Six Tips For Going Home After A Hospital Admission For Mental Health Problems

September 5, 2016 / bornwithoutmarbles / 8 Comments

You know that feeling when you go to the cinema, watch a film, then leave the pitch black room of the movie theatre and step out into the light? Usually, if you have been seeing a film in the day time, the sunlight outside will be such a contrast to the dimmer environment you inhabited previously, that you end up blindly staggering around in a daze wondering where you are, how to deal with the situation, and why on earth that small bucket of popcorn you purchased cost £50.
That overwhelming sudden change in environment and resulting confusion is pretty much what it is like when you leave inpatient treatment in a mental health hospital for the real world after several months (though I admit, in that situation, you are a little less concerned about the price of popcorn in cinemas than the analogical version suggests), and this is one of the reasons so many people relapse the moment they leave 24 hour care.
In hospital, you are helped to manage your mental health problem in a very specific environment which, once changed, can make someone feel like they are mentally back at square one, home in the house with the same ghosts that haunted them prior to admission. Everyone knows that going into hospital is hard, but at the same time, there are moments when leaving and going back home doesn’t feel any easier. There is a lot of support out there for people who are due to be admitted, but not a lot of help for those on the brink of freedom, and when on the brink of anything (e.g a cliff or freedom), it is vital to have a parachute, a safety net, a plan, and that is what I hope to help you lovely people with in this post. So as someone who left hospital a mere six days ago themselves (it is a very long story that I won’t bore you with here, but in summary I kicked up a right fuss about being in hospital and have been allowed home on a Community Treatment Order, a full explanation of which can be found via this link to my post about the Mental Health Act…https://bornwithoutmarbles.com/2016/07/11/demystifying-the-mental-health-act-with-penguins/) here are a few nuggets of advice for how to deal with leaving inpatient treatment after a lengthly admission:

1. Make a plan and stick to it: When you are in hospital, there are usually a lot of rules and staff who enforce them. Your days are structured, and going from this very regulated, controlled environment to total freedom where you can do as you please, can be a frightening shift in responsibility. Therefore it is vital to make a plan and rules to stick to at home so that the change is less dramatic and you still have boundaries, rather than the secure bars of safety falling down around you and allowing your mental illness to run wild. Create a basic timetable to follow (not religiously, just to give you a sense of how to structure the days you are suddenly free to spend as you choose), and implement any non-negotiable rules from the ward at home. Follow the plan of recovery that you have been working on in hospital and don’t let your days be filled up by the to-do lists scribbled on the walls of your mind by your anxieties.

2. Take it one day at a time: Before going home it is important to acknowledge that making the transition is never going to be perfect. There are new challenges to face, and with that it is likely there will be little slip ups along the way (If you watched hurdles at the Olympics this year you will know exactly what I mean. Seriously those people were professional hurdlers and they still kept falling over and sending hurdles flying all over the place). The key however is to not see every set back as permission to revert to relapse or give up the race. If you mess up one day, start afresh the next morning and don’t let a bad hour spiral into another bad year. Treat mistakes like sand castles, make them, acknowledge them, whack a shell on top, and then watch the tides of time wash them away.

3. Keep Moving forward: Whenever I leave hospital I often find myself feeling that the geographical move signals a mental move in terms of recovery. When inpatient you are constantly being pushed to move forward, but when you go home it is easy to halt all progress and remain static because your head tells you that you are “not in treatment anymore”. The truth is, wherever you are, you are in treatment and progress in recovery is possible, so to avoid getting stuck, make a list of goals or challenges for each month to keep progress going.

4. Ask for help: Bottling up thoughts and keeping how you feel a secret is a lot harder in hospital than at home because in hospital there are people constantly following you around and shining a torch in your face at night to check if you are sleeping, which, funnily enough you were until someone rudely shone a torch in your face (if you have someone doing that at home then you should probably bring it up with your landlord). Asking for help when inpatient then is not really necessary, because help is often following you around even when you don’t want it. At home however, it is easy to isolate yourself, pretend you are ok to please others, and fall down a slippery slope greased with eels and vaseline because you fear letting others know that you need a little assistance in scrambling back up aforementioned eel ridden slope. Admitting you are struggling is tough, but it is tougher to fight your battles alone. If you can call the hospital to speak to staff from the unit you were in, do that. If not, call a friend. Either way, reach out, be honest and don’t be ashamed of needing people to hold onto.

5. Use your imagination: Whenever I have been in hospital, then go home and struggle, I often find it helpful to imagine I am back in hospital. It doesn’t sound like particularly great advice to help someone in their journey to mental stability by telling them to imagine they are in a psychiatric unit (in terms of signs of insanity that one sounds pretty high up the list), but I like to remind myself of the fact that though things feel so different and so much harder at home, really the only difference is location. If you have managed to eat your meal plan/not self harm/resist compulsive behaviours within hospital walls then going home and doing the same is, in practical terms, no different. The hurdles as it were have not got higher, they are on a different track, so if you can leap them in one place you can leap them in another. Don’t let your head spiral out of control and make you believe that doing what you have been doing for months is as drastic as it feels.

6. Acknowledge that you are still unwell: One of the biggest mistakes when leaving inpatient treatment is to see yourself as “better” and able to thrust yourself back into hard core “normal life”. Just being at home will take a lot of energy and mental effort, so don’t force or pressure yourself to going straight back to a stressful job full time when you have been out of action for a while. Allow yourself to still see the journey to recovery as your full time occupation and ease yourself back into things gradually. If you have a job, maybe go back part time at first so that you still have time to look after yourself, and find your feet back home. Then when you have found your feet (and we all know how much easier life is when one is aware as to the location of all body parts), you can try full time again, but take it steady and prioritise mental health.

So there you have it! Six delightful tips to help keep you on track when making the difficult transition from hospital to home. Maybe calling them delightful is a bit of a stretch, but they are at least what I am trying to use to help me as I find myself suddenly back in reality after several months of being locked away behind a very high and unscalable green fence.
On a more personal and honest note, I know that discharging myself from inpatient treatment six days ago was probably not the best idea, and I know I did it for the wrong reasons, but hopefully it will work out OK in the end. Whether or not these tips are any good of course will be determined by how things go over the next few months of me carrying them out myself back at home.

