Mental Health Awareness Week 2019

I’m running a little late at the moment as mental health awareness week, but if you really think about it, every day is a mental health awareness day when you live with these difficulties in your life.

I know so many people in my life who struggle with mental health issues and sadly, many of these people have been struggling since their early teens and have been living with it every day for all these years, fighting their battles silently.

I know a girl who started college again this year despite her health issues, but it’s taken so much and so long to get her to this point. It's her third try at college but she has never given up and she has been getting better at getting herself to this goal and I can't be more proud of her than I am right now.

Anyone living with mental health difficulties knows the struggle, it's depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, dissociation & dissociative identity disorder, eating disorders, personality disorder and many more.

Personally, I struggle with depression and some day's I’m fine, I’m not happy but I’m fine. I still laugh and smile if something makes me smile but it's when something hits you, it could be someone putting you down for something you did, or you are putting yourself down because you don’t think you did good enough. It puts you in this void, where it feels like everything around you is not real; you don’t feel anything, you want to speak but at the same time you have not got any energy to. Then you have the horrid morning when you wake up feeling that way I just explained, so you have to fight against it. It seems so impossible to fight against it, but you have to, to survive, otherwise you end up staying in bed all day or sleeping all day and sometimes it will just make you sink lower and lower into this void around you. There is so much more I can speak about depression but there’s not enough time in the world.

Whatever demon you are fighting, you are never alone in this journey, there are hundreds or even thousands of people from a huge range of ages going thought the same tunnel and the same journey as you, they know the feeling of giving up, but they also know the feeling of the fresh air at the end of the tunnel.

Talking to people you trust with how you feel and getting yourself a support partner can help. A support partner is someone you will call when you feel the tunnel getting narrower and you feel like you can’t do it anymore. They will be the person you will trust with your life and they will be the person who will get you on your feet and help carry you until you feel strong enough to walk again on your own. A support person can be a family member, a friend, a therapist, or just anyone you feel you can trust and it doesn’t have to stay the same person, I know myself have had at least 5 in the 6 years I been suffering from depression.

Remember, there are always people out there who want to help you.

Here are a few support lines:

• Under 19, Childline Anxiety UK
• iTalk Bipolar UK
• CAMHS
• CALM (for men 15 years and up)
• Samaritans
• Social worker No Panic (OCD)
• Foster carers HOPElineUK (young person suicide prevention)
• Rethink Mental Illness
• YoungMinds

Young minds can give information on children and adolescent mental health. This may help social workers or foster parents who may need or want to know more about what they can do to help a child or teen in their care with their mental health.

• Phone: Parents' helpline 0808 802 5544 (Monday to Friday, 9.30 am to 4 pm)
• Website: www.youngminds.org.uk.

I hope this has helped in some form and can get you to the people who will help you on to your road to recovery.