I don't know whether I should come off my antidepressants or not

One of the most common topics on my blog is medication.
I often find myself writing about anti-depressants and defending their use. No one questions the use of medication for physical illness with the same vehemence they do for mental illness. This remains one area where stigma remains strong.

I'm proud to take anti-depressants for my mental illness. I'm not ashamed. And I've always been open about it.

But it's been 7 years, and at some point my health would be better served without medication. There are some long-term side effects from using anti-depressants, such as blood disorders and liver damage.

So after 7 years, I'm starting to wonder if the time to stop is now?

It's been two years since I've had a breakdown. Yes, my mental health has been poor on occasions since, but everyone's mental health takes hits and dips. I haven't felt helpless, hopeless or had thoughts of suicide for over two years.

After a seven-year struggle, I now have more good days than bad. I've developed coping skills. I've found strategies that help, and I know what I should be doing for good mental health, even if I don't always do it.

But the thought of quitting is scary.

I've been on my current dosage of medication for about six years now, seven years since I started taking anti-depressants. What will happen when I change the chemicals in my brain?

I've also only been with my current doctor (GP) for just over a year now. It took me a long time to find someone who was and who I trusted. But my GP doesn't know my full mental health history. She wasn't there for the bad times. How can she advise on what's right for me if I have only ever been in a good place when I've been her patient? I know that you should never go 'cold turkey' off antidepressants on your own, without the support of a healthcare professional. But is this the right person to support me now?

And how do you know when the right time is right?

One of the joys of depression is that it could reoccur at any time. Quitting means balancing the risk of relapse. And there is nothing scarier than the thought I could end up in the horrifying pit of darkness that was me at my worst. 

I also worry about whether I'll be seen as a hypocrite for deciding to quit. I've been so vocal about taking medication for my mental illness, that stopping taking them looks like I don't support their use.

Articles I found online about stopping anti-depressants call the decision a 'personal choice'. But this is not something I can decide on my own. I will need the full support of my friends and family, but especially my partner if I'm to get through this. I could need time off work, time to recover (again), time to go back to therapy. Coming off medication is a slow process which takes time, as this advice from Dean Burnett writing in the Guardian says:

"Take it slow, get help and advice, do it gradually and carefully. It’s not like ripping off a bandage or plaster, one sharp shock and it’s all over. It’s more like slamming your brakes on while in the fast lane of the motorway: it may be safe in other scenarios, but you’re currently in a situation where that’s extremely hazardous."

It's like facing the great unknown. I could sink or I could swim. But I guess you never know until you try?

Until next time,

Discrediting Trump as mentally ill sets a dangerous precedent

There is only one topic anyone wants to talk about these days. What is wrong with Donald Trump?
You know the one, President of the United States. Boasts about having a nuclear button on his desk and how smart and stable he is.

There's nothing wrong with questioning a powerful world leader. But what is wrong, is discrediting and excusing everything he does on the basis of a supposed mental illness.

Speculation has reached fever pitch with the publication of a new book Fire and Fury which has turned all attention to Trump's mental state.

I have had conversations which quickly turned to arguments with workplace colleagues on this topic. I can't contain my passion. You see, I wholly disagree with labeling Trump as 'mentally ill' for a number of reasons:

• What's wrong with having a mental illness?
• Mental illness is not an excuse for being a bad person.
• Your speculation adds to the stigma around mental health. 
• See my previous post Let's stop blaming Trump's policies on mental illness for more. 

If Trump has a mental illness, why does that mean he should no longer be President? Trump was elected for the view that he continues to espouse. He threw many tantrums and displayed similar Twitter rants and raves during the election. He was still elected. But the reason he should no longer be President is not that he holds dangerous views; but that he may be mentally ill.

This sets a dangerous precedent and poses the following questions:

Can people with mental illness not hold positions of power?
Can we be managers? CEOs? Politicians? President?

And if we do have a mental illness, do we now have to declare a deeply private and personal matter publicly?
Are we allowed to serve the public without revealing our medical record?

Is every person who makes decisions we don't agree with mentally unstable?
Is every 'bad' person, however you define 'bad', mentally ill?
Or what about world leaders from the past?
Maybe all dictators are mentally ill? Was Hitler mentally ill? Maybe Genghis Khan?