I guess that is something we will find out together…

Leaving inpatient tips

Preparing For University With A Mental Health Problem

August 29, 2016 / bornwithoutmarbles / 8 Comments

In a few short days it will be September, aka the month in which all of the leaves turn orange and everyone takes this as a sign that everyone should probably go back to school, or, potentially, to university. What with leaving home, meeting new people and learning to use a frying pan, going to university for the first time is stressful for anyone. With mental health problems however, the experience can be a whole new level of terrifying, and although your chosen institution may provide a handy welcome pack with maps and phone numbers of who to call when the oven explodes, they never seem to offer any advice on how to deal with the whole thing when you are a new student without marbles, a situation I found myself in several years ago.

I think part of the problem is that before people have even stepped onto campus, they have built up an image of what their first year at university is “supposed to be like” and anticipate having to be involved in various situations they may not be comfortable with.
People expect that they will have to drink copious amounts of alcohol, attend wild house parties where somehow everyone ends up naked, make best friends with everyone living in their accommodation, share a kitchen with people who never wash any dishes so that by month three the sink is covered in plates that have rapidly been growing some kind of blue fungus, carry out crazy pranks with their hilarious roommate Colin, get entangled in a passionate one night stand with a mysterious moustachioed stranger, live off kebabs/Pot Noodles/Pizza, experiment with drugs, and capture all hilarious moments on a polaroid camera to place carefully in a scrapbook which will then provide unforgettable memories of the university experience that will forever be heralded as the best three years of your life.
That university image, so often portrayed on social media, is understandably a nightmare concept for various mental health conditions. People with depression and social anxiety may fear attending all these wild parties when they are often unable to get out of bed, let alone party and interact with strangers. People with OCD may struggle with the wild unstructured “anything goes” attitude and questionable hygiene or lack of ritualistic order associated with student living, or people with eating disorders may fear having to drink alcohol and eat pizza to fit in at any social gathering.

Well, if that wild carefree party life described above matches your expectations as to what you think university will be/require you to live up to, I would like to invite you to place those expectations or ideas of things that are “supposed to happen” in a box, and then smash that box with a fairly large mallet. Nay, lets go wild. With a flipping colossal mallet.

Admittedly, my description of what people envisage before they go to university, really is the experience had by some students (bar the bit about hilarious pranks with roommates called Colin…people called Colin don’t tend to like pranks), but it isn’t the experience that you have to have or feel pressure and stress to be involved with. I would love to say that going to university with a mental health problem is easy, and it is true that some people find the new environment beneficial to recovery, but that doesn’t happen for everyone and it is important to acknowledge that so we can deal with it.

Indeed, when you embark on your university journey whilst dealing with a mental health issues, it is likely that it is not going to be straight forward and you may not have the same experience as everyone else. It isn’t pessimistic to think this way, it is realistic, and being aware of potential difficulties from the outset is a far better way to go about things than charging forth unprepared with deluded optimism, pretending you don’t have mental health issues in hopes that they will just go away. Denying them will not make university any easier and not dealing with them could make difficulties you thought wouldn’t be an issue come as quite a shock. The key is to accept early on that you are going to university in perhaps a different situation to most people (after all it isn’t every student that goes to get a degree whilst fighting an unrelenting mental health gremlin), and that is ok, not something to feel ashamed or guilty about.
You don’t have to pressure yourself to live the “expected” university life of gay abandon if that is something you cannot manage right now…

…That said, I am not trying to tell you all to go to university and allow your mental health issues to take over entirely, as whilst you must acknowledge the issues are there, it is good to challenge yourself and try new things. TO AN EXTENT.
University can provide opportunities for millions of new experiences, and though you may not be able to join in with all the things that are on offer, if there is something you would like to try that challenges your mental health problem in a manageable way, (whether that be going to a society, or saying hello to someone in your accommodation), go for it. I know I avoided all challenges in the early weeks by totally isolating myself (aka I lived under my desk for a month covered in a blanket in fear another student might see me through the peephole in my door and want to say hello), and it made things a hell of a lot worse for me in the long run.
Eventually however, I came out from under my desk, and over the three years I managed to go clubbing/ to a party a few times and live with some lovely girls in a shared house. I didn’t want to do any of these things and was terrified for various OCD, anxiety, ED reasons, but on days where I felt a little stronger, I pushed myself to try and join in with others. Of course it was difficult and I can’t say it always went to plan, but by dipping my toe into the waters just outside of my comfort zone occasionally, I managed to have some fun that I would have missed out on had I kept myself locked away in my rituals and bubble of safety.
What I mean then by saying you should challenge yourself to an extent, is to be aware of your difficulties and know when a challenge is manageable and when one is not. It is great to give scary things a go, but do not blindly leap so far out into the waters of your comfort zone that you end up drowning if you are not ready, just because you feel you should/feel pressured to. It is not weak or boring to say no to things everyone else is doing, so don’t be too hard on yourself. Nobody “fails at life” just because they didn’t manage to go to that foam party with UV paint being splattered into the crowd and needed to spend the night curled up under a blanket for a good cry instead.

It really is key that people remember the fact that when going to university with a mental health issue, you are ill, and have to put as much time into prioritising care for your mental health as you do for prioritising attempts at socialising or writing essays.
For example, if you have an eating disorder, it is important to make time to eat, follow any prescribed meal plan you have and not let things slip just because you are away from people at home who “know”, so if you miss bits nobody will notice. If you have depression and can’t get out of bed for a few days, take care of yourself and keep yourself safe rather than beating yourself up or feeling guilty about it. Prioritise taking your medication, make time to go to the Doctor, seek out mental health services available to you and take up offers of appointments. Equally, inform lecturers of your issues so that they can support you if you miss a lecture or require essay extensions, as although scary, being honest with staff and the support I received in return was vital for my experience.

Most importantly and the most difficult thing to accept though, is to know when enough is enough. It would be great to go to university with mental health problems and for it all to go swimmingly, but if that doesn’t happen and if you going to university has such a dramatic impact on your mental health that you find yourself becoming increasingly unwell, accept that this might not be the right time for you to be there. Allow yourself to drop out or defer until another year. Maybe in a few years time when you are in a better place you can try again, or maybe university just isn’t right for you, but either way it is fine, not a sign of failure, and no degree is worth sacrificing your health for.

There are a million other things I could probably go into when it comes to university and mental health or more specifics in terms of how to deal with it with specific illnesses, but I have waffled on too long and as a basic overview, I guess this is my advice:
It will be hard, it will be scary (much like an old toffee wearing devil horns), but the most important thing is to just try your best, take care of yourself first and never give yourself a hard time for being unable to live the “typical student” lifestyle.

That said if anyone would like more specific information or tips on managing university with certain illnesses or situations, feel free to comment or message me privately and I will do my best to help. To all those going to university in a few short weeks, good luck, I will be thinking of and supporting all of you. Take care.

