Mental health from both sides
I would describe myself as reasonably sensitive – after all, I’m a psychiatrist and, as such, would think that I am sensitive to other people’s needs. I don’t think that I’m particularly more sensitive than many others, and I know plenty of people who care and show empathy, both to friends and family, and even…
I am very happy to finally feel that I am shedding the last horrible remnants of my recent depression. I feel much better, possibly slightly on the high side, which I find hard to admit, much harder, actually, than saying I’m depressed. And it’s not too bad, so why worry? Nothing that can’t be managed with…
It’s impossible to describe what it’s like having a mood disorder, mainly because it will vary depending on your mood. I’ve written before about this, but make no apologies for doing so again. It’s something I feel compelled to think about and explore, while knowing that I will never properly understand it. Most people’s moods…
Not very long ago I was quite ill, in fact probably very ill indeed. Throughout my decades of illness, I have found it difficult to understand and recognise my illness; more recently I seem to have become more aware of my mood swings, and that they don’t necessarily align with what is happening or what…
There is nothing beautiful about mental illness. Art and literature may sometimes present it as such, but this is not reality. Depression first gripped me as a young woman; now I am in what can only be described as middle age, and my mood disorder has continued to torment me over the years. At times…
I have written very little in the last few months, as I’ve been quite unwell. Even I realise this, something which suggests rare and blossoming insight – although it may evaporate as soon as normality returns, who knows. But things have been hard. My mood has been very low, my beliefs about myself and my…
I often read blogs or writing by other people with mental illness – I find them interesting and inspiring, and often curious. After all, we all live within the confines of our own experience, however much we think we ride above it. Even as we start to understand, it often changes. Perhaps we get a…
I wonder, at times, why I didn’t write more about my experiences of mental illness when it was hot off the press. Not necessarily when I was very unwell, but in the aftermath of early episodes, when I was young, and emotions were high. It would have been very different, and I might not like…
It’s very hard to know whether you’re wrong or right about things, even when you have all the information that you think you need. In fact, while I would always advocate acquiring facts and proof, I think that it’s virtually impossible to do this in a non-biased way – we can’t help but be pulled…
The experience of having ECT has always been frightening for me, though – going through that door - repeatedly - to a place I can never really remember.
Back in 2020, I saw myself as something of a Covid resistance fighter. When Covid-19 first hit, my ward was converted into a Covid unit (admittedly not for the very ill), and, despite taking advised precautions, it’s hard to believe I managed then to avoid that nasty little virus. But I stayed well, and even…
When I am lying in my comfortable bed at night, I sometimes wonder what my life would have been like if I had been born, one hundred, five hundred, even one thousand years ago. And usually I breathe a sigh of relief that this is not the case, and turn over and go to sleep.…
These wards contain so many people’s individual horrors, and there needs to be enough beds and enough people to carry all this and care for them. Otherwise we lose our humanity.
Becoming a psychiatrist was very important to me as a young doctor. As a patient, who had been in and out of a psychiatric hospital, it felt like a lost dream, something I could never hope to achieve. It is true that I had wanted to train as a psychiatrist before I became ill, but…
My family never ask about my mental illness. They never ask how I am, whether I take medication, whether it works. I’ve no idea why, because I don’t ask them why they don’t, either. We’re not that kind of family. By family, I mean my birth family, the one in which I grew up. Of…