The Blog

 

The Mighty is a really awesome site (and i’m not just saying that because they’ve shared my blog, i’ve 100% recommended them before) for bloggers to share their experiences on not just mental but physical conditions too. The site is a great way of tapping into resources around particular conditions as you can sign up to follow specific bits so you’re not bombarded with a huge sites worth of intense material. People share some dark moments but also some very real stuff around the implications of meds on travelling or access to benefits (i personally strongly relate to anything that comes up on the idea of ‘looking sick’). So it’s basically a great platform for bloggers, a great resource for those who want to learn more and a great way of connecting with those that share some of your experiences. Continue reading ‘The Mighty’ just shared my blog – kinda cool…

Hello lovely people, i’m simply going to keep sending this round in the run up to October so that i ensure it reaches as many people as possible!

It feels like miles away but October 10th is mental health awareness day and so for the month of October i would like to invite you to guest blog about your own experiences. For those who might feel nervous about writing a chunk of text we can work together to make it more manageable and break it down. For anyone who feels like getting creative i’d love any art work, poetry or vlogs! This isn’t limited to Bipolar, i’d like to welcome entries from everyone including friends, family and carers. The plan would be to release these out over the month depending on how many i get through!

I’ve got some awesome people on board (and i’m only mildly biased) already so if you’d like to share your experiences please send me a personal message and we can have a chat.

Please feel free to invite others who may not be part of this group!

(https://www.buzzfeed.com/kirstenking/have-you-tried-herbal-tea?bftw&utm_term=.hpWgzz8qKq#.bpDGEEwq4q 10/09/2017)

So I have a love hate relationship with my psychiatric medication in the same way I have a love hate relationship with my contraceptive pill. On the one hand I take it and I know it does me some good and on the other I feel like I am stuffing mini chemicals into my body that will one day turn out to be killing me slowly. A couple of years ago I broke up with a boyfriend and decided it was the perfect time to come off the pill and give my body some au naturelle time, what actually happened was I got horrific PMS, breakthrough bleeding and acne. Turned out my body was kind of keen on the pill after all. Continue reading Medication Oops

 

I really feel for the Police, a few weeks back i talked someone off a train track, she told me she didn’t want to die but needed help and it wasn’t being offered, she wanted a short stay in Hospital to keep her safe whilst she got through a low but she was being turned away on the grounds that she was becoming over reliant on services. People we should live in a world where if someone says they are not safe they can access fricken services! When the Police arrived they told me they had collected this lady from a bridge that morning and taken her to Hospital where she had been placed under a section and discharged later that day. There’s a dark joke amongst the mental health community that the only way to get into a Hospital is to say you don’t want to go in and believe me it’s a well known joke for a reason. Once i’d chatted to the lady and she’d calmed down i asked the Police what we could do, they told me the only thing they could do was to take her back to the general Hospital to be readmitted, reassessed and then hope it was decided she should be sent back to the mental health Hospital. Not only an enormous waste of resources but a huge stress on someone who was already distressed. The Police felt helpless, they didn’t have the authority to make the call she needed, all they could do was pick up the pieces. One policeman was great with the woman and really relaxed her but the other kept pushing her to take her medication when she told them she hadn’t taken it that day, she wasn’t listening to the fact that she took her medication at night and it was only 5pm. It must be so difficult without in-depth mental health training to know how to handle these situations, particularly when your say is irrelevant in the end result. Because of huge cuts to services it’s now harder than ever to access the support you need and people have to push to greater lengths to be heard, either by committing crimes or risking their lives. The statistics in this article are pretty shocking and it’s definitely worth a read to understand the impact the cuts are having on the Police force.

For a link to the article click here

Hello lovely people, i’m simply going to keep sending this round in the run up to October so that i ensure it reaches as many people as possible!

It feels like miles away but October 10th is mental health awareness day and so for the month of October i would like to invite you to guest blog about your own experiences. For those who might feel nervous about writing a chunk of text we can work together to make it more manageable and break it down. For anyone who feels like getting creative i’d love any art work, poetry or vlogs! This isn’t limited to Bipolar, i’d like to welcome entries from everyone including friends, family and carers 🙂. The plan would be to release these out over the month depending on how many i get through! If you’d like to share your experiences please send me a personal message and we can have a chat.

Please feel free to invite others who may not be part of this group!

Hello lovely people hope you’re having a wonderful Sunday evening. It feels like miles away but October 10th is mental health awareness day and so for the month of October i would like to invite you to guest blog about your own experiences. For those who might feel nervous about writing a chunk of text we can work together to make it more manageable and break it down. For anyone who feels like getting creative i’d love any art work, poetry or vlogs! This isn’t limited to Bipolar, i’d like to welcome entries from everyone including friends, family and carers :). The plan would be to release these out over the month depending on how many i get through! If you’d like to share your experiences please send me a personal message and we can have a chat. Please feel free to invite others who may not be part of this group!

Hello guys! My wonderful friend Naomi is doing an awesome vlog series (when i try to do these i sound like a small posh child, she is both witty and wise) on mental health and has opened up the floor for any questions. She is a particularly good fountain of knowledge on personality disorders but is basically a very intelligent articulate lady so ask her anything mental health related. P.S she also always has very cool hair and makeup so there’s that too…

You can find her at Fat Fashion Films on Facebook 🙂

 

 

WRAP plans or ‘wellness recovery action plans’ are one of those tools that sound slightly happy clappy but are actually quite useful. My first experience of WRAP was at day Hospital where I attended a group on it because it was that or be bored watching TV in the communal area. As you will already know from previous blogs day Hospital was a life saver but also pretty dull and consisted of a lot of TV watching. I knew I was required to do a WRAP for my discharge so I figured it might make sense to attend and save myself awkwardly and painstakingly going through it with my care worker who was in his early twenties and seemed panicked by anything I did that didn’t correlate with his textbook. Mine is now tattily stuck to my fridge covered in so many magnets it’s not quite legible but as I’m having a tricky time at the moment I figured I’d get it out for review. Continue reading It’s a wrap! (but not in the theatrical sense…)

ERRRRR what? A super cool idea! Transport for London has created a map that shows you which tube lines are underground (apparently more than half are not!) and if so where on the line they are. The map takes a second to get to grips with but the idea is that for those who find the whole under-the-ground bit of the underground challenging you can plan your routes to avoid these areas. Continue reading The London Underground Stress Free Map