Experiences of talking about your mental health?

[littlepieces]

It's great that everyone's talking about mental health awareness, and trying to be more understanding towards people experiencing issues. But the media etc would have us all believe that it's now perfectly OK to admit to having MH problems, and expect the response to be kind and supportive. I think the reality is still very different.

What are your experiences of telling partners, friends, and work about MH issues? It was a long time ago now, but one of my best friends of 6+ years never spoke to me again after I told her I had depression. And a week later, everyone in my sixth form college knew. It's put me off ever talking about it to another soul as long as I live.

@LudoBear

Told my mum this afternoon I'd had enough and didn't want to be here any more. She told me to stop being silly.

Hugs. This is shit.

Please get in touch with your GP and have a chat.

I suffer horrendously with my
mental health. Every day lately I am thinking the best way to hurt myself.

I talk to my Dr and a couple of other people and I take it each day as it comes.

Best of luck. 💕

I’m so glad of this thread. I’ve been thinking for a while about the absolute hypocrisy of a society now mawkishly obsessed with being “woke” enough to bang on about “mental health” on every bloody tweet / news broadcast / ep of Woman’s Hour / senior royal engagements / virtue-signalling Facebook post ... yet at the same time to balk at the actual REALITIES of the unpalatable face of severe mental illness such as bipolar affective disorder, schizophrenia, psychosis etc.

I trained in MH, work supporting the most psychiatrically poorly people in society to reintegrate into society and live to their potential, AND... recently became very seriously ill myself with a diagnosis of a life-long serious mental health condition of the ‘unpalatable’ hush-hush variety.

I can honestly say, I’ve been staggered by the stigma and cluelessness surrounding my condition. Even my switched-on, educated, public-sector, compassionate colleagues and friends haven’t known what to say or how to relate to me or support me. I’ve been off work for 5 months, severely ill, under all sorts of MH teams, threatened with a Section 2 for my own safety etc.... and not ONE single ‘get well soon’ card.

If my diagnosis had been breast cancer, I’d have been inundated with cards, Facebook messages, flowers etc... but fighting for ones life when ones brain is ill results in total radio silence.

Never have I felt so disappointed in our society and so outraged at the total disparity of esteem between serious physical illness and serious mental illness. And I thought I knew about this stuff professionally. No one will ever appreciate the disparity and invisibility until they’ve walked in the shoes of someone severely mentally unwell (psychosis etc).

Meanwhile, everywhere continues to bang on about “mental health” (when what they’re really referring to is general “emotional well-being”.

They can stick the fucking mindfulness and “ensuring you take a walk in your lunchbreak” up their fucking woke arses as far as I’m concerned - it’s a massive sham designed to virtue signal and I want no part in it now I’ve been so badly abandoned when I needed understanding most.

@MuckyPlucky that is shit. People are so flaky and disingenuous. Sending you

@knackeredcat - thanks I will do - I think I have to override all my initial reactions- which is to compare and tell him to be positive - and that's not doing him any favours- as described by the anecdotes on this thread.
Like he said this isn't a choice for him - and it has been a tough year like never before.
But no judgement- no trying to fix everything- just listen

After I attempted suicide after years of mental health problems including intrusive voices, which I still have, I was admitted to hospital where I was visited by a suicide counselor for about five minutes, I was promised further visits, I never got the visits as promised, I was basically ignored by nurses who didn’t seem to know why I was there in the first place, they didn’t know what medication I was on or anything else about me, after I was released from hospital I was given appointments to see a counselor who then told me to put an elastic band around my wrist and snap it onto my skin when suicidal thoughts came, eventually I got to see a psychiatrist who is very good and has given me lots of help, offering respite when everything gets too much to handle.
I have in the past been told by a friend of my husband that my mental health problems are self indulgence, this friend is a plumber by trade and has no experience of mental health problems, there are so many armchair psychiatrists out there that make judgments about things that they know nothing about, I was also told by my mother that I should think about how it affects her when I am ill, it’s attitudes like these that stops people talking and seeking help and sadly it often leads to suicide because of the stigma and because lots of people get uncomfortable by your problems and friends drift away, I can’t discuss it anymore because I don’t want to lose friends, it’s a struggle I have to deal with alone and sometimes life is very bleak.

I only talk to DH about it, he understands but I would never tell anyone else and I am very ashamed about being on antidepressants, I have been on them for a long time.

I am crippled by anxiety and it has got a LOT worse during this pandemic.

I once told my DB and he said I should NOT be taking anti-depressants as "they change you and mess with your head" wonder where he got his medical degree from

I would never tell my parents, they would see it as a sign of weakness. I have heard other family members talk dismissively and dispargingly of "depressives" as though they are another inferior species.

