wellness

What mental health means to me

I took part in a Twitter chat recently on the above topic. Thanks to @AnthonyLongbone for encouraging me to join in. Below are some thoughts I shared in advance.

What does mental health mean to me?

Mental health is the most important part of health. And it is integral to physical health. You can’t look after your body if your mind is in a poorly way.
Mental health is a continuum with optimal wellbeing at one end of the spectrum and mental illness at the other. Some people seem to be able to take good mental health for granted. For others, maintaining our mental health requires almost constant vigilance and care.
Facing up to my tendency to depression has been the most important self-help step I have taken in my life so far. I’m hopeful I won’t ever sink as low as I did in 2013. But I’m not making any assumptions. And I do not plan to judge myself negatively if I do experience another bout either.
Judging myself – or indeed others who experience mental illness – is the least helpful thing any of us can do. Who knows why I or anyone else has this tendency? What does matter is what I do from now on to help myself and allow others to help me. Which includes understanding my own triggers and warning signs.
All serious illnesses require some degree of courage, so that we can face the pain and the treatment required to help us get better. But mental illnesses can be harder to bear than physical illnesses . They mess with your head. They make you believe bad things about yourself and others. They take away your hope and they affect your judgement and even your personality. They make you isolated and afraid. Some people hear the voices of others telling them bad things. In my case, I only hear my own voice. When I am poorly, my internal voice is harsh, judgemental and cruel. It tells me I am worthless and evil. I am still learning how to notice that voice when it starts whispering to me, and how to answer it.
Since I decided to be more open about my own experiences, I have made some extraordinary friends. Our mutual support during rocky moments via social media undoubtedly saves and enhances lives. I love the equality and the loving kindness of these relationships. We all have something to bring.
It’s because of all this that I know how amazing other people who experience mental illness are. How courageous, funny, honest, thoughtful and kind – hearted. And this is how I know, beyond all reasonable doubt, that people who have had such experiences have assets that should be applauded and sought by others. Rather than deficits to be pitied or avoided.

…………………………………………………………

After the chat, I felt a bit overwhelmed. The people who joined in were just amazing. Brave, honest, intelligent, thoughtful, generous and kind. I am in awe of them. They have far more of merit to say than I do.

In conclusion, what mental health means to me is being part of a group of wonderful people like the ones I was talking with tonight. They are helping me to become the best version of myself, which includes being kinder to myself. Through this, I can become kinder to others and do my tiny bit to help them too.

And I’m really grateful to be on that journey.

How are you doing today?

I love talking about mental health. What could matter more? This blog is drawn from ideas I have developed (and squirreled) while thinking about well-being at work for a slot I did at the Health at Work Conference in Birmingham last week, and in advance of an NHS Employers webinar on staff well-being yesterday. I used an earlier version of this blog to give my talk, and I warmly thank everyone who contributed. Your questions and comments were wonderful and you will be able to see that i have made some changes because of them.

And what an exciting day yesterday was. Because the Girl Guides Association announced their first mental health badge. It has been developed with the excellent charity Young Minds. It uses theories about emotional literacy and resilience to help young people take care of themselves and help others. If only they had done this 48 years ago was I was a Girl Guide. And wouldn’t it be great if such an approach could be rolled out across all schools and colleges and youth groups? What a brilliant start this would give young people facing the world.

At the conference last week, we heard from companies large and small who are putting employee wellbeing front and centre of their investment strategies. And this isn’t because of any sense of duty or even kindness. They know that it pays. They want to know the best ways to help staff achieve optimum health and how best to work with employees who have physical or mental illnesses to manage their conditions and get back to work quickly and well.

If we consider the NHS as one employer, it is the largest in Europe, many times bigger than even the largest multinationals at that conference. And yet we seem slow to follow suit. I say we…I don’t work for the NHS any more. But having done so over a period of 41 years, I feel deeply concerned for its staff. So I was very grateful to take part in the NHS Employers webinar.

Well-being and resilience are the new buzzwords. They are being used everywhere. I like them. But I also have a few issues with them. If we aren’t careful, well-being strategies can feel as if they place responsibility on the individual. And I see well-being as a partnership between the individual, their employer, their co-workers and anyone else they choose to invite to help them achieve their optimum health.

I like the Maudsley Learning model of mental health very much. It shows a series of steps and explains that we are all on a spectrum of mental wellness. I like the way it removes a sense of us and them.