University

Why Gyms Need To Be More Aware Of People With Eating Disorders

August 22, 2016 / bornwithoutmarbles / 17 Comments

Recently, I have noticed that gyms have been popping up all over the place, and it is getting to the point where I would not be surprised if I went down to the bottom of my garden one day to find that a new branch had set one up in my shed between the empty plant pots and the lawn mower. Obviously I understand the benefits of the gym, getting a bit of exercise is important to keep healthy, and it is nice to have a place that allows you to look sweaty and tired whilst exercising without the potential judgement one would receive were you to start doing press ups in the cereal aisle at your local supermarket. The problem is that while gyms advocate health and fitness, there is often far too much emphasis on the idea that both are achieved by losing weight, which of course, it isn’t. For some people maybe, but the generalisation that weight loss will improve your health is a dangerous one, especially for people with eating disorders, and in my opinion it needs to be addressed by gyms immediately.

When I first joined my local gym I was 16 years old and in my preliminary session with a member of staff I stated that my goal was to lose weight. This member of staff then took my height, weight, and calculated my BMI to discover a number that I will not post specifically, but let’s just say it was towards the lower end of healthy. Despite this information, the personal trainer happily agreed to set me up with a meal plan and exercise regime to achieve my weight loss goals, without any debate or suggestion that my intention to “shed the pounds” was unnecessary and actually detrimental in terms of fitness.
A few months after that preliminary session, I was admitted to hospital on an eating disorders program where I stayed for ten months, gaining back all the weight I had lost on the treadmill.

The day I was healthy and had been discharged, I went back to the gym, not with the intention of losing this time, merely “toning” my new healthy body, but soon enough it became an obsession again and I was there all the time exercising until I was about to pass out. One morning I went to the gym at 6am, the moment they opened. By 9am I had been admitted to hospital again due to my eating disorder and exercise addiction, which combined had made me rather underweight and not “fit” in any sense of the word (unless your sense of the word fit is that it means “to be a weak, dizzy mess on the brink of collapse”, in which case I was REALLY fit). A mere three days before that day, I had been approached by a personal trainer who offered to work with me and help me to lose weight.
Annoyingly, this being a blog post constructed of words rather than expressions displayed on my spectacular visage, you can’t physically see me right now, but as you read that last sentence, please just picture me throwing my hands up in despair and shaking my head at the ridiculousness of that situation.

Now, I understand that personal responsibility for one’s self and one’s actions is important. After all, gyms cannot be asked to dictate the lives of their members, weigh them upon entry, demand they get off the treadmill if they didn’t finish their bran flakes that morning, and cook them a hearty balanced stew for dinner each night (although I would not be adverse to any of these ideas), but when an eating disorder really takes over someone’s mind, that person can have no control, be unable to take responsibility for their own safety, and need people to step in. In part, this is because they may not realise that they are even ill, denial and distorted perceptions being a massive issue in people with eating disorders. The other and in my opinion bigger issue that can result in a lack of control over one’s behaviour however, is the feeling of a lack of permission to look after oneself.

Every time I went to the gym I was terrified and certainly didn’t want to be there at all. I had been told multiple times by doctors, my eating disorder service, nurses in A&E, that I could have a heart attack at any moment, but not going simply wasn’t an option. My head told me I wasn’t allowed to make that decision.
If I pleaded with the eating disorder that I was scared and couldn’t go to the gym, it would scream so relentlessly that I felt I had no choice but to give in, and I would end up on that treadmill whether I wanted to be or not.
Furthermore, the fact that I was continually let into the gym despite being so underweight almost supported the voice of the eating disorder. I had doctors telling me I was physically unwell and looked awful, but when I went to the gym and started rowing on one of those damn machines that is nothing like a real boat experience whatsoever (6 years at that gym and I didn’t see a single duckling), nobody batted an eyelid, so I assumed the doctors were lying and that I must look fine. If I was clearly “so underweight”, then why on earth would a gym let me in and offer me a personal trainer to lose more flab than I had already? Surely this meant they thought I was overweight too? Not saying anything to people who are clearly unwell is one thing, but asking if they want help in making themselves even more unwell in the interest of “fitness” just to make money is a whole new kettle of fish, a very dangerous hot kettle with sharks in it who are able to withstand shockingly high temperatures.
What’s worse is that my experience is by no means unusual or a sign that I clearly had a bad gym, as it is something that happens to loads of people in loads of gyms all across the country.

Now again, I am not asking gyms to approach skinny people in the gym, catch them with a giant net and fling them violently out of the window. Such a code of practice would be futile due to the important fact I have stated in previous posts, that not everyone who is skinny has an eating disorder and not everyone with an eating disorder is skinny. Indeed, someone could be severely unwell, on the brink of death or a heart attack and look a healthy weight or overweight. What I am asking for, is personal trainers and other staff to be made more aware of people with eating disorders, and how to support or help them when they are in a destructive relationship with the gym. They need to be able to spot various symptoms or unusual behaviours, be trained to have a grasp of eating disorders and exercise addictions, or be aware of someone’s motivations in losing weight if there are signs of any underhand eating disorder suspiciousness going on.
At the very least, if they measure someone and know someone is already a healthy weight or underweight, they shouldn’t give them a weight loss meal plan or ask if they want to pay you to help them shed the non existent rolls of fat they are complaining about just to make some cash in the name of “fitness”. When someone has an eating disorder, such suggestions are more like offers to assist in suicide for the price of £20 an hour. BARGAIN.

I know that it is a massive pain to say gyms have to spend extra money on funding training, especially when it may be that such training may be irrelevant for the majority of the time when it comes to healthy members.
Nevertheless, I would still say that it is less of a pain to be aware of sufferers and deal with them whilst having slightly lower profits, than to have to deal with a law suit and a hell of a lot of guilt when someone who clearly shouldn’t be exercising dies on one of the treadmills. I may not be a personal trainer, but that certainly doesn’t sound like fitness to me.

