PLEASE Support my Petition: “Improve CAMHS services in Cumbria, especially surrounding eating disorders.”

Hello!

I’ve kept this petition on the down low until I knew that it was fully up and running and agreed by the authorities that allow these kinds of things to be published. Until NOW.

(As a little foreword, I had to email this petition to 5 people and have them support it to first get it up and running and I finally have those 5 supporters now. This now means it will be checked and verified and then published officially, giving me 6 months to collect 10,000 signatures in order for it to be reviewed by the government/parliament.)

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/162797

I have wanted to make this petition for so long but have always too anxious to; convincing myself that I was an attention seeker BUT even if that was true, which as much as I may try to convince myself, it really is not, this action will help so so many other sufferer’s lives in our county in the years to come.

This is something I feel very passionate about as it is something very close to my heart and has been a part of my life for around 5 years now. I am learning not to be ashamed of the fact that: I have Anorexia Nervosa. I have had for 5 years of my 17 year-long life now already. I also have multiple other mental illnesses that have made my life immensely difficult in the past and still do despite being in active recovery.

I am soon to be discharged from my second stay in a specialist eating disorder inpatient unit. I have spent a total of a year of my life (or more) in this very unit.

It is 120 miles away from my home.

That is a minimum of a 2 and half hour -journey ONE WAY.

This is the closest one to me as there is zero specialist eating disorder treatment within the entire county, with an area of 4206 miles squared.

 

I want to make it clear that this is not a vendetta against a particular individual. Nor am I saying that this is the services’ fault; this really is through lack of funding and trained individuals working within the service in this county. It is not even a direct action for myself and my own care as I will soon be transitioning into adult services which begin at the age of 18. But this has gone on long enough. It has effected far too many people already and it will only continue to happen in the future if direct action like this isn’t taken.

In my own experience of the CAMHS services, that despite being incredibly grateful for a lot of the direct support that I have received in understanding myself and my illnesses, there is still a long way to go and a lot of failings, not caused by any one individual, but rather a general lack of resources and funding. Mental illnesses are allowed to get out of hand before proper intervention is taken. Personally, I was allowed to destroy myself and my body, despite constantly telling the services and originally actively seeking support, not just once but twice. I was allowed to deteriorate to below my dangerously underweight lowest before I was finally referred to inpatient services. This was at least a wait of 6 months, if not much, much longer. Many sufferers are not able to actively seek support this way and intervention must be taken so much sooner to stop this from happening, especially surrounding eating disorders.

In my own experience, every single person that I have met in my inpatient centre in Middlesborough, has been struggling so drastically that they were not physically able to or allowed to walk. They were in a wheelchair, even to get to their bedroom down the short corridor. Why must we as sufferers from such a horribly common mental illness, have to physically deteriorate ourselves at all to be taken seriously, never mind to such a dangerous degree?

 

This has to change.

We recently received a letter telling of a grant of money being given to Cumbria to increase eating disorder services which I am immensely grateful for. I can only hope that this goes ahead and services do improve. I guess I’m just a desperate and scared teenage girl trying to make even the slightest difference.

 

Soooooo:

Here is the link to my petition below and I can only ask you to take a couple of minutes out of your day to make such an incredible difference.

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/162797

 

 

“Oh, I Had That Too”: Mental Illnesses

I want to start this with an apology, really on the state of my writing recently. I must hold myself back from constantly apologising, because it’s one of my deep set compulsions stemming from countless core beliefs and therapy is constantly telling me “STOP” (insert little hand up emoji here because it would be very fitting). But I do believe this is called for and justified: my mind is so hazy, so confused and flustered, that I just really can’t focus. I worry that I make no sense, and my sentences take so so long to form as they should. There’s something time consuming and poetic about venting here and writing, but I really need to admit that it takes so much out of me. That I have been wanting to do an update on my Instagram for weeks but just seriously don’t have the energy from failing to fuel my body. I have wanted to write this post for months, but I stare at my laptop with the screen closed firmly, mocking me with its dusted, black emptiness where there should be a projection. (I cannot even open it to play the Sims 3, and you know that’s serious.)

