I’ve been having a run of bad days lately. That’s kind of putting it mildly. I’ve been suffering with severe anxiety as well as the crippling depression and even though my consultant has put me on citalopram, nothing seems to be getting better. I know I should be patient, but to be honest I’m not the most patient of people. The crux of the matter is that I let my mood get too low before I demanded that my consultant psychiatrist actually do something about it instead of worrying about me going manic. Manic would be good right now, even if that doesn’t sound very responsible. I keep taking baby steps forward – and then taking two steps backwards. Every time I think that I’m making progress, the next day, I find that I’ve actually gone backwards. It’s incredibly frustrating.
I’m still not able to write, though I’ve been reading a little bit this last week or so – thanks to my obsession with The Twilight Saga. It seems sadly pathetic heralding reading - something that I normally take for granted – as a great achievement, but that’s exactly what it is. A few weeks ago, I couldn’t concentrate enough to read more than a couple of sentence at a time. I suppose I should take that as a sign that something is working somewhere along the line – and hope that I’ll be able to write soon.
I can’t sleep. This is nothing spectacularly new, of course, although of late, I’ve been doing little else but sleep thanks to the enduring depression. That I’m awake now could possibly be a sign that things are getting better, but then again, waking early is also a symptom of depression, so I might just be living in hope only to die in despair.
I would happily sell my soul to the devil to be awake because of mania or hypomania, because that would make sleeplessness bearable. I would be able to write – my latest novel is stuck at 5000 words because I just haven’t been able to write for the last month or so. I feel so frustrated because I was getting on so well with the plot until I ground to an unceremonious halt. Writing is my life. It’s the only thing that I’m good at, and if I can’t do that, then it’s pretty damn pointless. I long to be able to feel the creativity burning in my fingertips again, to have the ideas, the inclination and the motivation needed to write my novel.
The stigma of mental illness has, for the most part, kept me quiet about my own illness, which is quite ironic since I’ve written books about mental illness and see myself as a contributor to the fight against the stigma of illnesses such as bipolar disorder. But it’s more than time that I was a little more open and honest about my own experiences with mental illness.
I have bipolar disorder – I was diagnosed with bipolar in 2007 after being mis-diagnosed for a number of years. I’m sure I’m not the only one in the mental health blogosphere who’s had the wrong diagnosis at some point or other!! It doesn’t matter what my original diagnosis was, but needless to say, I never agreed with it and was never happy with the label that was slapped on me. I had to battle to get the right diagnosis – because what psychiatrist likes to admit that they’re wrong?
I battle with bipolar seemingly every day of my life – and have done since I was in my mid-teens. At the moment I’m stuck in the pits of depression, and have been for some time, which is why this blog has been abandoned for so long. I just haven’t had the energy or the motivation to write. That I’m managing to write now must be a good sign, but I wish that I could make quicker and better progress than I am doing!
The first blog, I find, is the very hardest to write. It’s a bit like walking into a room and introducing yourself to a bunch of strangers.
But anyway, welcome. Welcome to my humble little home, where you’ll find (soon) blog posts about all aspects of mental illness. Make yourself comfortable, subscribe to receive my posts by email if you so desire, and keep popping back to find out what’s new!
A little bit about mental illness:
One in four people will experience mental health problems – such as depression, schizophrenia,and bipolar disorder (manic depression) - at some point in their lifetime, but there remains a great deal of ignorance about what it’s really like to experience mental illness.
Many people have been misled by the negative portrayal of mental illness in the media – such as headlines in the national newspapers that imply that all people with schizophrenia are prone to violence – and this means that people who experience mental illness either try to hide their mental health problems or are affected by stigma and discrimination.
Early in 2009, mental health charities Rethink, Mind and Mental Health Media launched an ambitious campaign to break the stigma surrounding mental illness. With imput from celebrities such as Stephen Fry, Ruby Wax and Alistair Campbell, the Time to Change Campaign has taken to the streets of the United Kingdom in an attempt to bring to the attention of the general public the truth about the experience of mental illness. One of the main messages of the Time to Change Campaign is that people with schizophrenia are not dangerous – there are a number of insightful videos on the Time to Change Website portraying the true story of schizophrenia.
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