Treadmill

Unveiling The Secrets Of Life As A Mental Health Nurse

August 15, 2016 / bornwithoutmarbles / 13 Comments

As you are probably all aware, this blog is a blog about mental health.
If you weren’t aware and thought this was actually a blog offering gardening tips, then I am sorry to disappoint you, but I really have no advice to offer in that department so you may want to look elsewhere for tips. All I know is that you should water your plants…but not too much…and plants need sunlight…but then some like to be in cool dark cupboards…yeah like I said I really am not qualified or experienced as a gardener…ANYWAY, browsing the titles of my current collection of posts I have noticed that most of them are aimed at people with mental health problems, but what about a post centred around the people who spend their lives trying to treat those without marbles? How do they feel about working with the mentally ill? What do they like about the job and which parts make them wish they had steered clear of the anxious and the depressed inhabitants of this godforsaken planet, to pursue a career in fish mongering instead? What makes them dream of swapping therapy for cod and medication side effects for a nice piece of haddock? What advice do they have for people thinking about becoming a mental health professional and how does one go about following that dream? If the mentally ill are plants, who are the gardeners providing enough warmth for seed germination and growth? (Please note I just used the word germination…that is a gardening term…maybe I am more qualified in that department than I realised). Well, if you have wanted to know the answers to any of these questions and even if you haven’t, I am here today to give them to you anyway in a hard hitting interview with a real, qualified mental health nurse working on the ward in which I currently reside. Prepare yourself for the secrets of the mental health professionals, the story behind the shift work and a very confused nurse wondering what on earth I am talking about…

LIGHTS GO UP.

[The nurse and I are seated in blue chairs in a place known as “the quiet room”. The conversation begins whilst the sound of the cleaner mopping slops rhythmically in the background]

Me: Hello Nurse Gertrude Potatobucket, thank you so much for joining me today for this interview.

Gertrude Potatobucket: What interview? Who is Gertrude Potatobucket?

Me: This interview. I want to know about the life of a mental health nurse for an article on my blog. Also you are Gertrude Potatobucket for the duration of this interaction because I am hiding your real name in the interest of confidentiality, so you can be brutally honest as nobody will know your true identity.

GP: I will agree to the interview but can’t I pick another name? Why does it have to be Gertrude Potatobucket? That sounds ridiculous.

Me: I will have you know it is not at all ridiculous but is an underused name that deserves more recognition, so no, you cannot pick an alternative. Anyway, I’m supposed to be the one asking questions here so please just accept your new identity and lets get to the good stuff.

GP: Katie I really think…

Me: [In a loud and interrupting manner] QUESTION ONE. WHAT DOES BEING A MENTAL HEALTH NURSE ENTAIL?

GP: [Sighs…there is a long pause during which the sound of mopping appears to increase in volume until Nurse Potatobucket realises that she is going to take part in an interview whether she likes it or not and gets on with answering the question at hand]. The role of a mental health nurse is different depending on what kind of service you are working for but in terms of my responsibilities on this Eating Disorder Unit, I am in charge of co-ordinating health care assistants on shift, running support groups, working with patients in 1:1 sessions, supporting them at meal times and I am in charge of handing out any medication prescribed by Doctors or psychiatrists.

Me: What a busy bee you are! I can almost hear you buzzing, your face is practically aglow with black and yellow stripes. So tell me Gertrude, how did you earn such responsibility? How does one go about becoming a mental health nurse? What training is required?

GP: To be a mental health nurse you need to have at least 5 GCSE’s including maths, English and Science and then go to university for three years to study mental health nursing. You don’t have to go to university to work in mental health though. If someone wanted to be a Health Care Assistant they would need to have something called a care certificate, but it is possible to get a job as an HCA without any official training. If someone has experience in mental health and does a good interview for a job, they may be offered a position and then have the opportunity to do the care certificate whilst working.

Me: Well to qualify alone sounds like a lot of fun but how about the job itself? What would you say is the best thing about being a mental health nurse?

GP: Supporting people and helping them to make positive changes in their lives.

Me: How nice. I don’t want to paint a misleadingly fluffy picture about the job though so tell me, what is the worst thing about being a mental health nurse?

GP: You see some really sad and upsetting stuff. Also shift work can be difficult as you never have a fixed schedule or routine and can be working at day or night depending on your rota. That said I know that “Bertha Potatonose” likes shift work as it enables her to be flexible when looking after her children, so it is different for everyone. Oh God I have just used her real name, can you cut that bit out?

Me: No need, I will simply hide her identity by replacing her real name with Bertha Potatonose.

GP: What is it with you using the word potato in fake surnames?…

Me: [Even louder and more interrupting than the first time the interviewee started to question the interviewer] QUESTION FIVE: HOW DOES BEING A MENTAL HEALTH NURSE AFFECT YOUR DAILY LIFE AND WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO SOMEONE WHO WANTED TO BE A MENTAL HEALTH NURSE?

GP: [Sighs. Despair at the situation is visible. The cleaner is still mopping in background]. First off I would advise someone to get some life experience or experience as an HCA. Secondly I would say that in terms of daily life you really need to learn to leave work at work and look out for your own wellbeing at home. You can’t look after someone else unless you have first looked after yourself.

Me: Does this mean there any people then that you would advise to avoid looking into being a mental health nurse? Are there any people you feel would be particularly unsuited to the role?

GP: No. It can be a difficult job but anyone can be a mental health nurse. Different people bring different life experiences, skills and character to the job and I think that is important. Mental illnesses don’t all fit into a neat box and neither do the people who are able to be great Mental Health Nurses.

Me: Inspiring. Truly inspiring.
Now Ms Potatobucket, I know that the people at home often worry when speaking to a mental health professional in candid honesty about their condition that they will be thought of as “crazy” or “weird”. Answer me honestly, do mental health nurses ever judge patients regarding what they say in a session?

GP: No, there is never any judgement. All I feel towards people talking about their difficulties is empathy and I want to show compassion towards the difficult time they are having in life.

Me: Well that is a relief. I am sure we will all rest easier in our beds tonight knowing that we can spill our inner most thoughts without fear of being thought to be “weird”. In addition to worries like that, a lot of people in treatment out there may also be struggling at the moment and feeling like things will never get better. Do you think recovery from a mental illness is ever really possible?

GP: Definitely. All mental health nurses hold the hope and belief that the people they are treating can get to a better place. I think everyone is capable of building the strength and determination not to let their mental health problem rule them forever, and in learning skills they can gain confidence they may not have had initially in fighting their issues.

Me: Fascinating stuff Gertrude. Truly fascinating. Now finally. The question everyone at home has been waiting for and the most important piece of information in all of this. Tell me, has being a mental health nurse in any way altered the opinion you hold with regard to penguins?

GP: What does that have to do with working in mental health?

Me: [Incandescent with rage at being asked a third question during the interview] MS POTATOBUCKET

GP: Oh for goodness sake ok, yes, being a mental health nurse has given me a new found appreciation for penguins.