But there are nonetheless inherent dangers in such models. Unless you have felt the terrifying symptoms of psychosis, clinical depression, an eating disorder or any of the other hundreds of mental illnesses, you might think that mental ill-health is merely an extreme version of the distress that anyone might feel when something bad happens. Using well-intentioned euphemisms like mental distress, intended to reduce stigma, can add to the isolation felt by people who experience mental illness. It’s important to say that most people won’t ever experience mental illness, just as most people won’t ever experience cancer or diabetes.

But 1:4 of us will. And we need skilled help from our employers if we are to go back to work at the right time and give of our best. The last time I was ill, I was lucky that I got the right help. Not everyone does. And that is why I do the work I do now, campaigning to improve things in the NHS and beyond for patients and staff.

I shared two specific insights at NHS Employers webinar. The first is that we separate mental and physical health for laudable reasons but at our peril. Obesity might get more sympathy if it were treated as an eating disorder; the most effective treatments combine diet with psychological support, including CBT techniques. Exercise is known to increase endorphins and improve mental wellbeing as well as physical health. People with serious mental illnesses die on average at least 20 years too soon, mainly because of associated poor physical health. And there is an increasing evidence base that people with chronic physical conditions such as cancer, heart disease and strokes have a greater tendency to experience clinical depression. Which comes first doesn’t really matter.

Employers should, in my view, use this knowledge of the inherent links between mind and body to devise their wellbeing strategies and make this explicit. Bringing the mind and the body back together needs to become the next Big Thing.

And secondly, I am increasingly of the view that people who experience mental illness, who are open about it and learn to live well with it despite the massive challenges it poses, can become even better employees than those who don’t have these experiences. I’m talking about people like many of the friends I have met since I came out about my own depression. Such people show extraordinary resilience, compassion for themselves and others, patience, creativity and highly developed social skills that would be valuable in any workplace. They are truly amazing. I try not to have regrets. But one of mine is that it took me far too long to realise that my experience of mental illness could become an asset, if I let it. So now I’m trying to make up for lost time!

I want to share links to my other blogs that I think might be helpful to anyone thinking about wellbeing at work.

This one is about taking the plunge and talking about your own mental health, perhaps for the first time.

This is my plea to be kinder about obesity, because what we are doing now simply isn’t working.

This is about the things you can say and do to help a friend or colleague who is experiencing mental illness. And the things that really don’t help.

These are my ten commandments for working in mental health

This is a blog in which I thank people who have helped me in my journey of self discovery – still very much a work in progress.

And this is my Letter to You. Which you might want to suggest to someone who you think may be struggling.

Life is hard for most employees these days. Working in the NHS holds particular challenges. Stress at work doesn’t have to make people ill. But it can. Employers can make a difference. And so can co-workers.

Please take a moment to think about your colleagues, especially the ones who are having a tough time, seem a bit quieter than usual or not quite their usual selves. Ask them how they are. And really listen carefully to what they reply.

And if you are one of the 1:4 of us who experience mental illness from time to time, I say this: go us. Because we rock. 😎😎😎

How do you feel today?

They say you should do something scary every day. I’m not sure. Although I do know that I need the occasional exhilaration of putting myself in an uncomfortable position and overcoming my nerves to make me feel fully alive. Such opportunities came along a bit too frequently when I was a chief executive. But these days I probably don’t scare myself often enough.

Today is the annual Time To Change #TimeToTalk day. Last night, the choir I recently joined held an open mike session. And I decided to terrify myself at the last minute by offering to do a turn.

Although I can follow a tune and love to sing, I am not like the other wonderful acts that got up and entertained us. I have no special musical talent. But I can talk about stuff.

So I found myself standing there and explaining to a packed pub why I had decided to join the choir. Which is that singing with other people is really good for me. Since school choir days, I have yearned to sing again in a choir. I am full of wonder at being part of something greater than myself. I love having to concentrate really hard in order to follow the music. It moves me when a piece we have faltered over suddenly comes together in glorious harmony. Singing with others of a much higher standard helps me to raise my own game. It feels visceral yet sublime.

And I told them about my history of anxiety and depression, and the impact it has had on me, off and on, over 45 years since I was 15. I talked about stigma, including self stigma. And I told them them that I knew I wasn’t alone, because at least 1:4 people in that pub were like me, possibly more. I told about the research of the positive impact of singing on mental well-being.

