A Day in the Life

So, it's going to be my birthday soon. I'm going to be 37 in just a few days. Unfortunately, though, I still feel as if I have the mental age of an 18 year old, while my body, on the other hand, feels about 67. I think, largely due to being ill for a long time, I have a strange relationship with my age. I feel as though I've been living in a dream world for around fifteen years and have suddenly woken up, only to find my brain still working quite actively, but, as I say, my body steadily falling apart. Due to this "experience" I don't share alot of common ground with my peers. While they have jobs, mortgages and marriages, I have blogs, recovery groups and seemingly endless free time. Some would say I was lucky, not to have to face the usual rat race, nose to the grindstone existence, but being in this position is alienating nontheless . Indeed, many of my old friends used to say to me that I had become a "waste". A waste of talent, a waste of oppor...

I don't know about you, but I've always had a vague mistrust of psychiatrists. For one, just simply the fact that they, along with GPs and social workers, have the power to put you involuntarily into hospital, I find a little scary. All that authority. To potentially have the ability to curb some one's liberty without their consent. I don't know whether I'd want such a big responsibility myself. And it wouldn't be so bad if they didn't get things wrong seemingly much of the time. I only have to look at my own history of mental distress to understand that psychiatry can often be a game of hit and miss. I believe this is largely because the view point of the psychiatrist is subjective and largely unscientific. It is, for the most part, sheer guess work. So when a psychiatrist tells you that he or she is scientific and objective in his approach, don't believe him or her. At this point, he or she will probably tell you that you're exhibiting signs of ...

So, it appears that my addiction problems are not yet over. This is the third blog I've written in, what, a week or so. I have never done so many blogs in quick succesion. I am writing this very early in the morning as I cannot get to sleep. Maybe that's the real problem. I wake up at 4am with nothing to do but get on my blog. Anyway, thought I would use this one to print another poem. You've had the political and the depressing, so thought this time I'd get romantic. Hopefully though the poem is not overly sentimental, but speaks of true, deep feelings of regret and loss. You will also notice that in it, I use the phrase "tread softly", which if truth be told I kind of nicked from the great Irish poet William Butler Yeats. So, what is this? Downright plaigirism? I hope not, because Yeats' estate might sue me. Instead, I like to think of it as postmodern intertextual referentiality. Bit of a mouthful, I know, but you know the sort of thing, that all texts ...

Hello friends, people, masses and multitudes of the lonely. I write this because somehow I get the feeling that many of my blogging pals (I say many, I think maybe I have two if I'm lucky) suffer from a bit of a sense of isolation and loneliness. I can just see all of us beavering away at our keypads but longing for some real interaction with people. As I have said before, it seems that this sort of thing is prevalent amongst those who have experienced some form of mental distress and through the evil machinations of stigma we begin to loose our friends and sometimes even family. So where to turn. I know that I, for one, use my blog as a means of both writing down my feelings and getting in touch with others. Leaving comments,etc. is rewarding and it always lifts my spirits when I get one or two comments left on my blog. In fact, I have been visiting my blog site more and more often recently and think that I may have become somewhat addicted. So, what is the nature of addiction? We...

It is Wednesday morning and it is very early and the reason I am awake and writing this blog is because I've just found out that Barack Obama has won the US election. This is, then, a momentous occasion- the first African-American to make it to the White House. I often talk about the prejudice and stigma of mental health on this blog, so I thought why not extend that principle a little because this decision on behalf of the American people is indeed an historic one. Just think, for example, how far things have come since the early days of Booker T. Washigton and W.E.B.DuBois, or for that matter from the later civil rights movements of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, when America seemed truly divided along the lines of race. It just shows that things have truly progressed and I'm sure many not just in America but across the world will see this decision as a new ray of hope. Indeed, it has come at a time when America's popularity in the world has been waning and its credibi...

Just a short blog this time to say that I may be about to become a film star. Well, sort of. As I am part of the Pathways to Recovery group at the Bennett Centre, I will be involved with the making of a film to show the experiences of the long-term mentally ill. Most of us at the group have diagnoses of either schizophrenia or manic depression and we have decided that the film should be there to promote an understanding of our experiences of those illnesses. There has already been many ideas thrown into the ring about what the film should be about and look like. Many have mentioned the isolation and loneliness they feel, our difficulty in forming lasting relationships or indeed, any relationships at all. But despite this we all seem to feel that the film should also portray a message of hope, that there can be light at the end of any long and dark tunnell and that recovery, coping, living and achieving with such diagnoses is possible. The film, I think, will be funded by the council an...

Thankyou again for your comments on my last blog. I will definitely get back to you. This time I was going to talk about some of the work we are doing at MAGMH as I am finding it particularly interesting at the moment. We are currently researching the possibilty of changing the name of schizophrenia to something a little less stigmatizing. I say a little less, what I really mean is alot less, as I'm sure we all know about the prejudices that surround "that word". Anyway, if you don't know, I shall inform you- consider it educational! For a start, and in no small part due to sheer semantics, people often confuse schizophrenia with a "Jekyll and Hyde", split personality. Of course those of us who know better, know better. But that doesn't stop the general public confusing the condition with something that is more like dissociative identity disorder. Such misunderstandings lead to misattribution of anti-social bahaviours and stigma. Secondly, many of us ima...