unstable, from the time she met Hughes to her death in 1963. She told him many a times of her failed suicide attempts: an overdose, attempted drowning. When she discovers Hughes is repeatedly betraying her trust and cheating on her she becomes more and more ill until she cannot cope anymore and on February 11th 1963 she committed suicide by putting her head in the oven. 
In her life she wrote some outstanding poems, such as Daddy. She also wrote her only novel The Bell Jar. The book centres around Esther Greenwood, a troubled young lady trying to find her place in the world. 
The novel was semi-autobiographical and portrayed many events which also paralleled Plath's life.
Sylvia Plath was unwell and sadly did not get the help she needed and deserved. Her intense poetry on the theme of death conveys her deteriorating mental stability and suicidal ideation. 
I don't know what is was about Plath's novel that captured me, left me pining for more of her works. I read The Bell Jar in a matter of days and it stayed with me long after I finished it. I may re-read it, especially after reading an article on one woman's permanent adoration of the novel.
Plath had two children. Her daughter, Frieda Hughes is alive today and identifies as a writer and poet, her son, Nicholas Highes was a fisheries biologist known as an expert in stream salmonid ecology, however he hanged himself in 2009 after suffering with depression.

Plath will be remembered forever for her talent and beauty inside and out. Her journals are available to read, which gives detailed insight into her emotions and experiences.

The Truth About Depression

The black dog.
Down in the dumps.
The blues. 
It doesn't matter what you call it.
It's depression.
It sucks all the life from you and colours your world black. You see in black and white, you lose your appetite, all you want to do is sleep. Past hobbies and leisure activities become boring.
It is a killer, a life destroyer.
Bipolar disorder is also a life destroyer. It can have you crying one minute and laughing the next. Manic episodes result in hyper activity, a high sex drive and unlimited energy, however down episodes leave you wondering why you're alive and attempting to slit your wrist.
People tell those with depression to "Put your chin up" or "Look on the bright side". But it is not that simple. There is a chemical imbalance in their brain, their serotonin levels are low, they cannot control their mood. I'm sick of the stigma that surrounds depression. Everyone who judges depressed people, I guarantee if they had a while living with depression they'd soon change their judgement.