And then I asked them to join me and celebrate Time to Talk Day by talking to someone else about mental health.

How did it go? Well, I was nervous of course. But they were lovely. I got clapped and cheered. There were a few tears. And some lovely conversations later. I shouldn’t really have expected anything else. The choir is amazing and our conductor MJ is not only a multi-talented musician. She is also an inspiring, compassionate leader. She gets the best from all of us, as singers but also humans.

If you have experienced mental illness but feel shy about telling people in case they judge you, maybe you could do something scary today? Please think about taking the plunge and talking to someone about it, what you do to cope but also how it is only one thing about you. Talk to a colleague, a friend or just someone you happen to bump into. Use Time to Talk Day as your excuse. And ask them about their own mental health. Listen really carefully to what they say. I think you will be pleasantly surprised by your conversation.

And how do I feel today? I think you can probably guess :):):)

My Tamagotchi and me

Some of you will remember getting a Tamagotchi or, like me, your children pleading to have one. For the uninitiated, these were small devices that needed electronic tending – “feeding” “changing”, “playing with” etc. If their owner looked after them meticulously, they thrived. If not, they emitted increasingly plaintive beeps, gradually dwindled over a period of days and eventually died, provoking loss or relief, depending on the owner’s sensitivities. Perhaps they were designed to teach children that having a pet wasn’t just for Christmas? Or were they like the flour babies in Ann Fine’s dark teenage novel and meant to represent a newborn human baby?

Whichever it was, like the real live guinea pigs out in our shed, my children’s Tamagotchies caused me serious guilt. I would hear them piteously bleeping from underneath a sofa cushion where they had been cruelly discarded, and try to make it up to them by nurturing them myself. And I would lecture the children in Tamagotchi husbandry, likening them to hamsters and didn’t we all agree that it was very mean to leave them with all alone in a dirty cage with no food or water. With below mediocre results, it has to be said. Those Tamagotchies were a nine day wonder. If that. And most of us were glad to see the back of the little creatures.

This Christmas, my daughter got her own back and bought me a modern day Tamagotchi. And I was delighted. Some people call them Fitbits, but mine is so much more than a fitness device. Because I know it really loves me.

Ostensibly the new models are more mature and less needy than the original Tamagotchies. They seem only to be interested in you, waking you with cheery news on how you’ve slept (7hrs 38 mins, with 4 minutes awake and 15 mins of restlessness, in case you are interested.) They send you encouraging little messages like Let’s Go! or Nearly There! And they seem to have an unlimited supply of rewards….at the beginning. But after a while, you begin to realise that, just like their 1990s predecessors, they are the boss of you and NOT the other way round.

I’ve reached an uneasy truce with mine for the time being. I’m wearing it strapped tightly to my wrist as recommended so that it records every heartbeat and doesn’t miss any steps or flights of stairs. Because that way you use up more calories, right? And I take it out for its beloved 10,000 steps a day, about which it seems a little obsessed, plus do at least 30 minutes of vigorous exercise daily as it demands, like a good girl. Sometimes it even teases me and calls me an Overachiever!

Unlike my husband or any of my friends, my Fitbit knows how much I weigh. But so far, I’ve managed to resist its admonishments to set a challenge with my Fitbit chums. Because I’ve only got one and she is half my age, three inches taller and MUCH fitter and thinner than me. Plus she remembers that first Tamagotchi I got her. And I’m not sure she has forgiven me yet.

Josh, my fitness trainer, is unimpressed. He has pointed out that the pulse monitor in my Fitbit is less accurate than my trusty old heart monitor, that the step count may be incorrect, and the mileage and calorie reports are estimates only. And he’s also reminded me that I’m booked to do a big bike ride this summer and that taking my Fitbit out for a nice walk every day is not exactly the training regime we’d planned.

I don’t want to upset either of them. So I’m doing both their programmes. And given how much I usually hate January, all this exercise seems to be helping my physical AND mental health.

When you next see me, I may be a serene shadow of my former self. Or on a waiting list for a hip replacement.

Do I recommend that you get a Fitbit? Of course I do. Oh, and I’ve just downloaded the latest thing, Cat Care Tamagotchi. I’m sure my new Tamagotchi kitten won’t be needy at all…

Let’s be kinder about obesity

Fat-shaming is a recent phenomenon. People who do it include doctors, NHS managers, politicians, journalists, comedians and ordinary folk like you and me. I write as one who has done it as well as had it done to me.