Moving on, if you are still reading, I’m going to go into one of my faaaavourite sayings *sarcasm overload and spontaneous combustion* “Oh, you have *insert major and severe mental illness here*? I had that for a few days/weeks too.”

But did you??? Ok, then. Just, okayyyyyy then.

It’s been happening a lot around me in college, (but now thankfully the main person is not in the class, which frankly means I am completely alone again) but of course it happens ALL the time in society and even on the television this very morning.

It makes my blood boil inside.

Or even, rather, it just makes me fall deeper into my own actual, clinical and highly medicated depression (…and anxiety and severe Anorexia and self-harm to cope with that). Because I know as a scientific and medical FACT that you didn’t.

You had depression for a few days then voluntarily pulled yourself out of it? Allow me to correct you, and it’s going to be blunt: you were slightly sad and you got over it because it was trivial and it didn’t matter and you didn’t have a chemical imbalance in the very structure of your brain.

You had an eating disorder for a few weeks and then just got better and never bothered about food or calories again. As you sit there with your Lucozade and chocolate bar as a snack. (I mean I can’t even go there with this one because I have just gone through way too much and there are people in my college who are my “friends” saying bullshit like this while I am teetering on the edge of a second inpatient admission with my health deteriorating daily, having full, screaming, clawing mental breakdowns at night. And if that makes me selfish so be it, I need to let that slide, because I’m on the brink of tears, or rather full panic attack already. Hmm, Anorexia, you are so poetic and beautiful.)

*takes a few days break from the writing process, and comes back after even more breakdowns (again, how beautiful, “I wish I had Anorexia”)*

You tell me you had anxiety, you used to panic. But were you trembling all over at something so seemingly trivial it made you sick with embarrassment and even more pain? You were dizzy, hyperventilating, feeling so close to passing out as your heart fluttered or palpitated in your aching, convulsing chest? That’s so great you just turned those off! I WISH I COULD.

You had a bit of OCD? Well that’s so fantastic that you just got over your “fear of germs” or you stopped ordering the crayons into the colour of the rainbow. How strong of you.

 

I’m so glad that you decided to just flip that switch and decide not to have a life-consuming mental illness.

Or how about, I AM REALLY NOT.

Because none of you had a chemical imbalance, or mental disease/disorder for a few days. For one nervous moment before something completely rational like a test. For one week’s dieting. For feeling a bit down. For picking at your scabs a few times. For saying you didn’t want to wake up tomorrow because you couldn’t be arsed going to school.

None of you were “depressed” that there wasn’t any of your favourite cereal in the house either.

None of you had a “schizo” mother because she got mad at you.

There’s hundreds of things I could list, so I’m going to round this up for you and end this patronising.

It’s annoying isn’t it?

So how do you think I feel when you tell me that you got over something that consumes my every waking moment, and even my restless, anxious time that I allow myself to sleep between compulsive and dangerous over-exercise and self-harming. When you use something so deadly and destructive to describe your emotions or daily activities. I really can’t stress this enough.

 

Because of someone’s naïve and plain STUPID comments today, just overhearing 2 minutes of their conversation, set me into a major panic attack and breakdown in the middle of college for hours. I’ll treat you to that post when I’m strong enough to do so.

Take time before you make mental illnesses sound so miniscule and unimportant: trivial even.

 

I’d love to hear of your experiences with this: if I get enough of them I will make a post with them on, linking you, so please share below or email me at:

deni.is.gaga@gmail.com

 

(I hope this post was okay at least!)

 

“Don’t Call Me Crazy”

I’ve spoken in the past on this blog about fictional portrayals of mental illness and their glamorising of them, but what about the television programmes broadcast on the television to supposedly raise awareness of the reality of mental illnesses?

This is the last part of my original essay (for which I received full marks for, just by going on a very heartfelt and honest rant in my GCSE English Language coursework).