Me: Aha! Just as I expected! Gosh! Looking at my watch it appears we are all out of time! Thank you so much for answering these questions Nurse Potatobucket. Your honesty and words will touch millions. On behalf of all my readers please know that we are eternally grateful.

GP: Can I go now?

Me: Absolutely

[Interview ends. The sound of mopping in the background has stopped. Upon leaving the room the cleaner is nowhere to be found and only a mop lies in the corridor. The cleaner has not been seen since…]

FADE TO BLACK

Well there you have it! The hard nitty gritty truth about what it is like to work as a Mental Health nurse, how to become one, and how such a career can affect one’s opinion on monochrome birds who refuse to comply with society’s expectations and use their wings to fly. I really hope that this helped people out there either if they are thinking about becoming a Mental Health Professional or those in treatment worrying about what carers in an inpatient setting may be thinking. It appears there is no judgement when it comes to working with the marble-less hoards and no matter how it feels at the time, it seems there is always hope and the potential to recover.
Now if you don’t mind me I am going to abandon my job as journalist for the day and turn to a little detective work. I really am getting worried about the case of the mysteriously disappearing cleaner that took place during this interview…any witness statements would be appreciated in the comments.

I will speak to you all next Monday, take care x

Gertrude Edited

Delayed Maturity In People With Mental Health Problems

August 8, 2016August 8, 2016 / bornwithoutmarbles / 23 Comments

In a few weeks time, my parents are flying to Malaysia for a fortnight’s holiday whilst I stay in my slightly less exotic summer holiday home of the English psychiatric unit (note I say only say slightly less exotic. Malaysia may have rainforests and tropical climates but I will have you know we have pineapple juice in the fridge here as a breakfast beverage option). The prospect of two weeks without my Mum and Dad here is terrifying. As a 24 year old I feel I should be past such anxiety when separated from my parents, but I can’t help it. In terms of maturity, I am ridiculously behind other people my age, in terms of development into an adult (whatever the hell that is).
Rationally, I suppose most people would miss their parents whilst they go galavanting off around the world and I know nobody feels prepared for becoming an adult. A lot of my friends for example are a rather taken aback with things like moving out or paying electricity bills, and like me often very much feel like retreating into a blanket fort to watch a Disney film. That said, because of all this mental health nonsense, I feel I am so extremely behind that it is as if I am in a giant swimming pool with all the other people my age, and that I am the only one who still has arm bands on. Heck I am not even in the pool with them, I am sitting in a paddling pool on the outside, splashing about and wondering how on earth these people are performing the front crawl with such ease.

This feeling of being behind my peers in terms of growing up used to worry me a lot, but “delayed mental ageing” or “stunted development” is very common in people with mental health problems. I have no idea why exactly this is, but if I were to guess I would say it was because when you are riddled with an illness of the mind, you kind of step out of the world and get lost/trapped inside of your head. Your neuroses and anxieties become your universe, they consume your entire being in terms of thoughts and behaviour, and it is very easy to forget that there is any other planet out there at all.
With things like OCD, your world is your rituals, every action requiring such concentration and focus that you have no senses spare to be receptive to anything else. When you are depressed you are too busy trying to motivate yourself to keep breathing to have time for real life stuff, and then there are eating disorders where your entire universe is food. No wonder then that people often describe people with severe mental health problems as “totally out of it”. Sometimes, they really are holidaying on the outward planet of insanity with whatever anxieties that involves, and in being this way they miss a lot of what is really happening in the real world, not because they are self obsessed, but because they are not there.

This wouldn’t be as big an issue as it is, and it wouldn’t potentially “stunt” or delay development and maturity at all if the world would just stop spinning whilst us marble-less creatures were otherwise engaged. If the world waited, people could just get better and pick up their lives and development from where they left off before the insanity creatures whisked them away, but that is the problem. The world doesn’t stop turning (sometimes Earth can be so inconsiderate). Even if you are living on a different planet, time in the real world still passes, so when you try to recover and return to normality it can be quite a shock to the system.
This shock is a really difficult thing to explain to people who haven’t experienced it, so in classic Born without Marbles style I am going to try to make some sense of it via some kind of analogy. The analogy? That coming back into the real world after being trapped in a mental illness is sort of like the feeling you get when you watch a TV program for several months, miss a few years, then try to pick it up again only to be baffled and confused as to what on earth is going on.

In this analogy, sane people have been watching a daily television show, lets call it “The Life and Times of Percy The Penguin”, a soap opera style show about a community of penguins living in the Arctic (think Coronation Street with more waddling). The sane people have never missed an episode, so they have seen the story grow over the years, and learnt things about the world that have changed and enhanced their lives. Each episode actually helps people develop in life.
Now, the person with mental health problems starts off watching this program too, but then, just in the middle of an episode in which Percy is getting married to his childhood sweetheart Patricia, the mental illness kicks in and whisks them to a world where there are no televisions. Whilst they have the illness they are trapped in this other world, anxious, alone, repeating rituals, hearing voices and experiencing a whole other load of things that most people never do. Despite their absence however, in the real world, the television show continues on without them.
Say they are then stuck in this mental world for a decade but then finally break free, back to reality. One may assume that they can join back in watching the program, understanding life in exactly the same way as everyone else, fitting in just like before, but unfortunately that is not the case.
They turn on the TV and are immediately confused by the image that confronts them on the screen. Where the hell is Patricia they wonder? Why does Percy have a wooden flipper? Who is this Polly he is married too? Why are Percy and Polly crouching in a bunker looking terrified and why have all the other penguins in the village been replaced by seals? It makes no sense.
To everyone else the answers are obvious. By staying in the real world they never missed an episode and have grown up over the years alongside the program, their understanding and knowledge continuing to grow as the program progressed. They are all well aware of the fact that in “The Life and Times of Percy the Penguin”, Patricia actually turned out to be an evil seal in disguise who ripped Percy’s fin off in the middle of their wedding, resulting in the rather splinter ridden replacement. They all saw every other penguin in the village reveal themselves to be evil seals working for Patricia, with the only real penguin other than Percy in the area being a hidden gem named Polly, who Percy then fell in love with, married, and is now hiding in an ice cave with planning how on earth the pair will overcome the wrath of Patricia the dictator and her fin flapping minions. The mentally ill person can try and catch up, scrabble around for any video tapes or use Google to find out all the things they have missed, but it isn’t the same. The lessons learnt over the missed years and development in everyone that the program inspired, happened in a time that cannot be retrieved, leaving the mentally ill person understandably behind and immature in comparison.