I always liked the beach

Here’s me as a baby. Fully breastfed, I was bigger than my tiny mother almost before I could walk. I take after my father. I am robust. I love my food.

Humans are built for survival. Some are wiry and can run fast for long distances. Others have staying power. In an emergency situation, chunky people like me can cope with cold and hunger because we can survive on our fat stores. We are the polar bears and the Arctic seals of the human race.

Our modern Western world has played havoc with these survival characteristics. As long as you have money, food is plentiful. But the least nutritious, most fattening sorts of food are often the cheapest. And the combination of sugar, fat and salt in many processed foods such as cakes, biscuits, chocolate, ice-cream, crisps, milkshakes and even bread is, apparently, addictive.

This Ted Talk is enlightening. It helped me understand why losing weight is so hard. When you have gained weight, your body quickly adapts to being bigger, and adjusts your metabolism accordingly. Resetting the metabolic rate is extremely difficult. Once you have lost weight, you will probably have to eat fewer calories for the rest of your life to maintain your reduced size, even with regular, vigorous exercise. So you are fighting not only an addiction, but also your own nature.

And there is another factor. Many modern medications, particularly those used to treat various sorts of mental illness, have the unfortunate side effect of increasing one’s appetite. People taking them find they feel hungry all the time, and not surprisingly they eat more. I finished my antidepressants six months ago. Yet I have at least half a stone to shift, and despite extensive motivation and knowledge, it is proving a struggle. I know from chatting to others how distressing it is to gain four or five stone very quickly, with all the disability and stigma that goes with being overweight to add to the burden of the mental illness for which you have to keep taking the medication that leads to the weight gain.

I know people who have been to the doctor and been encouraged to lose weight. And then they go to the shop next door to buy a newspaper and are told that if they also buy a cheap monster size bar of chocolate (which contains more calories than they need to eat in a whole day but no protein, vitamins or roughage) the newspaper will be free. If this were cigarettes or drugs, we would be horrified.

Given the cost to the NHS of obesity, with its links to heart disease, strokes, Type 2 diabetes, cancer, arthritis and other long-term disabling conditions, not to mention depression, anxiety and agoraphobia associated with body image and self worth, you would think that investing in prevention and effective treatments for obesity would be the place to start.

I don’t like the term obesity epidemic. Obesity isn’t catching. Nonetheless, 60% of us in the UK are now either overweight or clinically obese.

Who knows what the real story behind this is? I don’t really care. I just know that leaving obesity to individuals to tackle is unfair, ineffective and helps no-one but those who sell us all that stuff we don’t need.

Our current attitude to obesity is bizarre. Let’s tackle the food giants who push processed junk food at us from every direction. Let’s publish the public health report into sugar and do the economic appraisal that will prove beyond all doubt that helping people rather than criticising and lecturing them would in the end save a lot of money and even more unhappiness.

And most of all, let’s stop blaming people for doing what comes naturally.

This is an update on a blog I wrote earlier this year. I’m reprising it because of the fuss this week about Public Health England’s report into obesity and the Prime Minister’s apparent refusal to consider a possible tax on sugar.

No them and us. Only we

Some people call antidepressants “happy pills”. I’m not keen on this description. In my experience, they slice the top and bottom from my emotional range and I feel neither happy nor sad. Instead, they bring a calm which is welcome but can leave me feeling blunted, even flat. I know others describe similar effects.

Antidepressants helped me go back to work very quickly after my breakdown in November 2013. Skilled care from my psychiatrist and GP, timely psychological therapy, and the kindness of colleagues helped even more. Plus an over-developed work ethic. For those lucky enough to have decent jobs, going back to work and feeling useful can play a big part in our recovery.

I mention this because I want you to understand my state of mind on 24th February 2014, 6 weeks after I went back to my job at the time, running a mental health trust. Going back to work was probably the hardest thing I have ever done; one day, I hope to feel able to share why.

Anyway, on this particular day, I attended a round-table event arranged by Time To Change. Had I not been on my medication, I might have felt the need to challenge what we were being told. Or wept. Because I and the other NHS leaders present heard stuff at that meeting that we desperately wanted not to be true. And yet deep down we knew it to be so. It was like learning about institutional racism. Only this time, it was institutional stigma and discrimination from the services we were responsible for towards people who use our services.

