WHAT ABOUT US? | TIPS FOR ALL THE MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES WHO ARE FAILING US

Oh, what about us?
What about all the plans that ended in disaster?
What about love? What about trust?
What about us?

P!nk: What About Us

Over six years ago, I actually wrote a blog post of a similar theme and inspired by the exact same song (P!nk: What About Us – which you can listen to here) that led to this post too (you can read that post here), so I was in two minds as to publishing this. Eventually, however, I recognised that there has been a huge increase in the blog’s readership since then, and so it’s incredibly likely that there’ll be a lot of people out there who actually haven’t seen, heard of, or read that piece. I also realised that I have a lot of new ideas and experience on this topic, so it’s likely not going to be much of a repeat at all...

DAY FIVE MHAW | HOW MY LOCAL NHS MENTAL HEALTH TRUST ARE TACKLING ‘COMMUNITY’ WITH AN ‘INVOLVEMENT BANK’ | MENTAL HEALTH AWARENESS WEEK 2025 WITH CUMBRIA, NORTHUMBERLAND, TYNE & WEAR NHS FOUNDATION TRUST

The Involvement Bank - Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust

“Coming together is a beginning, keeping together is progress, working together is success.”

Henry Ford

I can’t believe Mental Health Awareness Week (MHAW) 2025 is almost at an end; with today being the penultimate piece of content for the Week! Today’s post is in collaboration with my local NHS mental health Trust; Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust (CNTW) and we’ll be looking at the largest points of discussion around this Week’s theme of ‘community’ in particular relation though, to the Trust’s genius creation and incredible operation of their Involvement Bank…

MY JOURNEY FACILITATING TRAINING IN MENTAL HEALTH WITH ADVICE TO HELP YOU DO IT TOO!!! | LAUNCHING UNDERSTAND WITH IND

“The great aim of education is not knowledge, but action.”

Herbert Spencer

A number of years ago, I was asked to co-facilitate mental health training for the new recruits of my local Police force (Northumbria Police) in partnership with Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust (CNTW). It was my first experience of doing something like that, but it remains one of the most enjoyable, influential, and educational opportunities I’ve ever had in the entirety of my blogging career! So, since then, I’ve gone to take on a number of additional, similar commitments and with those experiences and a recent decision in mind, I have created Understand with IND and its five Training Programmes. To launch it and acknowledge its feature in the brand-new pages on I’m NOT Disordered, I’ve put together this piece which is full of accounts of my experiences in facilitating training around mental health as well as things I’ve learnt from them, and advice I would give to budding facilitators…

EVERYTHING THAT WENT INTO CREATING A SERVICE USER APPROVED MENTAL HEALTH STRATEGY | IN COLLABORATION WITH THE NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE HOSPITALS NHS FOUNDATION TRUST

“Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.”

Andrew Carnegie

In 2021, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) conducted a mental health themed review in acute settings. From this review, CQC made three massive recommendations: that mental health care in acute settings should meet nationally recognised standards and that acute staff should have the training to feel confident in meeting mental health needs as well as being able to support their own wellbeing. Then, the third recommendation was that acute Trusts should have a Mental Health Strategy that has board level oversight and clear governance over administration and monitoring of the Mental Health Act. And so, NUTH set about creating a Trust-wide Mental Health Strategy, and almost immediately, they knew that including service users would be incredibly useful to the creation of the Strategy. I was honoured to be chosen to be in the ‘Expert Refence Group.’ This collaboration post will celebrate today’s official, internal launch of their Strategy by sharing my thoughts on all the steps NUTH staff have taken to ensure that it is service user approved. I do this, with the sincere hope that the Trust’s service user approved Mental Health Strategy will inspire others to adopt a similar approach in their Strategy creation processes as well as perhaps developing ideas to take even more action around mental health within their own organisation…

AN INSIDE LOOK AT CREATING A MENTAL HEALTH STRATEGY FOR AN NHS TRUST | IN COLLABORATION WITH NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE HOSPITALS NHS FOUNDATION TRUST | WORLD HEALTH DAY 2024

“The individual who says it is not possible should move out of the way of those doing it.”