I have depression and most friends and close colleagues know. We’re all adults and wouldn’t dream of mocking other people or changing our behaviour towards them, just because they suffer from mental health issues. I also support another colleague who has anxiety and depression, I find it has been much easier to talk about these things once they were out in the open. I’m not embarrassed to say I suffer with depression, or I’m feeling suicidal today, or I’ve had a major breakdown this week. Everyone is supportive and doesn’t treat me any differently, but I know I’m lucky in that respect.

I don’t talk about it with my family though. They’re old school and just say I need to toughen up and therapy or medication don’t help, and depression is what is youngsters call laziness. I gave up a long time ago.

Very few people know I have suffered with depression. When I was first diagnosed (in 2007) I only told my H and a close friend. Couldn't tell my mum as she would have broadcast it to my siblings, her brother and sister and probably the window cleaner too! She recently found out and has turned it into a 'oh I'm such a poor mum you couldn't tell me. I feel so bad. How could you not tell me. How do you think I feel knowing my daughter was suffering and didn't tell me." Precisely why I think so many of us keep quiet - shes made it all about her!.

Without excusing the shocking lack of mental health care available, I suspect part of the reason is that it is so personal, its really difficult to treat. Its not like a broken bone - oh slap a cast on and dont use if for 6 weeks then its mended. Everyone needs something different unless we just shove medication down everyone. My depression would be different to everyone else's in its causes and the way I deal with it which also may be different each time it occurs. My methods of dealing probably wouldn't suit someone else and their methods wouldn't suit me!

Nail on head, @MuckyPlucky regarding disparity of esteem between physical and mental illnesses. The invisibility of serious mental illness means people choose to ignore or poo-poo it until it manifests in an "episode" (hate that word) that they are party to. The backing away, the change in attitude, etc.

You're amazing. You all are.

I think a lot of people genuinely don't know how to help/offer support to others who have serious MH problems. If someone said to me 'I don't have any experience/training in MH issues, but I can give you some time and have a coffee with you and listen to you' or similar, that's great.

Blanking people who have disclosed their illnesses is cruel, and entirely different to not being available at 3 in the morning for a crisis. Maybe they feel that's what will happen if they don't cut off contact? Disappointing that they don't feel they can maintain their boundaries without this. IMO though, a lot of people seem to suffer with a functioning level of anxiety/depression, and maybe they feel they just can't cope with how they feel the 'situation' might pan out.

I am very careful who I disclose my illness to. My friends have been around me for many years, and I think (hope?) I have weeded out those likely to have a bad reaction to me being really in the future.

The people I have the real issue with the outright woke hypocrites who have been mentioned already a few times. For example, but in many ways typical, an ex-neighbour who had the 'Be Kind' banner on his profile pic on FB. All very well except he was the neighbour from hell, made my life miserable with his excessively loud music, and at the beginning of lockdown came round to threaten me. I'm old enough to be his mother, and it was pretty frightening. What kind of cognitive dissonance needs to be in place that you can do this, and still consider yourself to be a kind person?

So yes, there's a lot of 'talking the talk, and not walking the walk' going on with all the mental health virtue signalling.

Also, my experience of being a volunteer for a mental health charity was that certainly the CEO, and ex-nurse was a nightmare, and put more and more pressure on volunteers, demanding contracts among other things.

The volunteers, all of who had mental health issues were a different story, and were very caring towards other volunteers. I'm not saying there were never fall outs, or personality clashes, people are human, of course there were. But I have never seen a group of people so solicitous towards each other.

I just wish there was more distinction when talking about it. Feeling sad and not eating much after losing a job or going through a break up is not the same as chronic, debilitating, hospitalising depression and anxiety. Liking a clean and tidy house isn't the same as having OCD. I'm not saying milder mental health conditions shouldn't be treated or talked about, I just feel there should be distinction. And yeah, I lost a lot of friends when I went into hospital. I'm open about my mental health because it affects so much of my life I have to explain a lot. But I don't expect kindness, compassion or understanding from most people.

Be very careful about disclosure

It's backfired on me big time today

I do find the current 'trend' for being open and honest about mental health issues pretty hypocritical and does nothing but pay lip service to a very serious issue.

I've had situations where people have dismissed and minimised my struggles. An old boss suggested yoga and lavender on my pillow to cure my crippling anxiety, grief and daily nightmares. I don't think people truly get how utterly debilitating it can be to struggle with something as 'banal' as anxiety. That's before we get on to the more serious MH issues!

@badmudda

I think a lot of workplaces just want people who can talk about mental health in an articulate way but without ever showing any sign of said mental health problems. So, you know, talk about anxiety fluently but never show any signs of anxiety at work. It’s a bit like asking someone with a broken leg to talk about it but not use their crutches or limp.