THE RED FLAGS IN COMMUNICATION AROUND MENTAL HEALTH | IN COLLABORATION WITH NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE HOSPITALS NHS FOUNDATION TRUST | TIME TO TALK DAY 2024

This post is in collaboration with the Newcastle Upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (NUTH) who I’m helping and supporting in their creation of a Trust-wide Mental Health Strategy (which I’ve previously blogged about here, here, here, here, and here). Together, we’re marking Time To Talk Day 2024 which is a date where everyone is encouraged to talk more about mental health in the hope that it will tackle the discrimination and stigma held against the topic and that, in doing so, it will also improve the help and support that is offered or available for those who might be struggling with their mental health. We’ve decided to utilise the fact that whilst there is – rightly – so much content around encouraging conversations, there are too few pieces around the importance of recognising when a communication around mental health needs to be reconsidered whether by terminating it completely or changing the route it seems to be taking – something which is as equally important as starting a chat. Thankfully and admirably, it’s also something NUTH recognises to be an essential component to their upcoming Mental Health Strategy…

RELATING MY RECENT RELAPSE TO A DRAMATIC SCREAM QUEENS QUOTE | IN COLLABORATION WITH DISNEY PLUS UK

This post is in collaboration with Disney + who are currently streaming two seasons of Scream Queens, which is described by Disney as being ‘… a genre-blending comedy-horror anthology series… The first instalment revolves around a college campus which is rocked by a series of murders.’ Does it sound like your cup of tea?

You can stream it now:

Watch Scream Queens | Full episodes | Disney+ (disneyplus.com)

WHEN THEY SAY SUICIDE IS ‘SILLY’

You, with your voice like nails on a chalkboard

Calling me out when I’m wounded

You, pickin’ on the weaker man…

And all you’re ever gonna be is mean

Taylor Swift - Mean

So, a few days ago I was in a mental health crisis and there was a Policeman who…well, let’s just say I’ve put a lengthy complaint in and have been told mine isn’t the first against him. Anyway, he made a number of discriminatory comments around mental health and a few very personal ones specifically about me, but the one which stuck out and which seemed to fuel everything else was when he referred to suicide as ‘something silly…’

THE IMPORTANCE OF RESPONSIBILITY

My immediate response to the comment was to tell him that he ‘really shouldn’t use a word like that to refer to something so serious.’ Of course there was no apology. No hands up to say “yes, ok. I was wrong, I’m sorry.”

Now, I don’t know about anyone else, but I hold apologies quite highly in considerations around respecting and appreciating someone or an organisation on a whole. I think this stems from all the years of Crisis teams telling me to take responsibility for my own safety and then trauma therapy and Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) encouraging you to view your behaviours as a chosen response.

Initially that was a hard thought process because who ‘chooses’ to self-harm? But I learnt and realised that it was more about the fundamentals of the situation. You know? Like, if someone touched your skin with fire, you’d burn. If someone touched your skin with fire and you punched them in the face(!)… Well, you could argue that a level of that was instinctual, but it wasn’t something which everyone would do. And recognising that I’m responding to something because of something inside of me and not looking to blame another person who arguably, might have at the very least stoked the fire, was just one key to my recovery. 

EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT WASTING TIME IN MENTAL HEALTH

It might still be a few months off, but I feel like my Thirtieth Birthday is looming and with it, my need to justify what I’ve achieved so far in my life. And it’s inspired this post…

Back in 2007 – when the abuse had just ‘ended’ – I had wanted to work in Law so that I could help others get justice for when they had been wronged. I think I was so passionate and eager to give a voice to those who deserved it, when I felt as though mine had been silenced for the past year. I wanted for others to feel that those who’d hurt and upset them in some way, had gotten the consequences and punishment that they deserved because for so many reasons, my abuser never did.