That is how I feel right now, and considering I first got ill when I was 11, I feel that mentally I am still that age, not even a teenager, yet in recovery everyone is trying to force me into this world of the 24 year old. It is terrifying. “Getting better” from any mental illness is quite a challenge as it is, but getting better AND trying to cram 13 years worth of growing up into a couple of months is a bit much to ask. I am just not ready to be 24 yet, I haven’t had all the years leading up to it to prepare myself and I haven’t learnt the lessons you are supposed to learn alongside friends who are going through the same thing, friends who are now rather far ahead of me.
Whilst all the other people at school were leaving the beanie babies behind, hitting puberty, getting hormones and falling into relationships, I was too busy calculating the calories in an apple to join in with all the developing. When they were learning to drive, I was off counting the number of times I had washed my hands, and when they began to move out of their family homes I didn’t notice because I was too upset or anxious to come out from under a blanket.

I feel silly and embarrassed by these things, but at the same time I want to talk about them openly so that more people can understand and fewer people have to feel ashamed. It is easy to judge someone for living in their parents’ house past the age most people have moved out, but I think it is important for people to be aware of the fact that this whole stunted development thing is a real issue and yet another complex reason to add to the list of what makes recovery from any form of insanity such a scary, and difficult process. Maybe one day if I “get better”, spend long enough in the real world, then I won’t feel so alienated and distant from friends my age living adult lives. Maybe one day I will understand the friends I have who are considering getting a mortgage (what the hell is that?), whilst I consider which starter Pokemon to pick (Squirtle every time), and maybe one day I will have the answers as to how to sort your life out when your mental age feels so disconnected and underdeveloped compared to everyone else. I certainly hope so, and as soon as I find those answers, I will be sure to let any of you others out there who are struggling with this issue know exactly what they are. Until then, I guess I will just have to keep my arm bands on as it were. Force myself out of the paddling pool, keep jumping in the deep end where the other 24 year olds are, splash around a bit and hope to God there are some good life guards or at least a rubber ring floating around.

Stunted

Why Friendship Is Important When Battling A Mental Health Problem

August 1, 2016 / bornwithoutmarbles / 7 Comments

A few months ago I read a quote stating that when “I” became “we”, mental illness became mental wellness. Now at the time I will admit I thought that statement was a nice thing to write on the wall of a psychiatric unit (as in properly artistically written as a message, purposely placed there by the authorities rather than some crazed crayon scrawl of a patient with too much time and too many crayons), but other than that I didn’t believe the statement very much. It felt like one of those things that is all well and good to say like “the sun will come out tomorrow” and other similarly cheesy phrases sung by red headed orphans who have no experience, knowledge or authority in weather forecasting to make any such predictions, but I have to say that over the past few weeks, I have realised that this quote is actually pretty accurate. Okay, it is not flawless, but there is a lot more truth in it than the words of a deluded 10 year old who thinks no outfit is complete without a smile, a very inappropriate thing to wear to a relative’s funeral.

I think I can say on behalf of many, that having a mental health problem is very lonely.
For one thing there is the actual physical distance created by mental illness. Maybe your difficulties restrict your ability to take part in life so you lose touch with friends leading “normal” lives and end up pretty isolated. Maybe you have to take time off work to go into hospital or to have treatment which separates you from the community in which you may have played a part. Maybe you fall out with acquaintances who cannot understand why you can’t “just be normal” when “it’s all in your head” and there is “nothing physically wrong with you”, but the biggest distance is the unseen emotional distance that nobody really talks about. When you are so trapped in thoughts spiralling around in your head, you feel as if you are a million miles away from people who may be sat right beside you, simply because you can’t relate to them in anyway. You watch them laugh, eat or open a door without washing their hands afterwards, you wonder how they do it, and you feel like a lesser underdeveloped species. Furthermore there are the thoughts that come with mental health problems, the low self esteem, feelings that everyone must hate you, the shame and inability to be honest with people incase they think you are crazy, and general emotional detachment from reality.

Both these physical and emotional distances can make you feel like you are the only person in the world who thinks the way you do, and this in turn contributes to the overwhelming sensation of being alone. Don’t get me wrong, being alone is nice sometimes, but when you are feeling alone and trying to battle a mental illness that is hitting you on the head with a mallet every five minutes, it can make your individual feeble attempts to fight against it weak and futile in comparison to its all controlling power. What you need is an army to help you, people on your side to support you in battle, in short, you need to call in the troops to face your demons with you, troops who will preferably bring a large number of rather large mallets with them. For this reason, friendship, community and kindness should never be ignored as ways of treating any disorder, for they are pretty much as important as all the therapy and psychiatric drugs in the world.

I guess my attitude to all this has changed fairly recently and has been during my time in hospital. When you are stuck in unfamiliar surroundings with unfamiliar people, anyone is going to feel alone, and that in turn made me feel pretty alone with my problems. Fighting them felt futile and every second pointless. It was like I was a tortoise lying upside down on my back waving my legs around, unable to roll back over, yet being asked to wrestle with a lion, a crocodile, three tigers, and a bear who had somehow developed the use of opposable thumbs and managed to get his hands on an armoured tank complete with canon. As I lay there flailing pathetically, I couldn’t help but think “why bother trying to fight this? I can’t stand on my feet let alone battle a pack of vicious animals with the use of military style transport and machinery”. However, I then received a sudden onslaught of kindness both from friends, family and strangers, and it made me wonder whether or not there might actually be a point in giving it my best shot.
When people feel emotions caused by kindness shown by other people, they tend to say things like that they were “touched” and “moved”, but to say that is to vastly underestimate what I felt. Indeed I was so touched I was practically black and blue all over with the force of it, and so moved that one morning I actually found myself several thousand miles away in the sahara desert, where it took staff on the ward a very long time to find me again (they say they the reason for the delay in locating me was a dodgy sat nav but I am suspicious that they got distracted by the abundance of sand and started building castles…nurses love sand castles). I felt like a gigantic boob with the worlds strongest wonderbra supporting me, and though I never imagined anything positive ever coming from feeling like a boob, here I was proved wrong.

