World Mental Health Day 2012...and coming out

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Firstly, my apologies for the blog hiatus. Ironically enough, given today is World Mental Health Day, my reasons for going AWOL have been all about my mental health. I'd love to say it was because I've been off travelling and doing exciting things again, alas, it was instead due to an almighty mood slump that caused me to plummet back into the well. Cue days spent in salty tears and losing interest in absolutely everything. And I mean EVERYTHING. Getting out of bed was the biggest effort. Leaving the house was too much for me. I've willingly gone back on antidepressants, alongside my other bipolar meds, paroxetine this time - about the only one I hadn't tried! So far it seems to be helping a little, at the very least I am able to get up and about and am managing to venture further than my front gate ;) Let's call it a work in progress, for now. 

Until my F pointed it out in a text earlier this morning, I had no clue that it was WMHD today. To be honest, I'm not sure I even knew it existed. Does this make me a bad mentalist? Or does it just mean it hasn't been publicised enough in the run-up? Or have I simply missed all the action because I've not been on planet Earth much over the past month? Anyway, for all my fellow ignorants out there it's a real day! Not a PR stunt day like national macaroon day or celebrate printed tights month! An actual day dedicated to all things raising awareness and breaking down the stigma cloud we all walk under. Or something like that.

This years' focus is depression, that overused, vastly misunderstood and hugely misinterpreted condition. Depression is not 'feeling blue', nor is it about 'having a really, really bad day'; its a profound mental illness that scales from moderate to life-changing severe, that makes you lose hope, feel a huge sense of loneliness, guilt, shame and terror. It can be enduring, cause crises, breakdowns and suicide. It can steal the essence of a person away whilst they are suffering it. It can last months or years. Fighting depression and living with it is exhausting. Just in case I've not been descriptive enough then please check out a video by Matthew Johnstone for the World Health Organization all about depression:

The part about 'being emotionally authentic' has made a big impression on me. I've thus far written this blog anonymously. The truth is I didn't want people to know about my mental illness. I didn't want to shout about it to the whole world. I thought I could be more honest about being bipolar, about what has happened to me if I was faceless and nameless. But that in itself is exhausting. I have felt like I'm living two lives for most of my life - keeping my emotions hidden from all but the closest people in my life for fear I might be judged, that I might not be offered work if prospective employers googled me and a whole raft of information about me being 'that mental one' was the first thing they saw. Like it or not, there is still so much negativity and misinterpretation of people who are mentally ill. When people find that out about you they sometimes recoil because they have the image of 'loonies' rattling their chains in an asylum, or immediately think of horror stories of the mentally ill murdering innocent souls in broad daylight, or snapping and killing their whole families. A number of people just don't want to have anything to do with mental illness and are content to push it, and those suffering with it, away. And I'm scared of that happening to me. I'm scared of being rubber-stamped, of never getting writing work again, of never being able to work because of coming out about my mental illness. 

But I've realised something this week; nothing will ever change if we don't actively try to move it forwards. I want to change perceptions of the mentally ill. I'd like to educate people who don't understand what living with mental illness means. I want to help make people with mental illness see that however hard things get, there is always hope for the future. And I can't do any of that if I refuse to stand up and be counted. Gulp. So here goes: hello, my name's Hayley, and I'm proud to admit I suffer with mental illness, because there is nothing to be ashamed of. Welcome to my world. And to any trolls and haters out there, jog on.

me!