Tricia Cunningham

Newcastle Hospitals (@newcastlehosps) • Instagram photos and videos

Newcastle Hospitals (@NewcastleHosps) / X (twitter.com)

Newcastle Hospitals (@NewcastleHosps) | Facebook

Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (newcastle-hospitals.nhs.uk)

Having been a blogger for over eleven years now, there have honestly been so many instances where I’ve found myself genuinely shocked and pleasantly surprised. These have varied from reaching reader milestones to being gifted items or complimentary experiences to being asked to give speeches at events. Also, in that list of shocking things has been landing collaborations with huge organisations such as Newcastle Upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (NUTH)! Prior to the opportunity came up to help create and develop the Trust’s new Mental Health Strategy, it had honestly always – literally since Day One of my blogging career! – been a goal of mine to work with NUTH! I was surprised again when, after hearing about I’m NOT Disordered, the Trust asked me to also write some blog posts. So, as the Strategy is finalised this month – and because of it being World Health Day and the theme this year is ‘My Health, My Right’ – it was almost natural and automatic to write a blog post with some of the feedback NUTH’s Patient Experience team asked me and my fellow members of the Strategy’s Expert Reference Group to provide…

ALL MY CURRENT THOUGHTS & FEELINGS AFTER TWO MASSIVE FAILINGS BY THE CRISIS TEAM

A lot has gone on recently in my mental health journey, and as I came to recognise that I hadn’t posted any new content in over one week and started trying to think of what to blog about, I realised that it’s been a long time since I’ve talked about recent goings on! Like, I feel as though a lot of my most recent posts have largely been collaborations and reflective, regarding advice I’d give or things I’ve learnt rather than what’s actually currently happening in my life. And now that a number of pretty big things have happened this past week, I felt inspired and – to be honest – compelled to blog about them. I really want for this post to take I’m NOT Disordered back to its very roots in the fact that it was created to blog about my mental health and what was happening for me in the psychiatric hospital I was an inpatient in at the time, and I don’t want the very valid fact that blogging is (still) therapeutic for me, to get lost among adverts, awareness dates, freebies, events, and complimentary experiences…

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…

AN INTERRUPTION TO BLOGMAS UNBOXED | TW: DISCUSSION OF SUICIDE

I honestly can’t believe what I’m about to blog about… I mean, it happened over a week ago, but it still feels surreal. And I still find it extremely difficult to actually even just say the words because they continue to feel dramatic and unbelievable. I mean, a little while after I first became poorly – and right around the time I was given the Personality Disorder diagnosis! – I was labelled an attention-seeker and dramatic countless times by mental health professionals. And in all honesty, the sentence I’m about to say feels like I’m fulfilling all those remarks… In the early hours of Friday 8^th December 2023, I jumped from a bridge…

EVERYTHING I’M LEARNING FROM MY WORK WITH NEWCASTLE HOSPITALS ON THEIR MENTAL HEALTH STRATEGY | IN COLLABORATION WITH NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE HOSPITALS NHS FOUNDATION TRUST

Since the Involvement Bank of Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust (CNTW) advertised the opportunity on behalf of Newcastle Hospitals for its members to become involved in the development of their mental health strategy, I’ve been working alongside some of the most amazing NHS staff I have ever come across (namely Gemma and Fardeen)! And having created a post a while ago about my journey with the Trust (which you can read here), I thought I’d follow it up with this chat about everything I’m learning on this productive and inspirational journey to create a mental health strategy that genuinely has the Trust’s patients at the very heart of it…

If you’ve been reading, I’m NOT Disordered for a little while then you’ll probably know – or have noticed – that I’m very fond of creating collaborations with various organisations, charities, companies, and brands. My passion for this kind of content mostly stems from both the incredible opportunities or gifted experiences/products I’m offered, and from the idea that my blog is of a standing in the industry where being mentioned or featured on it, can be beneficial – in so many ways – for others. I feel that this says a lot about the standard of my posts, the popularity of my blog, and its examples and illustrations of the various definitions of the term ‘successful.’