Here's the big thing though. We don't know if Trump has a mental illness or not. This is all pure speculation which causes significant harm

Speculating is excusing people who make bad decisions and poor judgments.
Speculating makes people like me, who are mentally ill, feel degraded, judged and inferior for an illness I cannot change. It makes me question my sanity. Am I also a 'bad' person because of my illness?

Mental illness is not an excuse for throwing a tantrum. It's not an excuse for racism, or other bigoted views.
Playing the 'mental illness' card diverts blame from a grown man onto a real, serious and life-threatening illness that affects millions of people. Using it in this way is only serving to restigmatise mental illness as something only the 'crazy' other has, rather than something 1 in 4 of us live with on a daily basis.
Mental illness is being used as a weapon against Trump. How can he be a fit President if he's mentally ill? But I refuse to accept the label of mental illness as an insult.

Worse still, we cannot possibly judge someone's mental health from the image they project. While some psychologists have come out to state Trump is mentally ill, an almost equal number have come out to say that it is unethical to assume this when they have never met Trump.

And as for former colleagues who are questioning Trump's mental state?
Imagine telling a work colleague that having watched how they perform in work over the past few weeks or months, you've decided that they are mentally ill. If we can publicly question Trump's mental health and use it to belittle him, what's to stop us from doing to everyone else?
The stigma around mental health in workplaces remains high. And those of us with mental health problems who are working are left feeling under threat. Will my capability be questioned or belittled if rumour of my mental illness gets out? Will my decisions be scrutinized for signs of instability? Will it be used against me?

Those of us with a mental illness are being silenced by media and political speculation.

This has to stop. Every positive step that has been made towards defeating the stigma around mental health is on the verge of being set back or reversed. The legitimacy of surveys showing stigma-reduction and positive change hang in the balance.
Mental health awareness and advocacy groups need to take a public and vocal stance on this issue. And they need to do it now.

When being a mental health activist gets hard

The first year after my diagnosis with depression was hard. I had expected a quick-fix, but it was six months and five different drugs later and I still didn’t want to live. I struggled to get by day-to-day. I continued to withdraw and lost friends. I acted out self-destructively. I felt lost, and what I needed was to find a purpose for my depression.

I found meaning in mental health campaigns and activism. I got involved in local college groups that promoted the message “Talking is a sign of strength.” It was an easy thing to throw my weight behind – talking had literally saved my life. And I never wanted anyone to feel as alone and without help as I had.

We ran awareness campaigns of the supports available to students, hosted talks on eating disorders and CBT and tried to reach those who needed help. We held regular tea and coffee mornings to promote talking. And people would talk. I’d be taken aside to chat to someone vulnerable. To tell them that it’s okay not to feel okay, but sometimes we need help. They’d tell me about their battles, their hardships, their attempts.

And I was ever so grateful, don’t get me wrong. How much I would have loved to have someone listen to me and chat to me about my illness after my diagnosis. I had needed like-minded people with their experiences of mental illness to talk to. And that’s what I’d found through activism.
 But I went home feeling these people’s pain. Often their stories were triggering to me. It brought me back to exactly how I’d felt and how I'd hurt. And when we lost a life, I took that personally. “If only my activism had reached them”, I’d think. “If I’d done more, could I have saved them?”

My activism found a national stage through the Green Ribbon campaign. I was interviewed in national newspapers and on TV. People I didn’t know, people I used to know reached out to me to say they could relate. They’d been through something similar. They had lost a friend to a similar battle.

But then the questions started:

What medication are you on? What brand works for you?
When are you going to stop taking medication? Aren’t you worried you’ll get addicted?
But how serious actually was your depression?
Don't you think you should go back to counselling?  

When I left university and entered the workplace, I lost contact with like-minded people. I have always been the youngest person on my team in any place I’ve worked over the past three years. I quickly became aware of how much stigma still exists. I didn’t know how to react to office lunchtime conversations, or even if I should react?

 “There’s definitely something mentally wrong with him.” 

"Terrorists are all mentally ill. There's no other excuse." 

"I always thought depression wasn't real; it's just something in your head."

If I speak up I’ll probably get upset. How will people treat me if I do admit that I have depression?

I started my blog. I started sharing more indepth the daily struggles of depression and anxiety. I joined mental health chats on Twitter and met more like-minded activists through the Internet. But when life got in the way and I started to miss those chats, when I couldn't keep up or commit my time, I lost a lot of support.