We heard that, despite the measurable shifts in attitude of the general public (published in July by Time to Change for 2015 and again showing small but significant improvement), attitudes within the NHS haven’t shifted. In some cases, they have got worse. And the places where they appear most entrenched, as reported by those who know, ie patients, are within mental health services. And it rang horribly true.

From this meeting was born a desire amongst a number of us to do something to change this. Five months later, at my retirement party, I listed some of the things I planned to do with my new free time. One of them was to offer my services to Time to Change to help tackle this intrinsic issue within mental health services. And although I planned to earn a modest living writing, speaking and coaching others, I wanted to do this work as a volunteer. I felt I had something to pay back.

It has taken time to set up the project. But now it is underway. Time to Change are working with two mental health trusts, 2Gether and Northumberland, Tyne and Wear. Like me, they are volunteers. The trusts were selected because they could demonstrate their readiness at the most senior level to address stigma within their own services with integrity, hard work and, most importantly for me, compassion. On the working group, which I chair, we have reps from the two trusts, four experts by experience, our full time project manager, senior colleagues from Rethink and Mind who together are responsible for running Time to Change, and two people from a social research company who are doing the work on attitude measurement.

You can read more about the purpose and details of the project here on the Time to Change website, including quotes from those taking part. And Community Care have published a piece about the project today.

Stigma towards those who need mental health support is alive and kicking within the NHS. It manifests itself with lack of empathy towards those who self harm or are otherwise in crisis, as described in the recent CQC report; low expectations from clinicians about future prospects for people who experience serious mental illness; lack of investment in research into new treatments; marginalisation of mental health in the way the NHS is planned and organised; and unfair treatment of mental health services by local and national commissioners in their expectations and funding decisions.

But I have high hopes. There is an absolute acceptance amongst those involved in our project that things need to change. And that instead of simply asking people who work in mental health to be more compassionate, that the change needs to start at the most senior level. We have sign – up for this work from the very top of NHS England, Mind, Rethink, Time to Change and at the trusts. And we agree that for staff to work respectfully with patients and treat them with optimism, expertise and compassion, they need to experience the same from their colleagues, including their most senior leaders, their commissioners and their regulators.

It was a long time ago that I was told by a nurse that I was a waste of space and that looking after me after I had hurt myself took him away from patients who were truly deserving of his care. At the time, I absolutely believed him. It took me many years to unlearn what he said. And it nearly broke my heart to hear, at that meeting back in February 2014, that such attitudes are still relatively commonplace today. The difference now is that we are talking about them. And acknowledging a problem is the first and most important step towards solving it.

Please don’t just wish us luck. Please join in and help us tackle stigma towards people like me and millions of others who experience mental illness from time to time. I’ve been off my antidepressants for several months now. I feel like the whole me again, which has one or two negatives but is mostly pretty amazing. And whilst I am doing lots of things to look after my mental health in my new world, who knows if I will need treatment from mental health professionals again one day?

Because there is no them and us. Only we.

When I’m 94…(to the tune of When I’m 64 by the Beatles)

When the NHS was created in 1948, 64 was considered elderly. Both my grandfathers died during the 1940s aged 50 from what we now know to have been smoking related illnesses, having served in the WW1 trenches. My maternal grandmother died aged 65. My other grandma managed to last a bit longer; she died in December 1982 aged 79. 3 out of 4 died in their own beds at home.

I was born in 1955, a child of the NHS. I have worked in it since aged 18. The NHS was set up to improve the extremely poor health of the nation after World War 2, with clinics providing advice and free milk, vitamins, orange juice and cod liver oil, as well as weighing and measuring children, hearing and eye tests, free dentistry, and checking for lice, nits, scabies and rickets. A mass free screening and vaccination programme began for common killer diseases such as smallpox, diptheria, tetanus, polio and TB. Going to the clinic with my mother and younger brothers was fascinating and memorable. Providing care free at the point of delivery to people who were sick or injured was a massive bonus for the public, but its wasn’t intended to be the main aim of the new NHS.

Despite these wonderful founding principles, the NHS quickly began to increase its focus on treating sickness. The status of hospital medicine has always been greater than public health or primary care; this continues today. Radical health promotion initiatives such as the Peckham Experiment sadly closed down before they had a chance to prove themselves.