WHY THERE’S DIFFERENT ANXIETY WITH DIFFERENT SERVICES | MENTAL HEALTH AWARENESS WEEK 2023 | IN COLLABORATION WITH CUMBRIA, NORTHUMBERLAND, TYNE & WEAR NHS FOUNDATION TRUST

This post is aimed at really highlighting the chosen theme for this year’s Mental Health Awareness Week; Anxiety and talking about how this can look different depending upon the situation and those involved e.g., my anxiety in seeing the Crisis Team can be completely different to that which I experience in speaking to inpatient/ward staff. As a result of the fact I’ll be concentrating on each of the NHS mental health services who were involved in my recent relapse/admission, I thought I’d collaborate with the Trust providing all of them: Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust (CNTW). And so, throughout the post there’s information on each of the services that led to differing types of anxious thoughts and then, at the end of this piece, there’s a lot of links that include some of the very helpful resources CNTW provides around Anxiety…

FROM INTENSIVE CARE TO COLLABORATIONS | IN COLLABORATION WITH NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE HOSPITALS NHS FOUNDATION TRUST TO MARK THEIR BRAND-NEW MENTAL HEALTH STRATEGY

“To me, the model of success is not linear. Success is completing the full circle of yourself”

Gloria Steinem

All the way back in April last year, I received an email from Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne, and Wear NHS Foundation Trust’s (CNTW’s) Involvement Bank with a request for those on the Bank (service users, ex-service users, and carers) to help Newcastle Hospitals with the creation and development of their new Mental Health Strategy. Having had a number of experiences with one of the Trust’s sites (the Royal Victoria Infirmary aka the RVI) from a patient point of view; I applied to be part of the project…

The attraction for me to this opportunity was mostly centred around my previous, mental health related patient experiences with the Trust. Well, one experience in particular…

Q&A WITH CEO JAMES DUNCAN | MENTAL HEALTH AWARENESS WEEK: DAY THREE | IN COLLABORATION WITH CUMBRIA, NORTHUMBERLAND, TYNE & WEAR NHS FOUNDATION TRUST

 

Welcome to Day Three of Mental Health Awareness Week, today I’m collaborating with my local NHS mental health Trust: Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust (CNTW). A while ago, the previous CEO; John Lawlor, retired and now James Duncan is overseeing the Trust, so we had a meeting and I asked him a few questions on loneliness and how the Trust are supporting those who struggle with it. I also thought it’d be kind of good to see what my – as an ex-service user – answers would be to the same questions…

James’ Answers

Can you list five of the most important people in your life?

1. My wife, Dena

2. My 3 boys      

3. My Mam, Dad, brothers, and sisters

4. My Grandpa – huge influence on my life just by being him

5. My friends

Have you ever felt lonely?

I don’t think I’ve felt lonely. I have felt alone – as though no one can help or no one can understand. I think there’s a difference between being lonely and being alone… maybe that’s just me…?

THE TRUTH & ADVICE ON RESTRICTIVE PRACTICES | IN COLLABORATION WITH CUMBRIA, NORTHUMBERLAND, TYNE & WEAR NHS FOUNDATION TRUST

A little while ago an opportunity came up with Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust (CNTW) for someone to speak at a Positive and Safe Conference about their experiences of restrictive practices… 

Now, considering I’ve been a mental health Blogger for almost nine years, I think it’s totally reasonable to assume that I’ve talked about my entire mental health journey by now. In all fairness, I think even I thought that was true; until this opportunity came up… So when I was chosen to give the speech and first met with the lovely Lauren (who you’ll be hearing from later in the post) from the Trust’s Positive and Safe Team, I almost immediately realised two things:

1.     I have a lot of experience and a lot to say about the topic

2.     I actually haven’t talked a whole lot about it all before

In acknowledging these two points, I had a decision to make: did I want to change that? Did I want to change the fact that I didn’t talk about these things?