You start to become the 'mental health' person in your social groups. Someone uses the word 'mental' or 'depressing' in a conversation and all eyes turn to you to see how you're going to react.

I remember when my boyfriend and I first started dating. We had mutual friends in common and I was fearful that someone may have already told him about my mental illness before I was ready to myself (they did). I was scared he’d find my blog; an open chronicle of seven years of mental illness. I had made myself open and vulnerable by being so public.

It came up on our second date. He told me a friend had already mentioned the blog to him. I looked down at the table and tugged at my sleeves as I explained my mental illness to him. I wasn’t ready to talk about it yet. But thanks to my activism, I was forced to.

You make yourself vulnerable when you speak up about your mental health. Some days you get support and feel empowered.

Other times it feels like you’re constantly being attacked. Sometimes even media articles feel like a personal attack. They tell you not to take it personally, but it is personal. After years of relentlessly defending yourself, your own choices, your approach to activism and raising awareness, heck of even defending the fact that mental illness exists, you get exhausted. And I am tired. I am not always strong enough to be 'active'. Some days I have to put my own mental health first.
Some days are turning into most days.

Just like how I had hoped for a quick fix to my own mental illness, I thought there might be a quick fix to the stigma. I thought my activism would change things. But after fighting for so long, most of the time it feels like I haven't changed a thing.

As hard as it gets, as tired as it gets, you try to keep going. You don't want to give up, because there's a fight still ongoing. But boy is it draining. And one day there will a come a day when my own mental health will have to come first.

Until next time,

Mental illness is not a scapegoat for murder

Yesterday's headlines were written to cause fear.

• Trump publicly blames mental illness for mass shootings.
• 'This is a mental health problem': Trump on the Texas shooting
• Trump’s right, this is a mental health issue
• Pat Robertson Blames Texas Shooting on Antidepressants

As if it wasn't enough to be petrified of immigrants and Muslims when people of colour commit mass murder, we are also reminded that mental illness is also a cause for fear. 

What we've learned from US shootings and attacks over the past few years is that the colour of the attacker's skin is important in deciding the causative factor and motivation. As soon as perpetrator of the Texas church shooting was named, mental illness was identified as the sole cause and reason for the mass shooting.

“I think that mental health is your problem here. We have a lot of mental health problems in our country, but this isn’t a gun situation.” - Donald Trump

The man has a history of domestic abuse, but as of yet there's been no proven history of mental health problems.

But once again, mental illness has been used as a scapegoat for murder. White men are not responsible for their crimes, an illness they may or not even have is. And as such, they cannot be held responsible for their actions in the same way people of colour are.

1 in 4 of us are currently experiencing a mental illness. 4 in 4 of us have mental health.
Are we all to be feared? Might we all be potential murderers? I am mentally ill, is my illness to blame for everything I do?

Studies have proven that people with mental health illnesses are no more likely to be violent than the general population. We are far more likely to harm ourselves than others.
People in every country have mental health problems, but yet no other country experiences mass shootings to the extent that America does.

Trump and his supporters are demonizing those suffering with mental health problems. We have becomes just another vulnerable group for them to attack and fear.

Trump's comments yesterday prove we are nowhere close to ending the stigma around mental illness. We have a long, long way to go.

Struggling but surviving

Mental health is a weird topic in the media. It hits the headlines when important people realise that services are underfunded and under-resourced. The mental health of celebrities is examined when they die by or threaten suicide. People's stories are told when they show signs of cures or recovery.

But what about the rest of us?

What about those of us who still struggle with mental illness? Those of us who are struggling but surviving?

It's hard to find an accurate depiction of what it's like to live with a mental illness in mainstream media. These are rare, but a notable example is Sunny Spells and Scattered Showers recurring features on Newstalk. But other than this, I don't know of any other.

Instead, the media cares about sensational headlines and details. They call murderers and terrorists mentally ill. They run documentaries about the dangers of anti-depressants. They make light of celebrity breakdowns for webpage hits. They love stats on suicide attempts, self-harm, the number of people waiting for an appointment, people contacting helplines.

If you read a newspaper, you'd presume that anyone with mental illness is 'off the rails'. They're a danger to themselves and others. They're all either in therapy and or on meds. 

You'd think it's okay to call people with mental health problems a 'nutjob', 'bonkers', 'psycho' and an endless list of other insults. 