 

“Don’t Call Me Crazy” was a show created from video footage inside a secure inpatient unit and was originally broadcast on BBC 3. This show followed the lives of adolescents in a psychiatric unit in Manchester; a place for the most severe forms of mental illness, where the patients are a danger to themselves or society.

Showing distraught patients being held down with their face to the floor within the first five minutes, the show certainly did not gloss over any issues surrounding acute mental health care. It went on to show sectioning, tribunals as well as more patients being restrained, which could be somewhat disturbing to watch. I have not personally watched the programme but did a lot of research on the programme to ensure my GCSE resources were all correct. Plus, it down-right pissed me off and I couldn’t originally believe a programme like this would be created.

As someone who has had personal experience of a secure unit that specialised in eating disorders, I am outraged that this programme was broadcast. I am shocked that the health authority has allowed these teenagers to be filmed at their most vulnerable in order to make a programme and achieve a high viewing number. I mean what? I would never have imagined that when my friends in the hospital were being restrained in life-threatening emergencies, a TV crew would be there, shining their cameras and holding their great boom microphones in the way of the nurses who were already really fighting. Would they watch from outside, in the hallway, hearing only the screams as us other patients did for one of our best friends? Or would they be right there in the tiny, enclosed and secure room, adjusting makeup and getting all the gory details of another suicide attempt. Could they really resist the shock factor of such an incident after seeing how mundane and exasperating inpatient units usually are?

I admit the show did have something of a positive aspect to it; showing that even the bubbliest of people can be experiencing unbearable internal distress. It also highlighted the issue of having to wait to be referred to the mental health service, which is a sickeningly long list of sufferers, with only a minority being “fast-tracked” as a matter of urgency.

Those who are not regarded as an emergency are discarded.

To be honest I really need to write a post about this also, but I feel as though really I am a hypocrite after being rushed through as I fought for my life with untreated severe Anorexia Nervosa and self-harm.

There is a common misconception that anybody with an eating disorder must be emaciated, which is what we all too often see in magazines and newspaper articles about them. And I admit again, that when I was first hospitalised I was, and now am again, but this is another topic of genetics and severity of symptoms and circumstances. It is certainly not always the case: really far from it.

The show cleverly portrayed that this is not the case, whilst showing Beth who was struggling severely but did not look to be on the brink of death. Research by B-eat, the leading eating disorders charity, demonstrated that 80% of people with an eating disorder never become underweight.

 

But surely, summing up, having cameras follow around the severely mentally ill is in no way a positive thing. Personally, I find it to be just another hurdle; as inpatient care leaves you isolated from friends and family and indeed the “real world”. I would question who really cared about me after the broadcast of the show; or rather if it were to meet someone mildly famous. Those who were featured in the show began to receive horrible, taunting messages on forms of social media: especially Beth whom I have just mentioned. This would have impacted severely on her recovery from a life-threatening illness. Is that seriously what she needs when she is already so ill she has been locked inside a mental health unit??

People make me sick.

Asylums are Not Fun

Fuelled with fire in writing this post. So much so that I couldn’t even write it on the day that it was said, I have waited three weeks through a very bad slip/relapse in my thoughts and behaviours.

The comment: an innocent one, right?

“Every year, our course (Level 3 Health and Social Care Diploma), will go on a trip or day out somewhere to develop your knowledge. I wondered if anyone had any preferences on where they would like to go?”

“Oh, a closed down insane asylum!”

… Then, “Or an open one: we could go and watch the patients.”

URMMMMM?!

I’m really paranoid that the person who said this will find this post somehow, but in all probability not. I need to say it isn’t a personal vendetta, because it was the whole class, and definitely more people beyond that in the world.

I made it quite clear what my view was on this, as I sat there shaking with anxiety thinking about when I was locked in an inpatient mental health centre for 6 months of my adolescence.

“WE ARE NOT ANIMALS TO BE VIEWED IN A ZOO.”

