Just Get Some Fresh Air

Myself and many others who suffer with depression are sick of being told to 'get some fresh air!'
It doesn't work like that. We are depressed and nothing will change that. Leave us be and we will be ok. We need to stay in bed or hideaway for a reason. Our minds need recharging. Stop telling us to get out because it won't change anything and you shouldn't give advice unless you truly understand depression and mental illness.
Try walking a mile in our shoes and then tell us what to do.

Mental Health: Coming Off Mirtazapine

I currently write this, while battling depression and anxiety and coming off mirtazapine. The anxiety is a strange one that has started about a week ago, I just feel scared. Of everything. And nothing feels real. I know I am dissociating as I have done it before and will do so again, I know the medical jargon and that does give me some comfort, to know it is a symptom. Not a state of being I will be stuck in forever. But it doesn't stop the feeling and I feel like I need to be near people, near walls, enclosed. I feel scared of the wide world. I am currently withdrawing from taking mirtazapine which I have been on since 3rd February. It has not helped me at all. 
It is different to an SSRI, the more common anti-depressants, such as as sertraline and fluoxetine, both of which I have been on. It is different in that it is an atypical antidepressant. I have found it came with the following side effects:

• Severe weight gain and appetite increase (I gained a stone in a month!)
• Constipation
• Tiredness in the day (I have been like a zombie the day after taking it as I take it at night, I have been slurring my words, unable to keep my eyes open, sleeping too much!)

I have spoken to my Doctor and my Psychiatrist and they have both agreed I can come off of it. I haven't noticed my low mood or anxiety to have alleviated at all while on the medication so there doesn't seem much point in staying on it and becoming fatter and more zombie-like.

I am hoping they will replace it with a different anti-depressant as coming off of it my mood has decreased. I take it at night to help me sleep as I was on a helpful concoction of sertraline 150mg daily and quetiapine 150mg at night and this together fought my OCD, anxiety, mood swings and insomnia. But now it is all up in the air again as since being hospitalised and taken off sertraline completely and quetiapine at night due to overdosing on it and being seriously ill, to moving onto Depixol injection (flupentixol, anti-psychotic, for mood stability, anxiety and depression) and mirtazapine as the anti-depressant (instead of sertraline) and sleep aid (instead of quetiapine) and Depixol as an added mood stabiliser.

I am weary about what meds they may or may not put me on and just want to go back to sertraline and quetiapine as I was on them years and they were my comfort blanket. 

I write this experiencing dissociation and wanting to run back to my Dad's house and say "Cuddle me til this is over!"

I am going to try and read or do something. I need to take 15mg mirtazapine (the lowest dose, which is apparently the most sedating, weird I know!) instead of the 30mg I was on until Friday when I have a phone call booked in with my psychiatrist and he will talk me through what I will try next.

Wish me luck as I don't feel too good, my mood is low, my anxiety is high, if only they were the other way round.

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!

Things Never To Say To A Depressed Person

• Chin up
• I know how you feel
• You need exercise
• It's all in your head
• Get a different job
• Think positive
• Stop feeling sorry for yourself
• Is it your relationship?
• Look at how lucky you are
• Everyone has problems
• Life is hard
• I'm having a bad day too
• Is it the weather?

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.'

Chin Up: Depression

A depressed person cannot put their chin up and just be happy. You can say to them "But you're loved, you have a job, a good life, family and friends" and that won't change anything. Someone who is down because of a job loss, bereavement or relationship problems has a reason to be down and they are down not depressed.
Depression does not care whether you are ugly or pretty, fat or thin, poor or rich. 
As Stephen Fry claims, mood is like the weather. It can change, it will get better, it cannot be controlled.
Depression is the thunderstorm, the rain, the snow. Happiness is the sunshine. 
Bipolar disorder/manic depression is the two extremes of moods. The dark dismal depression, where everything is rubbish and life is not worth living, and then the mania - when you are filled with thoughts and ideas, you believe you can solve the world's problems, become famous, write a book, you have loads of energy and cannot stay still, your mood elevates.
There is no point in getting annoyed at a depressed person for being depressed.
You wouldn't get annoyed at someone for having heart disease or cancer. There's no reason for someone to have cancer, just like there is no reason for someone to have depression. They just do.

                                         Stephen Fry talking about bipolar disorder

If you know someone who’s depressed, please resolve to never ask them why. Depression isn’t a straightforward response to a bad situation; depression just is, like the weather. Try to understand the blackness, lethargy, hopelessness, and loneliness they’re going through. Be there for them when they come through the other side.
It’s hard to be a friend to someone who’s depressed, but it’s one of the kindest, noblest, and best things you’ll ever do.
-Stephen Fry

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/08/23/best-and-worst-things-depression-help_n_3802904.html

Don't Call Me Crazy

So a new programme began this week. 'Don't Call Me Crazy' follows the lives of teenagers in an inpatient psychiatric hospital in the UK, suffering from various mental illnesses. The unit - The McGuinness unit, has now been replaced by a brand new modern unit called Junction 17.
After staying at one myself, for 2 weeks, I found this programme rather interesting, yet also sad. Sad because of the illnesses the young people have and sad because of the way they are treated.
My stay at a psychiatric unit was a rather positive experience.
The people there were not restrained in front of other young people, which they are in the McGuinness unit.
One of the patients who suffered from depression, anorexia and also self harmed, refused to be weighed and eat. At the unit I was at, the young people had to eat, and did. They were weighed. They were supervised a lot of the time to ensure they were not exercising and moving around, especially twitching and fidgeting slightly to burn off calories. They went to the toilet and were not allowed to flush the loo until the staff had checked there was not sick down the toilet, which is a way of purging (vomiting).
On the positive and motivational side, one of the patients who suffered with acute OCD told the camera how "OCD does not define her as a person."
The patients raised awareness of the stigma surrounding mental illness and shared personal insight into their minds. All in all it was a very worthwhile programme. It was widely talked about. I read this article in The Guardian which advertised and promoted the programme which raises awareness surrounding mental health.

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.

Stop The Stigma Around Mental Health Issues

I hear the words "mental" and "psycho" and "schizo" being thrown around carelessly. 
What if you were one of those people who suffered with psychosis or schizophrenia?
The stigma around mental health illnesses has got to stop.
If someone has a broken leg or a black eye, people can see they are ill, but if you are mentally ill - no-one can tell. But those with psychological illnesses are still ill, they still need love and care and support.
In some ways illness of the mind can be worse than physical illness. It's harder to explain, it doesn't show and it is seen as 'strange'. Even in 2013 I still come across people who are prejudice against those with mental illnesses.
People with mental illness are not crazy, nor are they violent or hateful. They are not all suffering with the same condition. Not all depressives are suicidal, not all schizophrenics are violent, not all people with OCD are obsessive about hygiene.
So stop with the stigma. Think about it more. Research it. Support it. Mental health illnesses are not something to be ashamed of. Wipe-out stigma. Please. Start today.

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.