Where's the day-to-day reality of mental illness? The accurate portrayal of more 'complex' illnesses like schizophrenia or anorexia?

Where's the personal struggles of not being able to afford to pay for private counselling?

Where's the people who pop out on their lunch break to see their psychiatrist?

Where's the fact that not everyone recovers, but also not everyone who doesn't recover spends their life on a psych ward?

Where's the evidence that tabloids, and people in general, are actually learning from the occasional personal stories they do share and putting that learning into practice?

The lack of realistic coverage in the media fuels the stigma around mental illness.

I want to hear about those who are living with mental illness. How are they surviving?

Perhaps this is why so many people struggling with their mental health have turned to blogging about it. There is an incredible amount of mental health bloggers out there. I've lost track! There are too many for me to even follow them all! It's a movement, it's moving, and it's brave. We want there to be an accurate depiction, a real voice out there. So many of us are dare to bare all online.

I'm angry at the media for what they continue to do to people like Sinead O'Connor. She should not be ridiculed. I'm angry that they don't care, on our worst days when care is what we need most.

I'm struggling but surviving. And when there's no fair representation in the media, it often feels like I'm doing it alone.

Until next time,

I’m over ‘get over it’

There are many terms that reinforce the stigma around mental health. And I’m sick of them. Every time you use an out-dated, offensive and utterly unhelpful remark it tells me that my mental illness isn't legitimate. 

Here are some of the worst offenders that I'm totally over.

“Get over it.”

If only it were that simple to abandon all worries, fears and insecurities... 

“Look on the bright side.”

Oh thanks hun, I’ll be sure to keep my anxiety-ridden negativity to myself in future.

“It’ll get better.”

Now that YOU say it, I suddenly believe it! Yes, it will get better, but when? How much longer do I have to feel like this? When will the pain finally end?

“It’s so depressing.”

No hun, depression isn’t an adjective. It’s an illness. And what you’re feeling right now, what you think is comparable to my illness, is not depression. Also said as "Everyone gets depressed/depression at some point."

“It’s all in your head.”

I know it’s in my head, which is why its so all-consuming and I can’t escape it.

“Maybe you should go back to therapy if it's that bad.”

Do you think it's that easy to walk into an appointment? Ever hear of waiting lists? Understaffing? Lack of resources? In an ideal world we'd all be in therapy, not just those of us who are struggling. 

“You’re getting worked up over nothing.”

This. Does. Not. Feel. Like. Nothing.

“You should try meditation.”

I've tried most things to help with mental health at this stage, including meditation. It doesn't work for me but sure, keep making helpful suggestions. Also filed under "You should try exercise/God/journaling and other countless tips."

“You shouldn't take medication for your depression.”

Seriously? What makes you think that you have a right to tell me how to manage my mental illness? Why are you trying to shame me for managing my mental illness?

“But you don't have that anymore, do you?”
Is there a time limit on mental illness I didn't know about? Am I meant to be recovered by now? Am I less of a person if I do still have it? Why do I now suddenly feel like a failure?

What unhelpful and insensitive phrases are you over when it comes to mental health? Have you got any to add to my list?

Is talking about mental health really ending the stigma?

We've been talking about mental health for years now.

It's in the media every day. Another personal story, another awareness campaign. It rarely ceases.
It's mainstream now. We’re all familiar with the term.
So what if many people still think it synonymous with mental illness? At least they know about mental health.

It's a cause that has ambassadors.

A-listers are revealing their eating disorders, medication, anxiety and depression in ever increasing numbers.
Amanda Seyfried. Katy Perry. Prince Harry.
They bring a sense of glamour to the usual discussions of mental health.

Even in Ireland it’s been on everyone’s tongues for the past number of years.
We have male sports stars and musicians speaking out specifically to encourage men to get talking about their mental health.
Conor Cusack. Philly McMahon. Bressie.

I've been blogging about mental health for just over three years. And I’ve lost count of the number of Irish mental health bloggers out there.

But is it enough? What has all this talk about mental health got us?
News reports continue to show that we aren't lowering suicide rates. People continue to feel alone, to not ask for help, to self-harm, to die by suicide.

People may be talking about mental health, but that doesn’t mean they care enough to provide it with adequate funding. Mental health services are under resourced. There are not enough of them, not enough staff, and certainly not enough beds. Waiting lists are growing because, while we are encouraging people to seek help for their mental health, we’re not ensuring that ‘the help’ is available to listen.

recent headlines

So are our conversations ending stigma? Are we saying the right things?