Great, so you have been brainwashed by the media? It’s a poetic and beautiful place full of quirky, hilarious antics day and night. Full of escapes and conflicts and love affairs. A real life …Cuckoo’s Nest or Girl, Interrupted or American Horror Story, to name but a few. I have seen the former two, and I am not knocking the films, but this is so far from the truth.

The closed down “asylums” were disgusting. Their treatments radical and abusive and wrong.

The mental hospitals of today are not open for the public to traipse around. Can you imagine? As my best friend was being restrained by 4 nurses and given immediate medical attention to close the severed vein from another failed suicide attempt, along came twenty health and social care students with notepads and spotlights and prying eyes.

They are completely not poetic, horror film esque, dungeons. In all likelihood, even if you were allowed to visit one in the strangest of circumstances, you would be deeply disappointed. They are brightly lit, they are designed to be very much like home and are designed to the fullest extent to not be clinical. There are beds and lots of locks, on bathrooms, doors, cupboards, closets. There is a day room or two. A dinner hall. A communal toilet too. An office. A locked door holding the patients in (and observers out), and abiding to the law enforced sections. Really, that’s it.

We aren’t all “crazy” 24/7. We are normal people who are poorly, and have slips in our mental state. Really, there is nothing to be so fascinated about: even if you were going to be some sort of medical physicist or whatever they are called.

*and breeeeathe*

I’ll do anything in my power to stop this stupid visit from even being talked about.

Suicide Is NOT Selfish

Firstly, I recognise that this is a somewhat controversial view, and of course I am NOT condoning or promoting suicide in any way because each and every one I find out about (and indeed the countless others I do not) make my heart ache for the beautiful lost soul, taken away by internal agony that they should not have experienced at all.

It is for this exact reason that I am writing this post today.

Also, I should put a trigger warning on this for talking about suicide and feeling suicidal.

There is a common belief, and to be fair, a quite rational one, that anyone who attempts suicide or indeed does commit suicide is selfish.

They must be, right? To think solely of themselves. To rid themselves of pain. To not even consider those around them and what it will do to them: the people who keep on living with the black hole in their life.

Well: excuse you for thinking that.

Because it is so painful. It is all consuming from the moment you wake, dragging on all throughout the day in very activity that you manage to do in your crippling depression, to the nightmares and idealised dreams you have at night. It is alright for me to describe this to you, but if this is something you have never experienced, you will never understand.

I am so, eternally glad that you haven’t, and if you have I am so sorry.

I’ve had my own experience with this, and to be fair still do, but it is managed. I’ve had more than three friends attempt suicide; and I am forever fearful that they will try again, checking up constantly for fear it is the last time I will speak to them. I know for a fact that none of those were selfish to try.

90% of the people who commit suicide have a mental illness that they have either had for a long time, or have developed shortly before the ending of their life.

That is a truly staggering amount, but it is very easy to envisage.

And that isn’t to say that it’s only the “crazy” people who attempt suicide, countless other people do too, for countless different reasons. Every life is important and precious. A mentally ill person’s life is not any less valuable than a “sane” person’s, and likewise this is true for the reverse.

But to say that a person is selfish is would be laughable if it weren’t so triggering and heartless.

I’ll explain it to you.

You have just woken up. You realise you have done so and let an audible sigh that you have survived another night and not died by some freak accident of nature and biology.

You stare up at the ceiling, tears pricking behind your eyes but not being released because you have cried so much already. You are so depressed you don’t even have the emotional energy to cry.

You stagger out of bed, leaving it un-made: because why does it matter? You don’t want to exist, if you kill yourself today you will never sleep in it again anyway.

Staring into the kitchen cupboards, if you even manage this, is like choosing a last meal. Every single day. You wonder about whether any of it matters: the calories, the occasion the food was created for. You drag something out and pick at it, looking through it, still hurting from waking again. You are so sad inside that it is a physical pain in your chest and your very being.

