Visible Mental Health Awareness

Not all mental illnesses are invisible.  Not all physical health issues are visible, either. 

I believe that we need to spread awareness about mental health issues, but most of the campaigns out there are selective.  They ignore the “not so pretty” aspects of mental illness, and this is unacceptable.  It does not lead to true awareness, and can actually lead to increased ignorance and discrimination.  It can do more harm than good. 

Handwashing in OCD can cause visible damage, which in some cases is long-term, and even permanent. 

Many forms of self-harm, ranging from cutting and other related forms of self-injury, to eating disorders, leave visible scars and effects, which may be permanent, to varying degrees. 

More understanding and compassion in society, and less shunning, would help. 

Depression: A Message of Hope

If you are in a dark place with your depression - even feeling suicidal - please know that it does get better.

Realistically, it also gets worse again. It is a cycle. Just hold on. You are not alone, even if it feels that way.

I have been, and am, going through my own dark times. That is why I haven't been posting much on here. Also, I don't feel that it helps me, or anyone else, if I only ever use this blog to rant at length - and I am not even up to doing this at the moment.

Keep going as much as you possibly can, and recognise your own achievements, however small. Try not to be hard on yourself for not achieving more.

Sending love to anyone out there who is struggling right now, and reads this post. Please take care. There is hope. I believe in you.

Semi-diagnosed: Discussing "Borderline Personality Traits" and "PTSD Symptoms"

Is being diagnosed with "Borderline Personality traits" and "PTSD-like symptoms" enough to entitle you to support for trauma-related mental health issues?  

And I mean, if these are actually your main mental health problems, along with depression?

Why is it that it still doesn't feel as though I have been properly diagnosed with anything in this area?

And why is my OCD not "OCD-like symptoms"? There are so many aspects of OCD that simply aren't relevant to me.

It's so confusing. Why is it made so ridiculously hard to get the help that you need?

Not Everything is "My OCD" Just Because I Have The Label!

Honestly, this drives me crazy - yes, even crazier than I was to begin with. 

The mental health so-called "professionals" select one of your mental health issues, which they consider to be the "main one", usually the one which is most visible. 

In my case, my OCD causes obvious physical symptoms - damage to my hands from over-washing them. It could therefore be said to be the most "visible". 

I have actually only had OCD, to any extent, since 2008, and it is not, and never has been, the mental health issue which causes me the most distress. It is more of a manifestation, rather than my underlying problem. 

Anyway, the "professionals" then perceive anything and everything as further evidence of the illness, on which they have chosen to focus, even if something relates much more to another mental health issue, or is not even a mental health problem at all, but just part of your personality.

People with OCD are actually allowed to have personality traits that are both obsessive and compulsive, but are not part of the OCD. 

Also, as I stated in a previous post, not everyone with OCD has every type of OCD. I certainly do not.

I don't want to ramble too much in this particular blog post, as I have written quite a few longer blog posts. I just felt that I needed to make this point.

Thank you for reading this. Please also check out my poetry site or/and Facebook poetry page.

My Mental Health Diagnosis: Personal "Non-Assessment Appointment" Story

Finally, I am going to attempt to write this blog post. If you are reading this and haven't read my previous post regarding my mental health diagnosis, you might be interested in checking that out, as it gives more background about the situation which I am describing here.

Anyway, basically I have been trying, for some time, to persuade the mental health professionals to review my diagnosis. 

I had been under the impression that this was going to happen, and that I was going to be assessed for Borderline Personality Disorder, but this did not occur. 

The appointment with my psychiatrist and Community Psychiatric Nurse did take place, but we barely touched on the subject of BPD, and only then because I mentioned it, as they appeared to have no intention of doing so. 

They were more interested in discussing my OCD, as per usual, and trying to "push" medication at me. 

One pill suggested would make me gain weight - been there with that particular side-effect - and the other would cause diarrhoea, which is also not helpful, when you suffer, as I do, from IBS. However, I do give more details about this appointment in my previous post, so I won't ramble about it too much here.

As mentioned in my previous post, I did put my concerns into writing. 

When I eventually managed to get through to my CPN by telephone, she was extremely unhelpful, and gave me to understand that I was diagnosed with nothing more than depression, anxiety, OCD and "PTSD-like symptoms".

She said that she was "not prepared to discuss the diagnosis further", but did tell me that the psychiatrist would write to me and enclose a copy of the letter which had been sent to my GP. 

I did specifically ask her whether my agoraphobia diagnosis had also been removed, and she told me that I did not have agoraphobia because "you do go out". 

I currently go out on as many days as I can, although I remain very close to my flat.  However, I don't feel that it's necessarily helpful to take away someone's agoraphobia diagnosis the moment that the person is just about able to leave his or her home. 