When a white man commits an act of terror, we’re told it’s motivated by mental health.  

When Ant McPartlin, one half of the UK’s most famous and award winning TV presenting duo, entered rehab for ‘depression and substance abuse’ he’s told to go get ‘real problems’. 

Britney Spears infamous breakdown in 2007 is still used a slur today. ‘I haven’t shaved my head yet’, said Katy Perry earlier this year. Because she may be mad, but at least she’s not that mad. 

Sinead O’Connor. Amanda Bynes. Kanye West. Their mental health battles are not taken seriously by the media because they don’t fit with our image of a celeb. They should be happy, rich and have it all. 

Sympathy isn’t our first response when we see mental illness. We question motives. Wonder if it’s attention seeking. Tell them their problems aren’t real issues like a physical illness is. There’s no arguing with the severity of a physical illness that you can see after all. 

Shops continue to use mental illness as a joke to sell products. From slogans on Urban Outfitters t-shirts to straitjacket Halloween costumes in Tesco, it takes public outrage rather than common sense to pull these products from stores.

Have we succeeded in anything? 

Personally?
Sure, I feel less alone seeing mental health in the media and social media. I think, “Great! Now people will understand that it’s real, I didn’t choose this.” 

But that’s not always the reality. I still hear comments reinforcing stigma, mainly regurgitating what the media spews out. I overhear lunchtime conversations saying 'people with mental illness are dangerous' and 'I wanted to hang myself'. 

If I ask myself that same question as a service user? Well, I still feel alone. I still don’t have access to the care that I need. I still don’t have professional support. If I have a relapse in the morning and find myself in a major depressive episode, I wouldn't know where to turn for help, or even if I ever would get help.

I also ask myself this question as another service user. Perhaps one with schizophrenia. Because unlike me with my diagnoses of anxiety and depression, people with schizophrenia don't see their mental illness openly addressed in the media. While there is greater understanding now of what depression actually is, the same level of coverage isn't given to other mental health problems. There is still a major misunderstanding that schizophrenia involves multiple personalities. The media aren't so quick to clear up these misunderstandings. 

So then, what next for mental health?

Sometimes it's hard not to feel like you're speaking into a vacuum. Especially when the media still play on stigma when it comes to celebrities and crime. Especially when politicians have yet to answer our cries for help.

But that should never mean we stop trying. Conversations around mental health have changed substantially in the past 10 years alone. Who's to say we won't break down more stigma in the next 10 months, yet alone years?
So never stop.
Even when you look around and see how far we have yet to go. Let that be your strength to carry on the war. 

Mental health in the workplace

I'm a 24 year old professional who works 9-5 in an office-based job. Sounds pretty boring, right?

I actually love my job, and I know I'm one of the few lucky enough to say that. I enjoy the challenges, the mundane everyday tasks, and often not knowing a new day will bring.

As someone who usually has extreme anxiety when facing the unknown, I'm surprisingly okay with the fast pace and level of uncertainty that comes with my job. Yes, you see I am also mentally ill.

Mental illness can present challenges in any environment, but it's something that it commonly tricky in the workplace. I have both friends and acquaintances who have personally faced stigma and discrimination at work due to their mental health. Some have been bullied and harassed due to their illness.

A study published today found that almost half of all people in Ireland's capital city would not want to work with someone who has a mental illness.Half of people surveyed would not want to work with ME. And let me tell you, they're missing out because I am darn good at my job.

Today I want to talk about me experiences with mental health in the workplace, and why I'm now succumbing to stigma and keeping my mental illness under wraps.

Over the past four years, I've been in a number of unpaid or low-paid internships, and part-time jobs. Mental health was a topic that would come up naturally. My CV and past experience is littered with mental health awareness campaigns and events, and I am proud to have been Chairperson of a mental health committee in my university. As a result, I've had job interviews where I told prospective line managers about my mental health mid-interview.

"What inspired you to gt involved in mental health campaigns?" "Well, I ended up getting involved in mental health awareness after my own mental breakdown..."

The topic was on the table. And if I felt that I needed to, I knew the way for paved for me to talk to my line manager about my mental health.

