TW: Mental health illnesses/disorders, phobias, depression, bipolar disorder,
Throughout lockdown I wanted to learn more and understand mental health in a deeper and on a more personal level so I decided to enrol in a Level 2 diploma on Mental health and awareness.
After completing is diploma, my passion for mental health awareness has increased massively. After posting my certificate on Instagram, Mary asked me to write something for her blog.
My first question was “what on”. She said anything. So I think what I’m going to do is open your eyes to things I learnt throughout my diploma that I truly believe should be taught in schools as a part of compulsory education. This is because it turns out one of the largest issues when it comes to mental ill health is the lack of knowledge and the ignorance surrounding it.
I am no expert on this, I don’t wish to patronise , only to educate you on something I wish I was taught at school.
Misconceptions: mental health vs mental illness
I cannot even put a number to the amount of misconceptions there are about mental health and especially mental ill health, And yes, they are two separate things. That’s misconception number 1. Everyone always thinks it’s just mental health. And phrase it as “a mental health issue” rather than being specific about mental ill health or mental health.
Everyone has mental health. It’s very individual to them and experts have struggled to define it, however it’s a frame of mind that reflects the idea of good well-being. This refers to the idea that the person can cope with everyday stress of day-to-day life and are able to contribute to their community either at home and/or out and about without a huge struggle as well as being able to feel happy within themselves for the majority of the time.
Mental ill health is where what I have just described as mental health, starts to decline and emotional feelings start to decrease regularly. An individual struggling with mental ill health tend to become very introverted and can lose touch with the reality of day to day life and begin to struggle to communicate. To summarise, the general well-being of the individual begins to decrease.
Now we have those straight I can begin to cover some big misconceptions, I’ll only cover some major ones.
“A phobia is just a more severe fear”
A phobia is an example of mental ill health. Now before I learnt more about it, to me a phobia is just a more severe fear of something. How wrong was I. This just highlights that ignorance is the main issue when it comes to mental ill health. A phobia isn’t just a fear it’s a way of life. Someone with a phobia will start to live their life around the thing that scares them lessening their quality of life and well-being. Phobias can be split into specific phobias; fears of spiders, rollercoasters and darkness and social phobias; fear of public speaking or eating in-front of people. If you delve into this deeply a phobia can have a catastrophic impact on an individual as well as their family.
Take agoraphobia for example - fear of social places. If someone is so scared to leave the house, they may not be able to get a job. If they can’t get a job, where does their money come from? Family. Now the pressure that’s put onto family members to support this individual is a lot. This can therefore cause guilt as well as a potential hostile environment between family members which can lead to more mental illness. There are always so many knock on affects that aren’t thought about. The idea that it just affects the individual isn’t correct.
“You can switch depression off”
There is so much more to mental ill health than depression and anxiety, which are the main two that get spoken about, depression for example, again, has a fair amount of misconceptions. The term ‘depression’ is over used in modern day society. When someone finds something sad they might state ‘that’s depressing’. When in fact they are experiencing sadness. You cannot switch depression off. Clinical depression varies depending on the individual but depression is usually noticeable when someone has felt low constantly for a few weeks or more. Depression can stop someone completing normal day to day tasks as simple as getting up in the morning. But again varies massively. The lighter end can be the individual doesn’t receive enjoyment from life where as the heavier side is suicidal thoughts and acts.
I don’t want to delve too deeply, but depression cannot be switched off. People in modern day society need to start thinking before using the term ‘depressed’. Think for a moment…are you really ?
“Bipolar disorder is just mood swings of happy and sad”
Bipolar disorder. What are your first thoughts? Split personality? It’s just mood swings? There is only one type? Bipolar is rare? The change in mood doesn’t last long?
Any of these come to mind ?
Hopefully I’ll manage to iron a few of these out in my next paragraph. Bipolar is a not a split personality. The term only umbrellas the idea that the individual suffering with bipolar can experience very low lows (depressive stage) and very high highs (manic stage). The length of time an individual experiences these stages varies and varies on the bipolar they are suffering with. But it isn’t just happy and sad. It’s more drastic than that. The depressive stage isn’t just feeling sad it’s clinical depression. So not wanting to get out of bed and feeling low all the time. The mania stage isn’t just happy and productive it’s chaotic for an individual.
Some manic episodes can last a few hours or a few weeks. And same goes with depressive episodes. Someone could be in a depressive episode for days or weeks and then switch.
There are four types of bipolar. I won’t go into detail, you can research in your own time but there is Bipolar I, Bipolar II, Cyclothymic disorder, and then a bipolar disorder that doesn’t tend to follow any pattern at all.
Bipolar is more common than you think and taking it on average 9 years to get a correct diagnosis. About 1.3 million people in the U.K. suffer with bipolar. That’s about 1 in 50 people. (Stats found on Bipolar U.K.) So many people in the U.K. suffer with this disorder and it’s not known about widely enough.
Postnatal Depression
Now the last thing I’ve been dying to mention is about postnatal depression. This is something that shocked me massively when I learnt about it, being a female in my 20s this is something I wished I had been taught at school.
Postnatal depression can affect 1 in 10 women. Think of ten women you know and just think one could be suffering with postnatal depression after having a child. This topic isn’t spoken about amongst young women and I think should be something that’s spoken about when planning for a baby on how to manage if you end up suffering with postnatal depression.
Postnatal depression can occur from about four to six weeks after childbirth. But could be earlier or later. This can make caring for their newborn so difficult as well as taking care of themselves. Again the knock on effect on the family can be huge and not spoken about. Some symptoms can be lack of enjoyment from the world, frightening thoughts, depression, finding it hard to bond with the baby and trouble sleeping. All of these are so hard to deal with and support is needed. However whilst doing my Postnatal depression module I discovered Puerperal psychosis or otherwise known as postpartum psychosis.
Puerperal psychosis is probably a phrase you’ve never heard. I definitely hadn’t. And I’m now so much more aware of it.
To quickly sum it up it’s “a serious mental health illness that can affect someone soon after having a baby. It affects around 1 in 500 mothers after giving birth” (NHS). Someone can suddenly experience symptoms around two weeks after having their child. The symptoms can include hallucinations, depression, delusions, manic mood changes, feeling suspicious or fearful and being confused. These are only a few of the symptoms but it’s something that needs to be spoken about. If it’s seen to affect 1 in 500 women that’s 4 people in my home village which is a lot of people affected by something I didn’t know about. Just something else to become aware about. There are so many mental illnesses we don’t get educated about enough and that’s what I hope I’ve done.
I’m not here to go into depth about mental illness because I’m sure a lot of you are aware of how they can deeply affect lives. It’s something to think about. There are, again, so many misconceptions surrounding mental ill health. I’m happy to answer any questions or assist with research.
Just for a quick suggestion, if you’re in doubt about anything go to your GP. There are also many online charities that are happy to help and provide invaluable information for everyone.
---- Tasha Firmin, Guest Blogger
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