A Day in the Life

For this blog I have decided, for once, to write about something that has nothing to do with mental ill health, but something which, at the moment, seems to have the nation divided, and that is the increasingly incredible story of Jade Goody. I write this blog particularly because of the enormous amount of hypocrisy I think is being displayed by the media, especially the supposedly fairer, more intellectual broadsheets. As we all know Jade shot to fame as a contestant on Big Brother. Perhaps she was best known, sadly, for the stupidity she seemed to display during her time on the Big Brother set. Despite this, though, she was a lovable character who, although she didn't win, made it through to the final stages of the show. Before we knew it Jade was all over the place, on the covers of magazines and newspapers, selling stories about her every day life. She also proved herself to be somewhat less stupid than she appeared, becoming an incredibly successful business woman and cleverl...

Throughout my experience of mental ill health, it has often been my misfortune to think of myself as a "bad" person. Indeed, it seems to be something of the nature of depression and illnesses like it that when you are in its throes you seem to automatically come to think of yourself, not necessarily as "mad", but most certainly as "bad". This sort of thinking came to its zenith with me when I began to feel as if I were not just a bad person, but an inherently evil one. However, as sanity and its clearer ways of thinking began to sink in, I realised that these notions of evil I had been carrying around with me were pure fallacy . As they often say at the "Changes" group, we might not realise it at the time, but "feelings are not facts", particularly the feelings we have about ourselves when we are ill. But this did all get me to thinking, what exactly is a "good" person? Indeed, does goodness and evil exist at all, in the bibli...