HOW TRAINING, EDUCATION, & RESEARCH HELPED ME TO PREPARE TO WORK AT A HUGE NHS EVENT

"Good fortune is what happens when opportunity meets with planning."

Thomas Edison

On a bi-monthly basis, Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust (CNTW), host a Service User and Carer Reference Group (which you can read more about on their website; here). For October’s, I attended as a Lived Experience Reporter for the first time and with the idea that I’m NOT Disordered probably has hundreds of readers who attend big events, I have put together this blog post, where I’ll talk through all the ways – emotional and practical – in which I’ve prepared for this NHS event, as well as some advice…

5 THINGS THEY DON’T TELL YOU ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH

“Words can break someone into a million pieces, but they can also put them back together.”

Taylor Swift

Having recently experienced a relapse in my mental health journey (you can read more about it at its very worst in this blog post: TW | “SHE’S ACTUALLY JUMPED! GET AMBULANCE ON LIGHTS & SIREN!” | WHAT HAPPENS BEFORE, DURING, & AFTER YOU JUMP, LESSONS LEARNT, & LOTS OF ADVICE | I'm NOT Disordered), I’m finally in a much better and safer place mentally and, a few days ago (at the time of writing) I was discharged from the caseload of my local Crisis Team. The entire relapse really brought home the fact that professionals tend to miss out or skirt over the fact that recovery isn’t linear and so, they’re often promoting this idea of once you’re in recovery that’s it; you’re better forever. When this simply isn’t true, and – I feel – it does more harm to not prepare someone to still need to face difficult days. So, with this in mind, I was inspired to write this blog post about other things professionals leave unsaid about mental health…

EVERYTHING BLOGGING HAS DONE TO ME | CELEBRATING TWO AND A HALF MILLION READERS!!!

"What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals."

Zig Ziglar

In a recent career opportunity, I found myself having a lot of moments where I was thinking ‘I know that because of my blogging’ or ‘I learnt how to do that through blogging!’ And it is these moments and in celebration of I’m NOT Disordered reaching two and a half million readers, which have inspired this blog post where I’m going to chat through all the influences and the ways in which blogging has impacted me and changed my life…

TW | EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT BEING UNDER THE CARE OF THE CRISIS TEAM | PART THREE OF THREE

*This is Part Three of Three, you can read Part One here, and Part Two is here!*

So, if you’re put on caseload, almost from the offset, the Team will want to try to work with you to create some sort of plan – this can refer to a regime around changes they may want to make to your medication, the number of visits they want to offer you, and even when they think they can foresee your discharge from them as being. This – the bit about discharge – can seem counterintuitive when you’ve just been put on caseload, and you can often and understandably get the feeling that they’re already trying to ‘get rid’ of you! But that’s not why they do this.

TW | EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT BEING UNDER THE CARE OF THE CRISIS TEAM | PART TWO OF THREE

*This is Part Two of Three, you can read Part One here!*