LAUNCHING NTW'S ADULT MENTAL HEALTH NETWORK | AD

Another Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust (NTW) event!

The run up to this one was a little bit… well the staff called it ‘woolly.’ Apparently, that was on purpose because the entire event was to launch the brand-new Adult Mental Health Network and with it being such a unique and one-of-a-kind venture, there’s no real model or guide on what it should look like.

The launch event centred around bringing together a huge variety of people from a selection of charities and organisations what ranged from Age UK to Carers Northumberland to representatives of the RESPOND training. Immediately, the atmosphere was incredible – you get so many events where people are there because their manager has asked them to be and you can feel a reluctance and pressure there… At this event though, there was a clear feeling of everyone being there because they wanted to and that they actually wanted to learn.

WALK SIX MILES IN MY HEELS | AGE UK | AD

Two days ago, (July 11th) I was kindly invited to go on a trip with Age UK. They planned a walk through Teesdale Forest and along to the incredible High Force and Low Force waterfalls with a group of around thirty avid walkers and explorers.

A couple of things happened while we were there that inspired this post; the first was when one of the staff pointed to one of my recent, red, keloid, self-harm scars and said “what’ve you been doing? Did you scratch yourself on a tree?” I get that the scars were quite red and perhaps at a glance they appeared to be fresh, sore, scratches but never the less, I was put in an awkward position. When I recently cut my hand and needed stitches I had to tell a lot of lies to a lot of people who asked how I’d done it and I think I was just tired and – to be honest – a little bit ashamed to lie again. I mean I’m one of the people promoting that we talk more about mental health, yet I still resort to lies around my self-harm. So, I replied with “oh! I have mental health problems.” The lady quickly apologised and changed the subject – which I was grateful for.

HOW EDUCATION HAS AFFECTED MY MENTAL HEALTH | FUTURE LEARN | AD

I’m honoured to announce that this post is in collaboration with Future Learn.

At school I excelled at English – from a young age I’d enjoyed writing (granted, back then it was for writing short stories on having my own horse) and one of my Middle School teachers predicted that I’d end up being a Journalist. But from as young as I can remember; we were taught at school that we do our GCSEs in High School, stay on for Sixth Form to sit our A Levels, and go to University to get a degree to get a job. We were never taught about Apprenticeships or alternative qualifications like Access to HE, BTEC, and vocational qualifications.

APPEARING ON KOAST RADIO (106.6 FM) | AD

On Tuesday July 3^rd I’ll be paying a visit to the Koast radio station! Tune in to find out more – 1pm on 106.6 FM!

Follow Koast Radio on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/KoastRadio

FROM CUTS TO CARLISLE | HOW I CHANGED MY MENTAL HEALTH AROUND IN WEEK

*Note: This post contains talk of self-harm*

Last Friday (15^th June) I had a complete mental health crisis in the form of two dissociative episodes within hours of one another.

One minute I was at home watching Netflix and the next thing I knew I was staring at a huge cut in the palm of my hand, blood dripping from it and covering the floor; which was littered in pieces of a broken cup. I still can’t for certain that I smashed the cup on purpose and cut myself but since I’ve done that in the past it seems like the logical explanation(!) I think that the only thing stopping me from accepting that as the case is the fear that comes with it. If I’m capable of completely switching off from the world and self-harming without knowing it, then what the hell else am I capable of doing?!