And every single thing you do that day: from bothering to brush your teeth, to leaving the house if you can manage, to human contact and that plastered on, sickly smile coming back… It is all going to be your last, it all doesn’t matter. You are in so much internal pain from your mental illness or other worries, you can’t focus on a single thing. The bus driver asks you three times for your money, while you wonder how many paracetamol that could have bought you. You wonder if you will even manage to get home, or if you could find somewhere in town to do it.

You can’t take it anymore. You can’t.

You’ve done this day in, day out for as long as you can remember, but you carry on the draining fight for those around you.

What would your mother do when she found out? What if it was your little brother that found you in your bedroom? What about the mess, and who would have to clean it up? What about the money that you bring in to support your family? What about your wife arranging your funeral before you had even had any children, or even settled down?

It is an endless list: all of utterly selfless things, until you reach your own internal fight at the end of the thought process, and how you personally cannot envisage another day. Cannot find the strength anywhere inside to pull yourself through the night again.

Only then might you try…

And what if it fails? What if everyone thinks you’re pathetic? What if, what if, what if?

So don’t you dare say that anyone who tries or does is selfish. It is not a religious sin; it is not a self-centred act, or a pathetic cry for help, or a hypochondriac reaction to a meaningless daily event. It is contemplated and planned for longer than you’ll ever be aware of, even by those who are smiling and laughing in your classroom or workplace.

Think.

And if you are feeling suicidal yourself, or know someone who is, you do not have to face this alone. You are beautiful and unique and deserve life: it will not always be like this, I promise it will get better, and I will keep that promise. It will get better. You will get better, and improve. Remember that there are doctors and therapists, or Samaritans or Childline, or even your friends and family there to support you.

Support YOU. This is who it is about, this is who matters: YOU.

Focusing on Your Own Recovery

I’m so triggered right now and to put things back into perspective (or at least into a reasonable state of rationality) I need to write this post. I have previously written about this on my Instagram but it went away down my “feed” and was fairly ignored (it wasn’t but still.) 

Today’s post is about focusing on your own recovery. 

Mental illnesses can be extremely easily triggered, especially with the haunting, manipulative voice of an eating disorder in the front off your consciousness. When you have an eating disorder, you not only take part in a slow suicide, but you also begin to set this off in other people who are suffering or have a weakness within them that may cause them to begin suffering/struggling. 

My anorexia is severely competitive (at least internally, as I am monitored, much to my disgust) and I am very easily triggered. I obsess over comparing. I make sure to feed other people and I HAVE to eat less than other people in every situation… The list is endless. 

But this means that I plummet into a depressive, self loathing state at the slightest thing. And I do horrible things to myself, and I regret every moment that I have nurtured myself and attempted recovery. My body swells before my eyes, and a day that might possibly have been clear (as in body dysmorphia was not completely overwhelming my sight in the mirror this morning), is suddenly a day of physical pain at disgust for my very being. 

If you are anything like me, which I desperately hope you are not, you will know how hurtful this can be. 

Well I’m here now to be the biggest hypocrite and tell you: you must focus on yourself. 

We are all different, in a billion different ways: from cultures to genetics to environment. We have different body shapes and metabolisms and minds. Some of us are more closely monitored than others. Some of us are more vulnerable to health complications than others. 

This is okay. More than okay: it is essential and beautiful. 

Just like you. You are beautiful. You matter so much, you are worth recovery, you can do it and you can get through it because you are so immensely strong even if you aren’t aware of it now. 

Don’t allow other people to drag you down. You are your own person and you do not have to destroy yourself to compete with them: whether that be restricting and losing weight with an eating disorder, self harming more or deeper, wishing on anxiety attacks to prove you have a problem, holding in your smile in depression to follow society’s stereotypes. There are so many triggers and so many repercussions of this, and if you cannot over come this you are completely not weak. It will take time but you have that darling . This is something that will improve your life immensely and is worth sticking with. 

My days fluctuate, my fighting strength or negative emotions, and so will yours but it is fighting on the worst days that will bring you the most benefits. 