Knowing I had all these people supporting me made me feel empowered and suddenly trying to wrestle all those animals seemed a lot less daunting. I had back-up, and if I joined forces with them then my beasts could be overcome. Furthermore, actually engaging in the battle suddenly seemed worthwhile. When flailing on my back (remember the analogy, I am a tortoise here), not only did I see the fight as impossible, but I saw it as something that didn’t matter because I didn’t care what happened to me. I didn’t care if the lion ripped off my head or the bear flattened me to a pancake in his armoured vehicle. To be honest, when I was admitted, I just wanted for it all to be over. With the support I received though, I realised that it wasn’t just my vote that counted in all of this, it wasn’t just a case of me not wanting to fight and that being the end of it. For some bizarre reason, a lot of other people did think it mattered. They did care, and they did want me to win the fight. There were people who didn’t want to see me torn to pieces, there were people rooting for me, people who wanted me around, so when it came to facing a challenge, lunch for example, I couldn’t help but think “Even if I don’t care and don’t want to do this right now, there are a lot of people who do care, and I am not going to let them down, so for now I will do it for them”.

The confirmation in the quote that when “I” becomes “we”, illness becomes wellness and the important message I want to get across here then, is that when it comes to fighting mental health issues, knowing you are not alone in your recovery can be as important as any other aspect of treatment. If you don’t have mental health problems yourself but know someone who does and you want to help but don’t know what to do, helping them doesn’t have to be as hard as you may think. You don’t need to study all the psychology books in the library to try and understand what they are going through. You don’t have to move in with them, rally them each morning with an inspirational speech and skip encouragingly beside them throughout the day. Trust me, just letting a friend know that you are there for them if they need, that you care about their battle and other simple acts of kindness will do more for them than you will ever know.
Alternatively, if you yourself are sitting there reading this and you have mental health problems, feel that nobody understands, are unable to talk to friends and family in real life about your struggles and feel completely alone, know that this is not the case. I may not know you personally, but I can assure you that I care about your battle and I am more than happy to support you in it. When you know you are not alone you gain power, and that is what I want to give to you. I want you all to know that I am one your side, and that I have three tanks with canons so big that those bears and lions don’t stand a chance. If simply knowing that is enough then great, but if you still feel alone and ever want someone who understands, email or message me. I may not give the best advice and hearing from a stranger may not be what you want right now, but if you need a hand to hold in this darkness, I am more than happy to lend you all mine.

Take care everyone.

Tortoise

Food Demonising And Eating Disorders

July 25, 2016July 25, 2016 / bornwithoutmarbles / 2 Comments

During the month of April 2016, the food company that manufactures “Dolmio” pasta sauce issued a health warning telling people that they should not consume certain varieties of their products more than once a week due to high levels of salt, sugar and fat. The next day, the newspapers were covered in ridiculously dramatic headlines like “The Bolognese sauce in your cupboard is plotting to kill you” and “Research suggests it is safer to drink bleach than creamy tomato pasta bake”. Supermarkets gathered up all remaining stocks of Dolmio sauce and threw them into the ocean where over one million fish were knocked unconscious by the sudden downpour of jarred carbonara, and people fled their homes to set up new lives abroad as the sudden media frenzy had inspired such fear in their hearts that they’d rather safely escape from their kitchens without a backwards glance, than risk having a heart attack trying to dispose of a jar of pesto they had foolishly lurking in the cupboard. Now I will admit that this is perhaps a slight exaggeration on what happened after Dolmio’s announcement, but the message I am basically trying to convey here is that some pasta sauce company said there was some sugar and salt in their sauces and absolute chaos ensued.

This chaos probably doesn’t seem worthy of a blog post, especially on a website that focuses on mental health, but the problem is that this whole Dolmio extravaganza is not an isolated incident when it comes to the fact that the world has suddenly become obsessed with “clean eating” and being healthy. Just the other day I saw a headline on a magazine that asked “Which is more dangerous: Carbs or Fat”, a ridiculous question considering the fact that people need carbohydrates and fat to stay alive. It is far more dangerous to not eat enough of those food groups than to eat over whatever amount of grams the government has said is acceptable or required for every single one of us individually, despite vast differences in age, height, weight and exercise regime across the population. Ok too much of certain food groups can be bad for you, but no individual food group is especially dangerous, they all play a part, are all vital, and this food demonising obsession of recent years is incredibly disordered and unhealthy both in terms of mental and physical wellbeing.

Eating healthily is great, but being obsessed with what you eat and counting every calorie, every fat gram and every grain of sugar is not normal and is something that, prior to recent years, I had only seen in fellow people with eating disorders. Food demonising and counting “macros” is such an issue in the eating disorder community that groups are offered to try and challenge these behaviours, which would be a hell of a lot easier if the rest of the world wasn’t suddenly condoning the thoughts and fears around a potato that you have been told are unwarranted.
During one of my hospital admissions there was a brand of cereal bar that we had as part of the meal plan every day. It came in a variety of flavours but I always went for the blueberry one, because it was the lowest calorie option…However, one fateful day at the hospital, disaster struck. WE HAD RUN OUT OF BLUEBERRY. I suggested we should call the police immediately to deal with this heinous crime of cereal bar deprivation, but for some reason the staff thought this was not the way to respond and told me I would have to have another flavour bar. And they call me crazy? Still, as they were the staff, I had little choice in the matter and ended up having a different flavour that was a mere one calorie more. The next day I gained weight at weigh in and I put all the blame on that different flavoured cereal bar. I did not think of all the meals I was eating in the hospital, the fact I was on a weight gain diet and an eating disorder program designed specifically for weight restoration, no, all I thought about was that cereal bar, and I immediately decided that that flavour was dangerous and never to be eaten again. In my eyes that bar had caused my weight gain and I demonised that bar so extremely that I pictured Satan as that cluster of oats and honey I had consumed, presiding over the underworld with an iron fist and chunks of real fruit (Gosh I shudder at the memory). Hopefully anyone reading this will see that demonising that particular flavour of cereal bar was ridiculous, clearly irrational and that obviously there were many other things influencing the number on the scales at that time. Yet still the message is being spread that we should demonise and run from certain foods (like Dolmio pasta sauce) in the name of “health”, without remembering that health is another thing influenced by hundreds of complex variants and not determined by the macaroni cheese you had for dinner.

In the mental health world, being obsessed with “clean eating” is called Orthorexia, a term coined in 1996 to address the unhealthy fixation on healthy eating suffered by some people with eating disorders and it is a big problem. I myself have been obsessed with government guidelines when it comes to food intake, and due to all the scare stories I have developed a fear of salt. At times I have been so afraid of salt that I have avoided eating a single milligram, because low salt diets are “healthy”, but it has never done me any good. In fact I have ended up in A&E multiple times due to this lack of salt causing low sodium, a key electrolyte that people NEED in order to keep the heart working.