THE INS AND OUTS OF GIVING A SPEECH | MY EXPERIENCES, TIPS, & RESOURCES | IN COLLABORATION WITH CUMBRIA, NORTHUMBERLAND, TYNE, AND WEAR NHS FOUNDATION TRUST

So, I delivered a speech to some of the Peer Support Workers from Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS FoundationTrust (CNTW) and decided to upload videos of clips of my twenty-minute speech to social media. I received a lovely response and was sent a few private messages asking more about the bits that you don’t see – the behind-the-scenes parts of giving a speech, so I thought it’d make for a good blog post…

My first speech:

I think that my first real speech was for a Time To Change event named Story Camp in 2015 (you can read about it here) – and it was requested after I had volunteered at one of their events in 2014 (which you can also read about here).

With it being my first opportunity to do something like that, I obviously had a lot of nerves and fear at the thought of standing before a ton of complete strangers and talking about my mental illness and other experiences that most people would deem ‘personal’ and ‘private.’

I think that the fact my first speech had been requested could have had a negative impact on me and cause me stress if I felt as though there was pressure on me to do it. But actually, it really helped me in providing motivation to do it because I felt sort-of obliged. As though if Time To Change (a big organisation centred around challenging mental health stigma) could go through the process it would have taken to choose me, the least I could do was take them up on their offer!

WHO I’M TURNING TO FOR SUPPORT DURING THE LOCKDOWN | IN JOINT PARTNERSHIP WITH BRIARDALE HOUSE & CUMBRIA, NORTHUMBERLAND, TYNE & WEAR NHS FOUNDATION TRUST | AD

For the first time in forever

I finally understand

For the first time in forever

We can fix this hand in hand

-          Frozen

I’m very proud to say that this blog post is in partnership with TWO amazing organizations who are doing some incredible work in supporting vulnerable people through the Coronavirus Lockdown; the mental health NHS Trust; Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne & Wear NHS Foundation Trust (CNTW) and Briardale House.

After having received a letter to say that I’m listed as ‘extremely vulnerable’ and at a greater risk of being hospitalized should I contract the Coronavirus because I have Asthma, I was advised to isolate completely for twelve weeks from the day of receiving the letter. Up until that point, I’d been following the Government’s Lockdown instructions in only venturing from my house to do my weekly food shop and collect my medication. The thing I’d really struggled to do myself was with the food shopping side of things because I usually do my shop with my support worker from Richmond Fellowship, but unfortunately those appointments had all been turned to phone call sessions after the Lockdown was announced. I find it useful having someone with me when I have to do my food shop because otherwise, I always feel really pressured to get everything I need and pack my bags and pay as quickly as possible. When there’s someone else there, though, I am reassured that there’s less expectation and having someone to talk to when I start to stress is really comforting.

FIVE THINGS THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC HAS TAUGHT ME

You may have read Martin Baker’s guest post on his five things? The actual plan was to publish a post with both of ours, but Martin’s was finished sooner so I decided to post it alone and before my own.


I was recently in A&E (Accident and Emergency) with suspected liver failure but it – thankfully – turned out to be a really bad bout of gastroenteritis(!) and I was talking to one of the Doctors about the pandemic. She asked why I’d self-harmed a little while ago and my reason was something that’s actually stopped happening because of the UK lockdown! We laughed about how there’s been positives (is that the right word?) to the entire Pandemic and all the consequences that have come from it. And this inspired these posts... I’m definitely one of those ‘look-on-the-bright-side’ type of people and I’m definitely a ‘glass-half-full’ girl so for me, I find it helpful to look for positives and benefits from difficult situations in order to make them more bearable and easier to cope with.


After over a week of the UK lockdown, I received a letter telling me that because of my Asthma, I’m in the ‘extremely vulnerable’ category and am more likely to be admitted to Hospital if I contracted the Coronavirus. The letter instructed me to isolate for a further twelve weeks from the day of receiving the letter! This meant that whilst a lot of people are probably on Week Two or longer by now, I’m only just onto Week One (I only received the letter on Tuesday 31^st March)! So, I really do need something positive to think about and thought that finally writing this post might be a good idea...