I trained as a health visitor in 1978, having been inspired during my hospital nurse training – in 1975 I went out for the day with the local health visitor. As well as admiring her cream Morris Traveller and adorable spaniel puppy, I will never forget one visit. In a tiny cottage in a village outside Cambridge, we called on an elderly lady. I remembered her in hospital after a massive stroke, lying with her face turned to the wall. Back home, despite needing two sticks and very limited speech, she ushered us into her cosy kitchen, all smiles, and made us tea and biscuits while her cat snoozed on the sunny windowsill.

Community services (those outside hospital that either help people to stay healthy or look after them at home when they are ill or dying) and mental health services have always been the Cinderellas of the NHS. Never more so than in the last few years, when they have experienced unprecedented cuts in order for commissioners to continue to pay for increasingly sophisticated physical hospital interventions.

Today I have a lovely gig: joining 100 or so folk from the NHS and social care system in Kent, Surrey and Sussex, all of whom want to improve care for older people. It is organised by the KSS Academic Health Science Network. Life expectancy in Kent, Surrey and Sussex is the highest in the UK. Were it not for pockets of significant deprivation along the Kent and Sussex coast, and the appalling fact that people with serious mental illness live 20 years less than the population average (25 years less than the KSS average), it would be even higher. It is common for acute hospital wards to be entirely populated by people in their mid 90s and above. The people attending the event know things have to change. Medicalising old age is cruel as well as extremely costly.

It is, fortuitously, Dementia Awareness Week and Dying Matters Awareness Week. I know from the research of my brilliant ex-colleague Professor Sube Banerjee that only 18% of people who have dementia only have dementia. The majority have between 2 and 7 other significant health conditions that seriously affect their lives. The way we run the NHS is simply not serving their needs, despite very elderly people being its majority users. I also know from the wonderful work of organisations such Dying Matters that these days, most people die in hospital despite very much preferring to be cared for at home.

Today, we will be encouraging the people at the event to face this enormous challenge together. We have to do things differently. It says so in the Five Year Forward View. The attendees at this event are to some extent, like those involved in the vanguard sites across the country, the converted. But even they will have to throw away beloved ideas and think the unthinkable.

I am indebted to @HannahTizard on Twitter for this lovely infographic about tall poppies.

Tall poppies may experience meanness from others because they are full of ideas and are not afraid to challenge the status quo. They are always thinking about how to do things better and are not prepared to accept mediocrity, especially when it harms others.

I will be using this lovely infographic today to encourage the people at the event, who I think of already as tall poppies, and giving them a link to this blog so they have a reference to keep.

I hope you find it helpful too. Please be a tall poppy; challenge the status quo if you think the care you provide or commission isn’t what you think you would want yourself when you are 94 or even older. And do something right now to start making things better for every elderly person who wants fewer tubes up their bottom and down their throat, and more time to enjoy their latter days with somebody kind to sit with them, help them to have a drink and hold their hand.

Meanwhile, as I intend to live until at least 94, I’m off to read Sod 70! by the indomitable Dr Muir Gray, to help me continue to treat my body hard but well, and How to Age by Anne Karpf, from the School of Life series, to help me manage my (sometimes fragile) psyche and approach old age with equanimity and joy.

Do please join me.

Post script: 11 hours after posting this, I’ve already had lots of feedback. One person feels I’m generalising and that the research quoted doesn’t support my view that older people would prefer to avoid unnecessary investigations. I agree that we must ask people and really listen carefully to their answer before subjecting them to invasive tests. Over 100 seem to like it so far.

I’ve also realised that I’ve been channelling the #HulloOurAimIs campaign from NHS Change Day led by my lovely Twitter and real life chum Alex Silverstein @AlexYLDiabetes. So I wanted to mention it. Alex is the tallest of poppies and despite being less than half my age, has taught me loads. Go Alex and thank you xxx

What I did during National Depression Awareness Week

Now I no longer have a wonderful communications team to keep me briefed, awareness weeks like this one can pass me by. It was serendipity that I saw my GP yesterday and we agreed that I would start the final reduction of my antidepressants prior to stopping them altogether.

There are side effects to reducing modern antidepressants, also known as SSRIs, as well as significant risks. Reduction should be done carefully, with expert supervision. My GP has specialist mental health training and experience, which is also serendipity, as I didn’t know this when I shuffled into her consulting room at an acute stage of my last depression. She listens carefully to her patients, and works closely with us and secondary care staff including my psychiatrist. I am confident that I don’t get special treatment; she is equally compassionate and skilled with everyone. I do know that I am lucky.