I will probably write another blog post about my agoraphobia, or agoraphobic tendencies, as I feel that this subject needs more "space", in order for me to discuss it fully. I must admit that it is a little complicated, as my not going out much relates to my physical, as well as mental, health.

I did actually have two telephone conversations with the nurse, on the same afternoon, and the second felt more positive and constructive than the first, but I still did not entirely know what to expect from the letters which the psychiatrist would be sending. I could only wait.

Well, the letters arrived and, to be honest, it was not as bad as I had thought, or would have expected based upon what I had been told by my CPN, particularly during that first conversation. 

The psychiatrist seemed to have understood most of the points made during our interview, although there were still a few misconceptions, about which I know that I should write another letter, just to make matters a little clearer. I have lacked the motivation, so far, to do this, although I know that it is in my own best interests to do so. 

My official diagnosis now is recurrent depressive disorder, anxiety, OCD, Borderline Personality traits, and Post Traumatic symptoms, with panic attacks and depersonalisation. 

Although this does not cover everything, it is an improvement, and at least I have it in black and white, so that a week, year or decade later, they cannot change the words around and deny that the original ones were ever said at all, as has so often happened in the past.

I would recommend that anyone who has queries about his or her mental health diagnosis, or any aspect of treatment, should put these concerns into writing. That way, your letter has to be both answered at the time, and added to your medical files for future reference.

Thank you for reading this post. Please also check out my poetry site or/and my Facebook poetry page.

Misconceptions about OCD

What concerns me even more than a lack of awareness about OCD, is the fact that people think that they are aware, but are being given inaccurate information.

OCD, or Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, is an anxiety disorder, involving, as the name suggests, obsessions and compulsions. I am not going to go into detailed definitions, as many books and websites cover this area already, much more effectively than I am able to. I just really wanted to make a few points.

To begin with, OCD takes many forms. 

In my own case, I do excessively wash my hands, which is one of the main stereotypes. I worry about hygiene, but particularly anything relating to bodily fluids. Many people with OCD do not do this. They may not be obsessed with hygiene at all - or, even if they are, may deal with their obsessions in different ways. 

I do not alphabetically sort my CDs, or count tiles, or any behaviours of this nature. Others with OCD do, because they do not have the same type of OCD as me. 

Some people have many types of OCD, but I don't have most of them - only really the obsessions which I have developed relating to aspects of hygiene. 

It's also wrong to assume that any obsessive behaviour in someone who has been diagnosed with OCD, can be attributed to the disorder. People with OCD often have other mental health issues, which is true in my own case, and some of an individual's obsessive behaviours may result from the other illness or illnesses. It may also not be due to a mental health problem at all. Everyone has some "obsessions", whether or not the person suffers from mental illness.

OCD is not the same as OCPD, which stands for Obsessive Compulsive Personaltiy Disorder, and is a separate diagnosis, although the two overlap and have many features in common.

OCD awareness is not, in my opinion, helped either by television programmes which sensationalise the illness, or Facebook pages which go to the opposite extreme, quite possibly in a misguided attempt to rectify the negative image given by the programmes in question. 

A while ago, one of these pages did a "campaign", which involved continually posting photographs of healthy looking people, with positive information about their lives, and then a final line saying: "I have OCD." Whilst I can understand that they were trying to make the point that people with OCD are not "freaks", and that you might not even know about the illness just by looking at the person - without any actual information about OCD, and how it does impact upon the lives of sufferers, this does not spread awareness and is, at best, irrelevant. 

Also, in the real world, OCD can be very visible, and it might not do people any harm to look at hands like mine, since that would quickly dispel any myths about OCD being "glamorous". 

Moderate to severe OCD, as with any mental health issue, has a much more debilitating effect on the lives of sufferers than milder cases of the illness. I would guess that many of the people who were represented as the so-called "faces of OCD" had milder forms of the illness, which is why they managed to live such full lives in spite of OCD. I cannot say for sure, however - since, as I mentioned before, no information was actually ever given relating to these people's experiences of OCD as such.

Thank you for taking the time to read this post.  Please note that I also have a poetry site and a Facebook poetry page.

Maladaptive Daydreaming and Dissociation

I have just discovered the term "maladaptive daydreaming", and I feel overwhelmed. I cannot believe that I have never heard of it before, as this is something to which I totally relate. 

I first heard the term in relation to Dissociative Identity Disorder, which I don't have, although I do experience dissociation, and many aspects of DID overlap with my own mental health issues. I have now done a search on Google, and there are people discussing "Maladaptive Daydreaming Disorder" or "MDD", although it appears that this is probably not yet an official diagnostic category.
 

I have been trying to piece together my own jigsaw, due to the lack of interest and support from the mental health team, none of whom will even seriously discuss my depression with me, since changing my "primary diagnosis" to OCD. I know that they often resent my attempts to investigate my own mental health, and to learn about mental health disorders in general, but I only want some answers, and to find out what is going on with myself. 