That's not to say I haven't faced stigma. I've sat around the lunch table with colleagues where I've had to listen to:
"Terrorists are all mentally ill. There's no other excuse."
"I always thought depression wasn't real; it's just something in your head."
"Donald Trump has to have a mental illness. All the signs are there."

There have been times where I felt confident enough to rebuff a throwaway comment about mental illness with fact and logic. But there have been other times where I've kept my head down and my mouth shut. Or where my personal experience of mental illness has been dismissed with some pseudo-science someone has read online.

But now that I'm in a 9-5 full-time job? I've kept my mental health relatively under wraps.
As an online advocate and offline mental health ambassador, I know I'm being a hypocrite. I know that I should wear my badge with pride and start the conversations required to end stigma. But life's not that simple. And stigma is real, and sometimes fear of this barrier is too high for me to breakdown. Sometimes remembering what people I know have faced and been put through for revealing their mental health in work causes me to fear the same stigma that I may have to deal with.

Like when filling out forms on my medical history before I could start my job. I sat staring at that form for at least ten minutes trying to decide whether I would admit my own diagnoses or current medication.
Where would this files live? Would my colleagues have access to this data? Could someone in HR look up my medical history and discuss it over lunch with another colleague? Would it be passed on to my managers?

Or when faced with another form for declaring your disability. Was my illness currently debilitating enough to be classified as a disability? What if it's not today but is tomorrow?

Here I am staring at paper and inflicting stigma on myself.
I have no reason to presume my workplace would be unsupportive. But I choose to hide. I feel safer this way. This is how I protect myself any possible future hurt.

This way, I don't have to have a comeback when someone makes a stupid, inaccurate comment about mental illness.
This way, I don't have to be the one explaining why not all terrorists are mentally ill.
This way, I don't have to defend my very diagnosis.

But here's what I will do. I will put some Green Ribbon posters up in my office and stick some green ribbons in the canteen. Because maybe someday I will feel ready to tell a co-worker why I got into this line of work. And I want them to be ready.

This May is Green Ribbon month. Wear a green ribbon and show that you are willing to talk about mental health and end the stigma.
Visit www.greenribbon.ie to find out more.

What's wrong with being mental?

 “OMG you were so mental last night.”“Traffic is mental.”“That new Donald Trump bill shows how mental he is.”“Did you see what she’s done now? Mental or what?”

Crazy, mental, insane, mad. These words are used as common descriptions of something negative. Something wild, unexpected, lack of self-control, not normal, a fault with someone’s mental health. Despite having connotations with straitjackets and asylums, they've become a part of everyday speech. But this isn't a good thing. Rather than normalising the language surrounding mental illness, the use of these words, and countless others like them, continue to reinforce the popular idea that the surreal, odd, different and scary is associated with mental illness.

But today I’m taking particular disdain with mental.

No, your tidiness is not OCD. And no, feeling happy and then sad does not make you bipolar. And depression is not a feeling; it is a state of being.

And I’m sorry to make you check your dictionary, but calling everything unusual, or that differs to your view of society, ‘mental’ is also not okay.

What's so bad about mental?

The Oxford English Dictionary says:

UsageThe use of mental in compounds such as mental hospital and mental patient was the normal accepted term in the first half of the 20th century. It is now, however, regarded as old-fashioned, sometimes even offensive, and has been largely replaced by the term psychiatric in both general and official use

Bloomsbury's fourth edition of Tony Thorne's Dictionary of Contemporary Slang lists polar opposite meanings of "mental": first as "mentally ill, subnormal" and secondly as "exciting, dynamic, excellent". (Source) Subnormal but also excellent? Sign me up please!

Using the word 'mental' in your everyday speech to describe an event, an object, or a person shows your ignorance. Language is the foundation that stigma is built on. The way we speak about something shows our level of knowledge, interest and respect. When we talk about mental health, we don't mean exciting health. Boy, I wish we did. It means the health of your mind, your emotional wellbeing, and everything that comes with it - your thought processes, feelings, acts and thoughts.

I have always shunned away from and dissociated myself from the word ‘mental’. Its societal connotations are profoundly negative: I’m crazy, bad, other, ‘not normal’, insane, a risk, dangerous, ill.