WHY MENTAL HEALTH IS TAKING A BEATING WITH THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC | IN PARTNERSHIP WITH CUMBRIA, NORTHUMBERLAND, TYNE & WEAR NHS FOUNDATION TRUST

This post is in partnership with the wonderful mental health NHS Trust for my area; CNTW (Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust) so at the end I’ll be including all of their links and one of their most important articles produced during this Pandemic.

I’d like to think I’m a pretty fair and balanced kind of person in that I can usually see a disagreement from both sides, so when I write blog posts and posts on social media I try to imagine the other side to it… You know, in my last post: ‘WHAT I WANT YOU TO KNOW DURING THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC,’ I talked a little about how people are feeling that they can’t talk about how the pandemic is affecting them because they’re sure that there’s someone ‘worse off.’ And I absolutely get it; I mean, there’s tweets about Grandmas dying alone because visiting in hospitals is suspended and people having their lives genuinely turned upside down to coincide with the UK lockdown regulations (which you can read here).

I think that the one common impact that the Coronavirus Pandemic is having on at least the majority of people, is on our mental health. People often make the mistake of thinking that to be struggling with your mental health, you must have some sort of diagnosis, but this isn’t true. Everyone has mental health in the same way that everyone has physical health, and you can struggle with your thoughts and feelings without it being you must have an official ‘label’ or disorder. Someone can feel sad without having a formal diagnosis of Depression. You can feel anxious without it needing to result in a panic attack for it to be worth talking about. And you can struggle with your mental health without needing to feel suicidal for it to be deserving of asking for help and support.

A BEHIND-THE-SCENES OF COLLABORATIONS | CATS PROTECTION, NORTHUMBRIA POLICE, CNTW NHS FOUNDATION TRUST, OLIVER BONAS, BANDANA BOWTIQUE, RICHMOND FELLOWSHIP, LNER & MORE!!

In light of the success of my article for the Cats Protection blog about the benefits to my mental health having a cat has had, I thought it might be a good time to talk a bit about what it’s like to collaborate with organizations/charities/companies and why I do it.

There are a few controversial issues in the blogging industry such as whether or not to monopolize your blog and feature ads, if you should make your blog into a ‘brand’ and whether you should collaborate with others on joint projects and partnerships.


I guess I decided to do collaborations pretty early on in my blogging career and had a guest blog feature on Time To Change’s website within months of beginning I’m NOT Disordered. I made the decision to work with the brilliant organization who primarily campaign to eradicate the stigma against mental health quite easily. I had been enjoying writing/blogging and found it a huge relief to have somewhere to vent and offload all my pent-up thoughts and feelings that were magnetized by being in a psychiatric hospital. So, it just seemed to make sense to also write a piece for such a huge, well-known, and influential organization like Time To Change. Seeing my number of readers grow after the collaboration was very rewarding and realizing that working with more established organizations would shed some light on the existence of my brand new, little, unknown blog led to more and more collaborations.

GUESS WHAT I'M DOING JUNE 17TH... AND SO ARE YOU!! | AD

FILMING 'HOPE' WITH THE NHS | IN COLLABORATION WITH NORTHUMBERLAND, TYNE & WEAR NHS FOUNDATION TRUST | AD

I was honoured to be asked to film with NTW for their film about 'hope.'

Both versions of the films can be viewed at www.ntw.nhs.uk/hope

It is generally accepted that hope plays a crucial part in recovery from mental illness. The film came from Peer Support Workers looking at how we connect with people at a time when we feel that we have lost hope. Something Peer Support workers do on a day to day basis. We wanted to explore how we help people see that others have been through similar experiences and felt hopeless, however have found a way back. It is hoped, this film will be a powerful tool to anyone in finding hope, whether that be as a person experiencing mental ill health themselves, or a person’s friend or family member.