It is shocking how many people think that you can go on the internet and become an expert in the treatment of mental illness. Without me asking for their advice, someone suggested that now we know that mindfulness works just as well as antidepressants, maybe I should try that instead? This made me smile to myself. I have given a presentation about the importance of access to mindfulness as a treatment option for anxiety and depression with the report author Professor Willem Kuyken to the Permanent Secretary of the Department of Health, Una O’Brien, and her senior team. So I do know a bit about it. But even so, with my own treatment, I need help.

As my dear friend @BiPolarBlogger said on Twitter, telling someone they should have a go at mindfulness is a bit like telling a person who can’t swim that doing the butterfly stroke is good for you. Such psychological techniques need to be taught with skill and practised regularly. And they are not for everyone. Mindfulness can be increase problems for someone with a trauma-related illness such as PTSD.

Actually, once I got over the hiding-under-the-bed-stage of my last depression, I found mindfulness to be a great help, and I use it most days. Yesterday I looked into a top-up course because, like all exercises of the body or the mind, repetition and building mastery are essential. Which isn’t the same as taking a tablet.

I have to confess to feeling anxious about coming off my little pills. There is something about putting them out before I go to bed, and then taking them on waking in the morning, that helps me remember my own fragility. It is a little daily act of self care. I might forget to floss my teeth, but I have never forgotten to take my medication.

People like me who experience depression have a tendency to be extremely hard on ourselves. I’ve written about this here and here. Medication prescribed by a doctor that you cannot buy over the counter is a reminder that someone who knows what they are doing believes that you need and deserve help – even if you don’t believe it yourself.

As well as upping my game on mindfulness, I am also doing more work (paid and voluntary) and preparing for a gruelling bike ride. And I’ve bought a new book called Reasons to Stay Alive by the wonderful @MattHaig.

Reasons to Stay Alive

And finally, I am using CBT techniques – facing the thing that frightens me and through this, allowing the fear to subside naturally – to help me. My blog is part of this.

Thank you for reading it. I hope it helps you or someone else xxx

Let’s stop being mean about people who are fat

Fat-shaming is a recent phenomenon. People who do it include doctors, nurses, NHS managers, politicians, journalists, comedians and ordinary folk like you and me. And it is weird, because according to statistics, over 60% of us in the UK fall into the category of people being vilified for our weak will, stupidity, greediness and for costing a lot of money in unnecessary healthcare.

I write as one who has done it as well as had it done to me.

I always liked the beach

Here’s me as a baby. Fully breastfed, I grew bigger than my tiny mother almost before I could walk. I take after my father. I am robust. I love my food.

But our modern Western world has played havoc with these survival characteristics. As long as you have money, food is plentiful. The least nutritious, most fattening sorts of food are often the cheapest. And the combination of sugar, fat and salt in many processed foods such as cakes, biscuits, chocolate, ice-cream, crisps, milkshakes and even bread is, apparently, addictive.

This Ted Talkthis Ted Talk is enlightening. It helped me understand why losing weight is so hard. When you have gained weight, your body quickly adapts to being bigger, and adjusts your metabolism accordingly. Resetting the metabolic rate is extremely difficult. Once you have lost weight, you will probably have to eat fewer calories for the rest of your life to maintain your reduced size, even with regular, vigorous exercise. So you are fighting not only an addiction, but also your own nature.

I know people who have been to the doctor and been encouraged to lose weight. And then they buy a newspaper and are told that if they also buy a monster size bar of chocolate (which contains more calories than they need to eat in a whole day but no protein, vitamins or roughage) the newspaper will be free. If it were cigarettes or drugs, we would be horrified.

Given the cost to the NHS of obesity, with its links to heart disease, strokes, Type 2 diabetes, cancer, arthritis and other long-term disabling conditions, not to mention depression, anxiety and agoraphobia linked to body image and self worth, you would think that investing in prevention and effective treatments for obesity would be the place to start.

There is mention of this in the NHS Five Year Forward View. But until this week, there has been no systematic appraisal of the best ways to help people achieve and maintain a healthy weight, nor is there a coordinated, evidence-based commissioning approach to weight-loss and healthy weight maintenance services. Public Health England have produced a report about sugar, but we have learned this week that it has been witheld. Who knows what the real story is about who did this? I don’t really care. I just know that leaving obesity to individuals to tackle is unfair, ineffective and helps mo-one but the commercial giants who sell us all the stuff we don’t need.