But maybe it’s time we embrace the term? Rather than hear it as an insult, could it be reclaimed, like how the LGBT community reclaimed the slur ‘queer’. The long history of abuse experienced by the LGBT community has been synonymised with this one word.
In many ways, mental has become synonymised with the history of mental illness and confining the people we deem ‘different’. We need to start thinking about how to take back ‘mental’.

This is what 'mental' looks like

This is what mental looks like. A 24 year old Irish woman with a full-time job who also has depression and anxiety. I like books and selfies and facts. I watch a lot of TV and love the outdoors. I have four pets. I have bad days and I have good days. I have more good days than bad, thank god. But it hasn’t always been this way. I take medication every day.
I know that 100 years ago I probably would have been committed to a mental hospital and deemed 'mental', and that’s okay. It's okay because it means society has more acceptance for mental illness now, albeit limited acceptance, and that’s progress.

You see, I’ve been mental for as long as I remember. I've never felt 'normal'. It's not a bad thing, it doesn't make me scary or dangerous. In fact, being 'mental' is what's normal for me.

Things people have REALLY said about my mental health

I didn’t really know what stigma was until I started volunteering for See Change, the national organisation for stigma reduction. Up until that point I would have told you that my mental health was accepted, I was lucky and I hadn’t experienced any stigma.  But we grow up in a society where the word ‘crazy’ is thrown about to describe reckless behaviour, emotional exes, and celebrity breakdowns. We can easily grow accustomed to behaviours of stigma as they’ve become so commonplace.
And little did I know, but I was oblivious to the stigma I had faced for years.

While the vast majority of people have been supportive and kind, it's the harsh words and dismissive comments that often stay with us for longer.

Here’s a look at some of the things people have really said to me when I tried to talk to them about my mental health;

'We all feel like that from time to time, it will pass'
The context: I told someone I was feeling suicidal.
Why it’s wrong: This response refuses to acknowledge the very serious thoughts of suicidal ideation. It’s like saying my feelings and my urge to die was not important. It is so dangerous to ignore or shrug off any suicidal thoughts.

‘You’re okay. You’ll be fine.’
The context: I was scared and crying down the phone to a friend.
Why it’s wrong: Did I sound okay? I felt so far away from ‘fine’ at that point in time, and their shut down made me refuse to talk to anyone else about my low mood for weeks. If someone tries to start a conversation to you about their mental health, listen to them.

‘Were you an emo as a teenager?’
The context: I said I felt lonely, and that no one ever wanted to hang out with me.
Why it’s wrong: Where do I start? There is a terrible presumption that teenagers who look a certain way must be depressed. It’s horrible and offensive. I never would have identified myself as ‘emo’, but here I was being told I must have been if I was feeling lonely.

‘You’re attention seeking.’
The context: I said I was worried I might have Bipolar Personality Disorder.
Why it’s wrong: Any attempt by someone to reach out for help and question their mental health should be encouraged and supported. Mental illness isn’t fashionable, and those who try to self diagnose should be encouraged to seek professional help, not made to feel as if they made it up to gain notoriety.

‘Stop feeling sorry for yourself.’
The context: Honestly, I think I was just skulking around the place as I generally do.
Why it’s wrong: If there was a magic button to press so I would stop looking miserable, then don’t you think I’d press it? Faking a smile doesn’t come easy to me; so when I’m down I can’t really hide it. But depression is about so much more than feeling sorry for yourself.

‘You’re imagining it.’
The context: I thought somebody hated me; in fact I was sure I’d heard them call me ‘crazy’.
Why it’s wrong: Paranoia often accompanies a lot of different mental health issues. I remember thinking that people who looked at me when I was walking down the street hated me. I thought people knew I was worthless just by my presence, or lack thereof. But the other side of this is stigma. Stigma is alive and well, and I do still believe that I was called crazy because I remember distinctly hearing it!

‘Things could be worse.’
The context: I get this one a lot, in fact, I know I’ve also said it a few times too.
Why it’s wrong: No shit Sherlock. I actually spend most of my time worrying about what could go wrong and how much worse things could be. That comes with generalized anxiety. But knowing this doesn’t make my immediate feelings anymore muted. For a long time I felt so selfish for being depressed as I knew there were people who had it worse than I did. My mind continued to torture me irregardless.

Please think twice before dismissing someone's mental health. It takes a lot of courage for someone to begin the conversation and seek help. Don't be so quick to dismiss them.

And think before you speak. You can't take it back. Your words can be more damaging than you can ever imagine.