Here you are folks, another rambling blog post with no specific point, just another bleedin stream of consciousness but it does give you the chance to play the great Nat King Cole (above) as you read.
As another Mental Health Awareness Week creaks to a close, beads of relief sweat fall from the brows of people who won't have to address the questions going around in their own mind the main one being "Am I Mad?" for at least another year.
By all accounts this lock down has been challenging for peeps emotional well being. I never know what to call mental health these days. When first diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder in January 2006, I started on the journey of a mental health evangelist telling everybody who would listen 'that we all have mental health'. Nodding and smiling, their eyes said "Keep taking the tablets". Well I stopped taking the tablets in August 2008 and have therefore been nearly 12 years free of psychotropic drugs.
Watching the Tony Slattery documentary last night (on somebody else's TV licence) I realised how common co-morbidity with substance abuse that 'psychological problems' are. People who had seen the documentary were all saying how sad it was on social media but I felt that it was an extremely positive reflection and Tony appeared 'better' or 'happier' at the end of the programme than he seemed at the beginning.
Outside observers will never know how you actually feel because they don't live in your head like the gremlins or social media trolls from the past. The Bipolar spectrum was being discussed in relation to where Tony might fit and a world expert from Oxford and an addiction Counsellor from the South West were consulted but the crux of the matter came when Tony travelled with his partner Mark to Queen's College Belfast. It was here that childhood trauma was discussed as the most obvious trigger for Tony's challenges as an adult. A very moving programme and similar in its honesty to the actor David Harewood's documentary this time last year 'Psychosis and me'. The relief I felt after watching both these programmes was palpable. Thank you gentlemen for sharing your stories.
The difference between them and I is that I am not famous, not a celebrity (and none of their talent). Although both their lives had their challenges the question I would like to ask the ether is
"Do you have to be a celebrity or do you have to have been a celebrity to discuss mental health where people take note of what you say?"
For somebody to go from nobody to somebody with a mental health history is extremely rare. Many have gone from 'somebody' to 'nobody' and told their tales. These emotive terms to describe people are of course ridiculous but Tony appeared to be searching for his lost star, the star that had been stolen by childhood trauma.
Shortly we will all be returning to a 'new normality' but the cynics among us will know that it wont be long before we continue on the big dipper ride of insanity with its Premier League heroes and its Celebrity reality television series. The artificiality and shallowness will creep back into our lives and within months we will all be back to the busyness that keeps most of us from thinking about death and about the end. If you have been asking yourself 'Am I mad?" during the lockdown then you are probably not alone. The Grim Reaper has been reading the number of Covid 19 deaths every night during the Government Press Conference. You have probably been trying to work out whether you are going to reach your goals before death comes for you.
Twelve years down the tunnel on the 'mental' to 'normal' spectrum I am no longer the tub thumping mental health evangelist I used to be largely because normal people don't really want to know. People don't want to know until it happens to them and by then it is too late. So now I largely keep quiet about the subject and only wax lyrical when invited to do so, so lucky for you that Mental Health Awareness week only comes around once a year.
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