Something a little different from me today: I’ve joined the fantastic Concerned Bloggers Association whose mission is “to provide direct and accurate information through social media.” Each month we’ll be talking about a different topic of concern – this month happens to be a subject very close to my heart: Mental Health Awareness. What follows is my personal experience and it’s been a little hard to be so frank on here about it so I hope you’ll read with an open mind and heart <3

Alone.

Everybody’s experience of being diagnosed with a mental health disorder differs, of course, but I bet amongst the forefront of how you’re feeling is alone. Well, you’re not: about 1 in 5 of all people over the age of 18 has a diagnosable mental disorder; 4 of 10 causes for disability in developed countries are due to mental health issues*. And you don’t have to suffer from a disorder to be affected by one: friends, family, colleagues – you’re not alone, either.

I spent many years denying that there could be anything ‘wrong’ with me. I’d seen family be touched by mental illness and was determined that it would never ‘get’ me; at the same time as being shit-scared that it already had. I was too frightened to talk to a doctor for fear of being carted off to an asylum that it wasn’t until a bereavement sparked a major depressive episode that I knew I had to get some help – in (Read more...)

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