You can do this. You matter. You you you, focus on you. 

Nature or Nurture: Which Most Impacts on Mental Health?

I began the 30 Days Mental Illness Awareness Challenge on my recovery Instagram (but have since deleted the posts as they did not fit in with my feed; damn aesthetics hehe).

But I came across this question and immediately made a note so that I could post it as a blog entry instead.

Do you believe nature (biology/physiology), nurture (environment), a mix, or something else has an effect on mental health?

This was a very important question: one that is very strong in my own recovering mind and one that link perfectly with this blog and its theme.

Personally I believe it is a mix; a potent mix of bad and harmful things to create something as dreadful as mental illness. From my own experience with my mental illnesses, it was definitely much more to do with nurture and the surroundings and company I found myself in, but this may be because it is (severe) Anorexia Nervosa that I mostly suffer with. An illness so naively promoted all over the internet as a poetic fad diet: pro ana breeding and spreading like a bacterium disease, feeding on the negativity of humankind and seemingly nothing else but ice cold waters (goodness I hope you don’t understand these references).

It is most likely dependant on the mental illness itself: whether it is post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD or OC traits), or any number of the others that inflict daily, endless pain on the sufferers and victims of itself.

To give you an insight and make this post more personal, I’ll relate it to my own struggles:

I have always been underweight. Always. Varying degrees admittedly, but I have never been a healthy weight, especially not as a child stuffing her face with Fruit Winders and Happy Hippos and unbuttered white bread slices, one after the other. This was due to my super speedy metabolism (which I still have now, but perhaps not as much). This meant that there has always been some sort of obsession with my weight and size: as if other people couldn’t comprehend how I was so thin, or rather how I “stayed so skinny”. I was bullied in my tiny primary school, that had 65 people in its entirety. I was called “lanky” and a “stick insect” and pushed into walls because I bruised so easily. This may not sound so bad, and in retrospect it wasn’t, but this meant that there was an awareness awoken in me of my body and my size. As if a metaphorical demon woke up that I could never turn off. This is when I started self- harming, but I didn’t even realise it at the time as I flung myself at the floor to skin my knees and develop “carpet burns” at the age of 8.

(Just a reminder, I will try to keep this as related to the subject as possible: so clearly a lot more happened in these years but this is focused on my development of Anorexia Nervosa. I have mentioned this before, but I also suffer from severe forms of depression, anxiety and self-harming ((but am now clean)).

In secondary school I was, again, a commodity. I was something to stare and revel at in the changing rooms. When the class was weighed individually in fitness (part of the P.E curriculum), people would crowd around me as I stepped on the scale or just after to question my weight and gawp at my BMI that was dangerous to begin with but dropped another 2.0 or more as the monster took over. I began to become aware of myself even more, and as the natural process of development and puberty began, I was bewildered at the tiny differences that were all consuming in my head. I was developing two years after everyone else, and after all of this attention that I received for my size, being glorified and liked for being so thin, I began to wonder that if I were to lose more weight, would I be liked more? “OF COURSE! LOSE MORE WEIGHT. MORE AND MORE AND MORE.” Piped up the awakened demon which manifested itself into Anorexia over years. In the midst of all this of course was the revolting world of pro ana on Tumblr, mentioned in my previous posts.

Super long, stressful and traumatic story short, one thing led to another and I was not liked for being thin, I was worried and gossiped about. I was gawky, I was disgusting, I was fainting up to once a day. My heart was failing and I was rushed into hospital where I began my really rocky path to recovery. (Almost typed rocky road there hehe. )

Literary perfectionism hates the way that the above was worded, but I wanted to shorten my story as much as possible as it wasn’t particularly the subject of the post.

The point that I wanted to make with the above point was: did my mental illnesses develop because of nature or nurture?

For me personally: both.

Would I have been bullied for being so “lanky and thin” if it hadn’t of been for my genetics of growing tall so quickly?

Would I have become aware of my body at such a fragile, young age if it weren’t for this bullying?