After my mental health deteriorated during my exams at School, I lost the opportunity to study Law at University and instead, found passion to go into Childcare. I guess that again, I was projecting my own experiences and harnessing them as motivation to work in a particular industry. My thinking behind Childcare was that I wanted to promote that children have a similar, innocent childhood to my own, but that they were also aware of all the things that I hadn’t been; and which hit me like a ton of bricks when I finally experienced them.

Again, though, my mental health prevented me from taking this aspiration any further and before long I was spending the following three years in and out of both medical and psychiatric hospitals worrying that I was wasting everyone’s time. This concern didn’t just come from my own thinking though, I was told this was the case by Police Officers and A&E staff. I think that from the Police force’s view, they were there to fight crime, catch perpetrators, and protect victims; and not to sit for hours on end with someone who was in a mental health crisis. But their legal obligation to have a duty of care for everyone, their powers under section 136 of the 1983 Mental Health Act, and the fact that mental health services are operating on a very low budget with a limited amount of staff has meant that they’ve become somewhat responsible for helping and supporting someone in a mental health crisis. Of course, they aren’t the ‘best’ or the ‘right’ people to do this job and I think that maybe those feelings of inadequacy led to a lot of frustration for Officers who also felt that this wasn’t what they had expected in joining the Police. Inevitably, the frustration was taken out on the nearest person and that person was often me. Except, because I was in crisis, I couldn’t understand or appreciate their side of things and to me, they were just being rude, insulting, and unfair in saying I was wasting their time.

TIME TO TALK DAY 2020

https://www.time-to-change.org.uk/get-involved/time-talk-day

This year, for Time To Talk Day I’ll be celebrating my Mum’s Birthday so I’ve had to reject all of the event invitations for the day and decided instead to schedule this post in advance so that I can really dedicate my day to my Mum!


Note: For 2020’s Time To Talk Day, Time To Change have chosen to base the theme around the popular game; ‘Would You Rather?’ so this blog post will be in keeping with that…


Would You Rather is a bit of a controversial topic in mental health I think because a lot of people are very – and rightly so – defensive of their actions and decisions where mental health is concerned and particularly where self-harm is involved. I guess that a lot of that comes from the feeling that self-harm isn’t very often a ‘decision’ because it can sound as though a person is choosing to self-harm rather than feeling that it isn’t an option. Of course, if it were, then they wouldn’t choose self-harm and all of the negative consequences that come from it! Another reasoning for some finding the idea of mental health being a choice is the thought of what has led them to be struggling the way that they are. For me, if I could have made any decisions around the trauma, I went through which triggered my ill mental health, then I would have most definitely opted to have not experienced any of it! Or would I?! And here’s where Would You Rather comes in!

DEAR SERVICES, DO YOU KNOW THE POWER OF YOUR WORDS? | "DO YOU KNOW WHAT FEIGNED MEANS?"

Can’t you forgive me?

At least just temporarily

I know that this is my fault

I should have been more careful

Ariana Grande – One Last Time

These last two weeks have been so chaotic that I’m completely lost as to what has happened when because I’ve self-harmed so many times but on each of my hospitalizations (I think I’m on about four now) something has happened to inspire this post. 


On one of my hospital stays everything had been going well – I was telling staff when I was struggling, co-operating with the treatment for the overdose I’d taken, and keeping myself safe whilst I was in the Hospital. Then a Nurse – who I’ve met and had a similar dealing with before – made a comment about me ‘wasting a bed’ because she said that it was my own fault I was there. This comment – her words and attitude – saw me refusing the final blood tests and discharging myself. On my way out, I considered not telling the Sister and Doctor what she had said because I was a bit ashamed to admit that I’d let her comment get to me and a part of me always thinks ‘if you’re going to be open and honest about your mental health then you have to expect at least one response like that.’ Of course, it shouldn’t be that way; but the reality of mental health is that there are still people who hold that stigma and prejudice against those who are battling against it. I think that there’ll have to be a time when we recognize that no matter how many people - and how many followers they have – join the fight, we most likely can’t change the world.