Gum on My Shoe

In September I wrote a post about being an informal patient on a psychiatric unit . It is with great sadness that I am now able to write about life as a sectioned patient. Seeing it from both ends has been a real eye-opener for me. I came back into the psychiatric unit after only managing four weeks of discharge. I found those four weeks a real struggle: things happened and I couldn’t cope. I was first admitted as an informal patient after being on a section 136 by the police. Everything was going ok, but I had a few days where I struggled. I got really upset and angry at myself and ended up using destructive coping mechanisms. Unfortunately, this meant that on Friday 13th October—a day that is known to be unlucky—I was placed on section 3 of the Mental Health Act with no leave for three days. This was a shock to me. I didn’t expect the knock on my door asking me to attend an assessment under the Mental Health Act. I always thought I would be informal. As an informal patient I took ...

By Julie A. Fast People with bipolar are regular people with a rotten illness. The more you can help us find ways to manage the mood swings, the more you will see the real person behind the mania and the depression. It’s not all violets and fast cars when you’re friends with someone who has bipolar disorder. The day-to-day dragging on of mood swings and the constant vigilance we need to stay stable can take its toll on any friendship. Sticking to a plan is hard for us and you will regularly be amazed at how quickly we change our minds. Untreated bipolar can make friendships difficult. Trying to help a person with this illness can be like herding cats! Have I shocked you? I hope so. Being prepared for the realities of our lives will allow you to stay in a relationship that can be as rewarding and lovely as it can be frustrating. What is friendship? Why do we enter into a relationship with someone? What do we want and need from that other person and what do we expect from ourselves...

Last week I returned from a three week holiday in Italy. Because of my mental illness (grandiosely delusional psychosis and anxiety, more easily described as being ‘Crazy’—a phrase I am comfortable with) I haven’t been away from my hometown much since about 2004. These days I am so much better though, hence the bold move to leave my hometown for three weeks. I have put in a lot of work towards getting better, especially in my anxiety, and with some good luck as well, I have considered myself to be pretty much recovered since about 2016. In 2016 I flew to Ireland for my niece’s christening and in 2017 I flew to Holland for my cousin’s wedding, despite being afraid of flying, an endeavour that has the power to shake me to the core. These two trips were successful and enjoyable though, the flying was bearable, and they made me confident that I could safely enjoy three weeks in Italy, without my fading mental health issues getting in the way. I had a good time in Italy, we stayed a...

There are far more people than we can ever list by name, but those we are able to include represent a wide spectrum of experience, knowledge and expertise—and they have all believed in us. That is awesome—and humbling. As any author will tell you, compiling the acknowledgements is not the least part of writing a book! Whether you choose to recognise one person or one hundred (or none at all) it is a decision not to be taken lightly. We learned so much that we wrote a blog about it , in the hope authors might benefit from our experience and our friends and readers might understand how we went about it (and, perhaps, why they were—or were not—included). It is one year since our book, High Tide, Low Tide: The Caring Friend’s Guide to Bipolar Disorder was published. It seems an appropriate time to share our acknowledgements here on our blog. Acknowledgements We are grateful to writer, journalist, and mental health campaigner Rachel Kelly for her encouragement and support, and...

If you were going to write a book about your life, what would be the title? Who would you want to read it? Would you cover anything up? Would you expose an area of your life into the light? I want to lend you a story. It’s a story about life with mental illness but with none of the vocabulary you’d expect. You’ll read about depression, psychosis, mania, paranoia, anxiety and you will also read about recovery, finding being, mindfulness, healing, recovery. My favourite stories are those that you can relay to a child and the adult reader also finds depth of understanding beyond the literal narrative. Are yours? Well, I hope that The Flight of the Bumblebee does just that. In the last few weeks, I’ve added questions for individuals and book groups at the end of each chapter. I want to make it easier for you to have those ‘mental health conversations’. I find that when I have a metaphor to talk about, those chats are much easier to begin. “Have you read The Flight of the Bumblebee ? We...