Would I have been paralysed with fear of gaining weight and of losing my poisoned “popularity” if I wasn’t glorified at the height of my illness, then discarded like rubbish as soon as it “went too far”?

Perhaps most importantly: would I have even known how to lose the weight, or even wanted/felt the need to if it weren’t for society: modelling, pro ana and the typical trash talking teenage girls in the changing rooms?

One thing leads to another in this world. But the journey would not have begun at all if it hadn’t been for my natural genetics: something out of my control.

I wanted to know what you thought about it, and I’d certainly love to write another post about it.

Do you believe nature (biology/physiology), nurture (environment), a mix, or something else has an effect on mental health?

Think in depth about it: how did it affect your own journey or those around you, or even what do you predict is the truth?

Poison (Cinquan)

What is

it like? Never 

fretting of calories; 

Of having no poison inside 

your brain. 

Naivety: Not “Looking Like” A Mental Illness

How can you ever say that someone “doesn’t look like they have a certain disorder”?  And more specifically a mental disorder. 

Let me repeat that for you: a MENTAL disorder.
A disorder of the mind, of chemical imbalance and of overwhelming irrationality that may even have been hereditary. There is all too often no outstanding reason that a mental illness develops, which can make recovery the hardest thing imaginable, having nothing at all to pin the feelings and thoughts on. 

So try having those horrible exasperating feelings internally, and then being shunned by the outside world (society) and having them disbelieve your distress! 

“Well she doesn’t look anorexic…” 

Screw you. 

“Well she doesn’t look like she has lung disease…” 

Why does mental illness need to be justified with physicality’s? It does not. That it is why it is a MENTAL illness. 

And yes, some often are characterised by physical differences, but the internal distress can never be measured through appearance. You will never ever know unless you are the unique sufferer. Likewise you will never know how someone else with the same illness as you feels: we are all affected in different ways, more/less intensely, for different reasons, for different triggers. We are all completely different. 

So someone with an eating disorder who has not lost as much as someone else, is not suffering any less. Someone who has gained more in recovery is not suffering any less. 

I found this picture on Pinterest to back up my ongoing argument that is so poignant and true: 

    

It is the same with other mental illnesses. You may not think that someone is depressed because they are not the poetic melancholy you see in the films. They laughed?
“They are definitely faking depression, I saw them smiling!” 

You may not think that someone suffers from anxiety because they are not curled in tightly like a wilting flower, clasping their own arms in terror of their surroundings. Because they aren’t shaking and crying for the length of the time they are venturing outside: if they even can do that, “clearly it isn’t that severe”.

It sounds so pathetic (to me certainly as I’m typing this) but this happens all of the time. 

A mental illness cannot be measured as a physical illness can. 

Even in answering manufactured questions “on a scale of one to ten…” (Pah!) a person can never be diagnosed as accurately as a physical problem can in the doctors surgery. 

Every day for someone suffering from a mental illness is different. Every day there are unique triggers; thoughts that arise that may have been hidden behind the other mental fog for as long as months, that suddenly make an appearance for that one day of the questionnaire. All too frequently it is the day after, or the minute after you have left the therapy session and you are falling apart on your own. 

But how can you be? This test was designed by a chief psychologist and you aren’t at the severe clinical level! Get out and stop moping around. 

In other words: go and make yourself more ill in order to get better. 

What I am trying to say is, you will never know how someone is suffering. You will never know how severe the illness is, and perhaps never know at all. A person cannot be judged. A person should not be demeaned and trampled on because they do not “look” ill: because that is an impossible feat to achieve. 

Mental illnesses are internal and unique. 

Internal and unique. 

Glamorising Mental Illness and Harmful Behaviours: Channel 4’s Drama Series “Skins”

This post is again raising awareness of how mental illness is wrongly portrayed. It links back to my previous post relating to promoting mental illness on Tumblr..