I am also interested in finding out about different mental illnesses, so that I am in a better position to help and understand others. 

I am so fed-up with hearing that people shouldn't "self-diagnose", with either physical or mental health problems. I wouldn't even be diagnosed with dyspraxia had I not first "self-diagnosed", later having the diagnosis confirmed by professionals. Self-diagnosis can be dangerous, but so can just "going along with" what you know to be an inaccurate or incomplete diagnosis.

Anyway, I am going to research "maladaptive daydreaming" some more. I don't feel ready to explain it yet, as I am only just discovering about it myself, although believe me, it is nothing new that I am hearing about. The only aspect that has come as a shock to me is that there is actually a name for something which I have experienced since childhood.

Self-injury

I am aware that self-injury is a difficult subject. It is controversial and widely misunderstood - and for many of us, addressing the issue can be emotional and deeply painful. 

I am also conscious that my last post was about depression. This blog was, and is, not intended to be exclusively about mental health. It is a blog about chronic illness, both physical and mental. 

However, the issues that are on my mind at a particular time will tend to be reflected in what I feel the need to write about, and this seems unavoidable. I have been thinking a lot about self-injury, and in a way, I need to write this post, in order hopefully to move on.

I shall start with the term "self-injury". Perhaps the more commonly used term would be "self-harm", and I must admit that this is the one that I have generally used myself. However, I am using self-injury here, as it is more specific. Self-harm is a broad term, which covers addictions, eating disorders, and so on, as well as self-injury. 

Self-injury usually refers to "cutting", although people self-injure in many different ways. I will only use the term "self-harm", for the purposes of this post, when I feel that self-harm, in the wider sense, is applicable to what I am saying. I hope that this is not too confusing.

Self-injury is not the same as attempted suicide, and this needs to be made clear. Many people who self-injure do have suicidal thoughts and feelings, and people who self-injure may also, at some point, attempt or seriously contemplate suicide, but self-injury in iself is not attempted suicide. It is a coping mechanism, although not a healthy one. It is a way in which people survive and deal with emotional pain, which they could not otherwise endure. It is particularly important that self-injury is not confused with attempted suicide, as this also leads to genuine suicide attempts being dismissed as "self-harm" or "self-injury".

As to whether self-injury is for attention - occasionally, yes - but usually not, and often people will be desperate to hide self-injury scars. People's motives and personal issues vary, but in my experience, most people who self-injure are not attention seeking.

People who self-harm are likely to suffer from depression or/and anxiety, but most people with depression or/and anxiety disorders do not self-harm. There is a much stronger specific associaton between self-harm and, for example, BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder) and DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder), both of which usually result from trauma, particulary in childhood.

It is a misconception that self-injury is either an exclusively "teenage issue", or an exclusively "female issue". It affects people of all ages, and males as well as females. This needs to be recognised so that more people feel able to openly discuss their problems and experiences.

I have not mentioned much about my own experiences here. I have "cut" in the past, but I don't currently, and I have never had a serious problem with cutting, compared to many others. I have mainly used another method of self-injury, with less severe, long-term consequences. I still use this method of self-injury at present. I am trying to reduce how frequently I do this. I wanted to discuss this subject, not only because of my own experiences, but because it concerns me in general, and because I do know others who self-injure.

I find it draining to write these blog posts but, if one person out there feels less alone as a result of reading my words, then it will have been worth the effort. I have felt so alone, with so many struggles throughout my life. Nobody deserves to feel that way.

Getting out and about

I had been hoping to write a post on why I find it so difficult to get out and about, which is due to various factors, involving long-term physical and mental health problems. I actually attempted to put these into some sort of logical order in my mind, by creating a mind map.

However, I begin to wonder how personal I want my explanations to be. I do have a tendency to be very open, which is generally positive, but I sometimes feel that I can be a little too open. This can leave me feeling vulnerable and exposed. Also, it does offend people on occasions, and although I can't, and won't, let this stop me from being who I am, I really don't like to feel that I have upset people, and I do fear losing friends. As well as these considerations, I don't particularly want to write blog posts that sound more like answers on a DLA form, or whatever they call those forms nowadays. (I can't always keep up with the constantly changing terminology, I'm afraid.)

Anyway, I may or may not write the blog post that I originally planned to write, but for now, I would just like to mention that, although I do struggle to get out, I am trying to overcome this, with some success. I don't get out every day, but my ideal would be to do so, and I get out as many days as I can, although usually only for a short local walk. I have recently managed to get the the hairdressers on one occasion, and to a local furniture store and cafe on another. These were significant achievements for me.

I did go for a short local walk this afternoon, but to be honest, I haven't achieved much else today. This is largely because I have felt depressed and withdrawn. Writing this blog post now means that I at least have something to show for the day.

Love and blessings to all of you, and I hope that I will have more productive days to tell you about in the near future.