A Day in the Life

It was recently reported that a former contestant on "Love Island", Sophie Gradon, aged only 32, tragically took her own life. After finding her body, her boyfriend, Aaron Armstrong, even younger at only 25, also later took the drastic action of ending his life. According to reports, only two weeks before her death, Sophie was said to have been in "good spirits", and there seemed to have been no cause for concern about her welfare. It was, then, a massive shock to her family and friends when her suicide was revealed. Indeed, Sophie, in any purely outward assessment, would appear to have had a pretty good life. Blessed with good looks and a burgeoning career as a reality TV star, on the surface everything would have seemed rosy. However, she had been on the receiving end of many hurtful and unsavoury remarks from online trolls, and indeed, had spoken about bouts of anxiety and depression. All was not, then, as it may have first seemed through the happy glare of tel...

"... in terms of opportunity, this would mean mental health professionals perhaps becoming involved in helping people achieve a life beyond mental health services by, for example, aiding them in gaining some form of employment or just engaging them in some form of meaningful activity. This may also have implications in terms of stigma and discrimination, a major barrier to opportunity, as service users would, perhaps, be able to rely on psychiatrists and others of professional capacity to join the fight against stigma." From my blog post, "Dave's Progress. Chapter 100: The Road to Recovery." Looking over my blog the other day, I came across the above, now apparently rather optimistic comment, and I was struck by just how much things have changed since I wrote those words. The post concentrated on the transition in mental health services to a more recovery oriented model, where the social rehabilitation of a service user would be seen as perhaps just as ...