I have personally watched the drama series Skins (4/6 seasons). I watched them with ecstasy as I fell in love with each character and their unique representations. But I watched this as my own world was crumbling and as my severe Anorexia (Nervosa) developed, the familiar characters plastered over Tumblr were there to reassure me that this behaviour was all fine and dandy. This post, although it may seem to be straight forward “slagging off” of the show, is to raise awareness of over glamorising in the TV and media. This is not the way mental illnesses are. At all.

This is but one television series’, labelling people and judging them. Using mental illness in order to make their characters more quirky and exciting; and therefore for them to be spread around on Tumblr and other, similar websites.

In the programme, “Skins”, a fictional UK drama on Channel 4, we follow the lives of multiple teenagers throughout two years of sixth form. This has never particularly sank in for me until now as I type, having received my GCSE results less than a week ago and being at the fragile age of 16 facing sixth form or college to further my education.

Nearly every character in this drama had something “wrong with them”, either in the form of a mental illness, an unstable relationship or drug abuse. Yes, every character, as if mental illness in teenagers is compulsory and something everyone goes through as if as a hormonal phase.

Hannah Murray played the fictional character Cassie Ainsworth, who struggles with an eating disorder, suicide attempts and the abuse of illegal drugs. She was only sixteen herself when she applied for the role, wearing a watch around her ankle and unusual clothing style and was immediately cast. Is this really what a growing mind should be subject to? Exploitation of her thin frame; remembering full scripts of melancholy lines relating to negative aspects of life, trivialising illnesses that kill 1 in 5 sufferers ,all whilst studying for A levels?

The programme not only showed mental illness, but encouraged and promoted it. In one memorable episode, Cassie showed her love interest how she got away with not eating at home by completely showing a pro-ana tip. But that was just the tip of the iceberg, as every episode had more than one negative quote: now a black and white photo radiating through Tumblr, poisoning the minds of everyone that comes into contact.

“I didn’t eat for three days so I could be lovely” and “I stop eating until they take me to the hospital” are just two of the horrible quotes that came from this show. Promoting unhealthy means of weight loss and the unhealthy need to be ill and striving to be this way. This character, and indeed actress was only sixteen! She shouldn’t have these thoughts at this age; and in an ideal world: never.

The show not only promoted eating disorders, but suicide and drug use. “[Do you remember when] you rode in the ambulance with me when I tried to kill myself? … That’s what love feels like.”

Excuse me, what?!

When they did delve deeper into the eating disorder problem, they used unrealistic references to inpatient care. They made it, once again, fun and made fear foods of Anorexic patients almost laughable. Cassie smiled and shrugged away the fact that she could eat a certain food. I watched this in secret merely months before I was rushed into hospital, threatened with a section, forced onto bedrest for an entire month and quickly transferred to inpatient care for a 5 month stay. In all honesty I left with a worse mind-set than when I entered. Inpatient care is traumatic. It is an every-day struggle: surrounded by nurses, NG’s insisted and forced when a meal was refused, patients and close friends of mine attempting suicide and being violently restrained. It was not the façade that the media portrayed it as, with peppy quotes of hiding weights in underwear. In reality patients are weighed in hospital gowns without any underwear at all, not even suspicious hairstyles. I could fight this out until my voice has all but disappeared; I am so desperate to defy these LIES.

Perhaps what angered me most about this character and her portrayal, was that the show created an unnecessary “therapy video” which they uploaded to YouTube and other video websites. This showed Cassie sitting outside telling people in less than three minutes, that she “hated her thighs”, and that she “liked people who don’t smile”.

Why?

Were the creators of the show aware that their quotes had thousands of “reposts” and “likes” in such a negative aspect? That their character was a main promoter of Anorexia Nervosa, Bulimia, suicidal thoughts and depression?

Did it seem rational and moral to create an unrelated video to fuel the horrors on the dark side of the internet?

I need you to know that this is so wrong. That these are all lies. That programmes like these should not be made, and yet they continue to be made every day: creating more and more lies. Lies lies lies lies lies.