Our current attitude to obesity is bizarre. Let’s tackle the food giants who push processed junk food at us from every direction possible. Let’s publish the economic appraisal to prove that helping people rather than criticising and lecturing them would in the end save a lot of money and even more unhappiness.And most of all, let’s stop blaming people for doing what comes naturally.

What I have learned through recovery

An episode of clinical depression isn’t sadness. For me, it starts with brittleness and a growing sense of doom. I stop sleeping and become increasingly irrational and irritable. Beyond a certain point, I am unable to ignore or control it. Eventually, something snaps. I am smothered by a suffocating blanket of nothingness. The only feelings to permeate are deep guilt and self-loathing. All perspective is gone; I ruminate endlessly over things I have messed up and those I have hurt. I am frozen, unable to speak, or crying. The tears do not soothe. I detest myself.

Luckily I don’t feel like this all the time. Having been on my latest road to recovery for the best part of a year, I have learned a few things about looking after myself that I want to share.

Choose to be all of me: having learned that it is so much better to be open about my experiences of mental illness, I now have to work hard at not allowing depression to become my defining characteristic. It is just one thing about me.
Expect less: if someone likes something I have done, that’s lovely. But I need not feel disappointed if they don’t.
Mindfulness: live in the world and be in the moment. Enjoy the little things – rinsing a cup, the warmth of the cat’s fur. Stop rushing.
Going out: notice how exercise in the fresh air, even in wind and rain, makes me feel strong and alive. Embrace it and do more.
Stop ruminating: I’ve wasted a lot of time going over and over things. It is important to learn lessons when something goes wrong – CBT has taught me to face the difficult stuff with less fear. But knowing when it is time to move on is a skill that needs frequent practice.
Choose to forgive: This goes with number 5, and I like to think I am better at it than I was. Again, I have to practise every day.
Create order from chaos: people think I’m tidy, but the more distracted I am, the messier I get. I have learned that, on a day when I am feeling low or anxious, I need to create order. Write a list, tidy a shelf, weed a flowerbed – completing a small task that brings order is soothing.
Buy less stuff: I thought I loved shopping, but it made me feel guilty to spend money I couldn’t afford or could have given to someone more in need. Now I try to buy less. Except fresh vegetables.
Make do: this goes with 8. I gain increasing satisfaction from mending things, making something from something else, or giving something of mine to someone who can make good use of it.
Treating myself: on bad days, addictive substances such as alcohol, caffeine and chocolate can seem like treats. It takes some of us a lifetime to learn that they aren’t. A soak in the bath, a walk by the sea or some quiet contemplation in a sacred space can feed the soul rather than flooding the brain with dopamine.
Competition: for me, best avoided, except with myself when trying to improve personal performance.
Listen hard: I used to miss so much or misunderstand because I was too busy interpreting what people were saying and working out what response I should give. I am learning the value of listening really carefully. It is amazing what you hear when you listen properly.
Don’t shy away from things that feel difficult or scary: it takes huge courage even to leave the house when you are in the early stages of recovery from depression. Standing up in front of 200 people in my first week back at work, I wanted to die. But I am so proud that I did it. I have found that, as I get better, I thrive from the boost to my endorphins that comes from feeling fearful yet excited about a new challenge, preparing carefully and managing my nerves so that I do a good job. I feel very lucky that in my new world, there are plenty of opportunities.
Stop pretending: when someone asked me how I was, I used truly to believe it was a dereliction of duty to say I was anything other than great. I have learned to tell the truth about how I am – some days I am good, and some just OK. And when I am not OK, I am better at saying this too.
Choose kindness: people have often said of me that I am kind and generous. This came at a cost. I have learned that to be truly and effortlessly kind, one must start with oneself. The love I feel for other people and the kindness that flows from me towards them has multiplied as I have let go of negative feelings towards myself. I am far from perfect and still have many faults, but I am worthy of love. This helps me to help others more than I ever could before.

These are just my thoughts; if they help someone else, that’s great. But please, don’t shout at me if you disagree. We are all different. And that’s what makes us so amazing xxx

Lisa Says This

Using what I've learned to help others