“If
you want to get positive results you have to refuse to think negative thoughts
by substituting them with constructive ones. When you develop a positive
attitude toward life, your life will start having a positive result.”
Roy
T. Bennett
Mental Health Awareness Week (MHAW) kind of came out of nowhere for me this year and it was literally just on the 6th May that I spotted it as a post on the Mind Instagram account (@MindCharity with the specific post I’m referring to being this one!)! So, I managed to find the theme this year is ‘Take Action’, and I worked that into seven blog posts with this first one being the launch for the Series, the following five each being a different thing that can be important to your mental health that you can take action with, and the seventh being a re-cap. I hope the content this Week is somewhat up to scratch for you all despite my lack of preparation and creation time(!), now let’s kick things off with more on MHAW and why both the Week and this Series, matter…
The Importance of MHAW
Mental Health Awareness Week was actually created
by the Mental Health Foundation in 2001 and has always maintained the ultimate
goal of ‘increasing the public understanding of mental health.’ Each year, the Foundation
set both the dates (though it is always in May) and theme of the Week (you can
read more about MHAW and view some of the previous themes in recent years, here:
About
Mental Health Awareness Week | Mental Health Foundation). The Foundation
also recognises that the Week has ‘contributed to government policy changes’
and that it also provides a date when UK mental health charities can really put
a focus on their fundraising efforts to support their vital campaigns, work,
and the services they provide such as free helplines and various types of supportive
accommodation initiatives.
What ‘Taking Action’ Means to Me
For me, my experience around ‘taking action’ in
reference to my mental health begins with my trauma which started November 20th,
2006, when I was just 15 years old. On that date, after two or three weeks of
sheer manipulative and ingenuine acts of ‘support’ and ‘empathy,’ a person who
was in a position of trust and power in my life, abused their position and
began sexually abusing me. And in all honesty, it was almost immediately that I
felt like I could think of one million and one reasons why I couldn’t instantly
report it – to neither any of my loved ones, my friends, the professionals in
my life, nor the Police.
The largest of these reasons did, however, not come
through until around one month after it begun and it was my abuser’s assurances
that he would deny it and that I would never be believed. Regardless of the
fact that I couldn’t report it, I was still desperate for people to know so
that it could be stopped – because I’d established (especially by that time)
that there was nothing I could do to end it – so rather than tell them, I tried
to show them that something was wrong. I thought that if I began ‘acting out’
at least one person would sit up and say; “this isn’t like Aimee, I wonder what’s
wrong.” But they didn’t, and because of my poor behaviour – particularly at
School – I believed my abuser and recognised that he was 100% right; I would be
seen as a ‘trouble-maker’ or ‘attention-seeker.’ He was massively respected and
admired, not even just by his colleagues, but by my peers too! And this actually
also really added to how completely alone I felt.
As a result of this trauma – which came to a head
with one instance of rape and me finally reporting the abuse to my abuser’s
employer… who branded me a ‘manipulative liar’ and banned me from the building
before putting a ton of terms and conditions on me with all of them massively
affecting my education – I ended up beginning to experience auditory hallucinations
two years later. It was after two years of desperately trying to cope with the
memories in various ways that ranged from drinking alcohol excessively to
restricting my diet and over-exercising and throwing myself into my schoolwork as
I went on to study my A Levels at a different School to that which my abuser impacted
and had a level of authority in.
As a result of the stigma around mental illness at
that time (2009) and the horror stories I’d heard about my local psychiatric
hospital, I didn’t tell anyone about the voices for ten days. Finally, they had
become almost constant, and I found myself so desperate for relief and escape from
them that I made my first suicide attempt via an overdose of prescription painkillers.
With everyone’s shock and horror at the attempt and absolutely no one having
any idea why I would do it, after trying to run away from A&E, I was
detained by the Police under section 136 of the 1983 Mental Health Act and at
my Act assessment, this was enhanced to a section 2 of the Act. This meant the medical
hospital staff could restrain and sedate me when I refused the life-saving
treatment for the overdose, and that after finishing it, I could be transferred
to a local – though not my nearest – psychiatric hospital.
Now, to me, these two instances – the traumatic
abuse and the start of my mental illness – and my inaction in the beginning of
both, are key moments that truly define, to me, just how fundamental ‘taking
action’ can be to protecting your safety and your own physical and emotional
wellbeing. If I’d reported the abuse as soon as possible, it might not have continued
for months and it might not have exacerbated and turned into one instance of
rape. It also might have meant that my mental health was somewhat protected and
that I was safe from hurting myself in any way. ‘Taking action’ could have
saved me from so many horrible moments and experiences and also from so many
difficult thoughts and feelings.
If you’re ready to take action with your mental
health, please visit the Help Directory for contact details of charities and
organisations in a variety of different methods: Help Directory
Top 4 Purposes for This Series
1. To
provide brand-new resources to help others with their mental health.
2. To
raise awareness of mental illness generally and eradicate the stigma.
3. Publicity
for MHAW and the Mental Health Foundation for creating it.
4. The
opportunity to practice my skills – and maybe even learn new ones(!) – on Canva.
The Content Plan
As I said earlier, each day from tomorrow until Sunday
(the 17th) will be a different topic or aspect in life that being
aware of, could benefit your mental health. So, here are the five I’ve chosen
and why I picked them…
1.
Your
Support System
My Mum, Step-Dad, three best-friends (Jack,
Spencer, and Martin), and Recovery Workers from Waythrough have all been
monumental in my life and absolutely 100% fundamental to my recovery.
2.
Your
Experiences
This one was inspired by my point earlier about not
acting on the abuse and rape because it made me recognise that doing so, could
have done wonders for my mental health.
3.
Your
Challenges
This felt almost like a no-brainer though I
recognise that it might, initially, sound very similar to ‘your experiences,’ but
this day will be all about specific emotional wellbeing/mental illness
challenges.
4.
Your
Coping Skills
I feel like being able to identify your coping
skills – which you might not always be able to do – can be instrumental in
taking action and utilising healthy and safe methods to cope.
5.
Your
Positives
Finally, I wanted to really end on a bit of a high
note and put some focus, effort, and time into thinking about all the positive
things in your life – no matter how ‘small’ or ‘insignificant’ they may seem.
Stay
Tuned for Day Two…