Wrapping up mental health awareness week…

I was planning to do this post later today but regardless it’s still the last day of mental health awareness month whether it’s early in the morning or during the day. I have a telephone doctors appointment about my anemia results (had them three weeks ago but pre-bookable appointments take at least two weeks to secure) and the eye problem I have had for over a year now, my eyelashes at that point won’t grow back properly and it has an itchy red line on top of my eyelid. I am going to try to get something prescribed to me for insomnia too because the sleep deprivation has accumulated too much. I can’t sleep naturally for more than a few hours at a time. I need to drop the blood test pack which the consultant at the hospital wants doing for when I go to appointment in June. I will therefore be busy during most of today. I’m also feeling my monthly start to kick off so I may not be able to go out if it gets bad. I’m hoping that it doesn’t but I never trust it after taking iron tablets for a while. I hope that improving my lifestyle (apart from the sleep issues) helps, eg. Cut down alcohol, drink more water etc.

Anyway, let’s get on the subject of wrapping up mental health awareness week. I am basically going to echo what I said at the end of the autism awareness month first. As I previously stated back at the end of April, don’t keep having these ‘awareness’ weeks/months if you do not intend to make changes for people with those conditions… that is mere tokenism. Mental health awareness week / month doesn’t really cover mental illnesses that can be quite complex. Borderline Personality Disorder which I was suspected of having many years ago is extremely complex… twice as complex as things like depression, the condition that always gets highlighted on these weeks / months. Anxiety is so much more a wider spectrum of symptoms than what get’s discussed on awareness weeks. Depersonalisation, dissociation and the whole umbrella of various personality disorders never get covered on these awareness weeks / months. Schizophrenia is never discussed. How are people going to be aware of mental illness if they don’t know details about them? The mental health awareness week / month content at the moment consists of mental wellbeing information with the odd bit about depression and anxiety thrown in because they’re quite common in comparison to the other types of mental illnesses. The services for people experiencing mental illness is in a dire state in the UK. The treatment can actually be counter productive and sometimes many of us come out with more issues than what we had originally. The way people are treated within that system is inhumane. The system isn’t designed or working properly. Patients shouldn’t be coming out of that system traumatised by the environment they were put in to make them better. Mental health patients shouldn’t have to deal with the stigma of being in or having been in the system. They shouldn’t be losing their children to social services because of professionals being ignorant and not understanding the conditions which they’re being instructed to assess. People have got dismissed from jobs, education courses and other public places also due to the same ignorance. It is completely wrong and if the focus of these mental health awareness months / weeks were changed to educate people on mental illnesses specifically those things would happen less frequently. I think we should change the focus for next year or even have a trial month of mental illness education month in June to see how it would actually work practically.