We really need to stop avoiding food groups or labelling them as “dangerous” when it is so much MORE dangerous to become obsessed and potentially develop a fatal eating disorder. Ok if we ever discover crowds of potatoes rallying in secret, plotting to take over the world, then maybe we can see a danger in the carbohydrate department, but until then can we all just sit down and eat some damn pasta like we used to rather than this spiralised courgette nonsense that suddenly seems to be so popular.

I suppose that the message I really want to get across here is that in no circumstance is a food or a food group to be considered a danger in itself, as the real danger here is actually food demonising that condones and can potentially lead people into serious eating disorders. Obviously you should still eat your greens at dinner and whack a banana on your cereal, but you should also be able to eat a bowl of actual spaghetti rather than a courgette that has been cut to ribbons. Take government warnings with a pinch of salt (literally, remember, sodium is important), and stop seeing any food as the ruler of the underworld. It isn’t just an apple a day that keeps the doctor away, sometimes you also need a piece of good old chocolate cake.

Dangerous potatoes

Why “Self-Care” Is Important And How To Get Better At It

July 18, 2016 / bornwithoutmarbles / 8 Comments

Pretty much every time I part from someone who knows that I have mental health problems, they will tell me to “take care” of myself. It is a lovely thing to say, and an instruction I very much wish I could follow, but for some reason I, much like many other people with mental health problems, find the act of self care incredibly difficult.
It isn’t a matter of being incompetent, if you asked me to take care of someone else I could do it very well, but being kind to myself is another story.

As you are all probably aware, I am currently in hospital trying to battle anorexia, but this week on top of all that going on in my head, I have the added joy of having developed shingles. To be honest when I was first informed of this I was rather excited, for it is not every day one is diagnosed with an illness that rhymes with jingles. As an impulse buy I ordered four large boxes of bells to be delivered to the ward because I really wanted to be referred to as “the patient with shingles who jingles”, but since they have arrived the novelty of shingles has very much worn off and I have lost the ability to go anywhere or do anything discreetly around the hospital anymore, because every time I move it sounds like the ward is being invaded by a troop of morris dancers or Santa’s reindeer.
Practically every hour staff are telling me to sit down, rest and take it easy, when I am anxious or upset and struggling they advise me to do something they know I used to and sometimes manage to enjoy like watch a film, read a book, play a video game or draw, but allowing myself to do these things feels selfish, indulgent and like a waste of time. It is like I always feel I have to be doing something productive, no matter how I feel, something of use to someone else or something to tick off of a to do list, for the act of “relaxing” serves no tangible purpose that I can use to justify it. This problem of self care is especially apparent here in hospital because I can see it in all of the other patients I am surrounded by, they all feel the need to do “something”, without realising that relaxing is “doing something”, it isn’t wasting time but is something vitally important that everyone should do a lot more often.

Whether you have mental health problems or not, everyone in this world has some level of stress and needs to allow themselves a bit of self care and a break for their overall wellbeing. Maybe one of the many reasons the number of people developing mental illnesses is on the rise, is because we are all so busy these days that we have forgotten the fundamental basics of taking care of ourselves. Doing things you enjoy (or if you have depression and find enjoyment difficult, doing things you used to enjoy/not giving yourself a hard time for lying on the sofa when thats all you feel able to do), taking time out, resting and, in short, being kind to yourself, is as important for your wellbeing as all the other crazy things people do in the name of healthy living, like getting enemas or taking cod liver oil tablets.

For this reason then, I have come up with an ingenious piece of advice to all people with mental health problems who struggle with self care, whether that be not allowing yourself to sit and rest because it feels lazy, not feeling worthy of taking a shower/getting dressed/putting on make up/ decorating your room to make it a little brighter, or even letting yourself take a nap. Actually even if you don’t have mental health problems and struggle with allowing yourself to slow down from the hectic stress of daily life in any sense, I would like to urge you in the name of both your physical and your mental health, to do one very important thing for me. That thing? To treat yourself like a puppy. I will even allow you free reign on the decision as to what breed of puppy you would like to treat yourself as (I would say the fluffier the better), and that is not a decision I would trust everyone with, so please, handle the responsibility wisely.

Now of course, by treat yourself like a puppy I am not advising you trot off to the vet to be neutered, microchipped, nor would I suggest entering yourself into Crufts. Trust me, it doesn’t work. (I tried to convince them I was a cocker spaniel to get into the agility round but they didn’t believe me. Told me that I was clearly a poodle and I was so offended I left). No, what I mean when I tell you to treat yourself like a puppy is to do for yourself and be kind/take care of yourself as you would do for a puppy. If you need to rest, allow yourself to nap, if you are hungry, allow yourself to eat, if you are dirty, allow yourself to wash, allow yourself to just sit, to be, to play, whether that be with a rubber ball, some sticks you found in the garden, or the human equivalent in recreational entertainment. Every time your head tells you not to do an act of self care like resting, washing, eating or playing because you don’t deserve it, take the former concept of you and remember that you are a puppy, and if you had a puppy, what would you do? Leave it to starve and force it to round up sheep without a break or rest or play? (For the duration of this post you also might want to imagine you are a shepherd with sheep to herd). Would you treat it so badly that the RSPCA were forced to come round, seize your canine companion and put you in prison for puppy cruelty of the first degree, never allowed to own a dog again in your life? No! You would let it rest and play and eat and wash without even thinking it was indulgent or selfish to do so and it is exactly the same as the right and need to take care of and be kind to yourself.

Obviously in an ideal world you would tackle your issue with self worth so that you felt able to be kind to yourself without having to pretend you were a cocker spaniel, but self worth can take a long time to develop, and it is important to have a way of managing a little self care whilst that self worth is germinating. No matter how low your opinion of yourself, you deserve to be kind and take care. Even the declaration of human rights states we have the right to be treated to a certain standard, and that includes the way in which we treat ourselves. It is illegal for someone to imprison someone without food or shelter, or to keep them from the things they love and hobbies that bring them happiness (that is my interpretation of “The right to your own things” anyway), so don’t let a voice in your head neglect you and treat you like some evil dictator.

One of the groups in the hospital I am in at the moment is all about learning to be kind to yourself and self care, so this isn’t even me telling you to try to experiment living in this crazy way of treating yourself nicely off the top of my head, taking care of and being kind to yourself is officially NHS approved and declared as important. Yes ok the group at the hospital isn’t telling me to pretend that I am a cocker spaniel, but for now that is how I am trying to manage self care until I have worked on the ability to be kind to myself as the mentally troubled, shingles ridden human that I am. So, for now, if you struggle with self care and find the concept of it too hard because of low self worth, please don’t be so hard on yourself. Join me, be a puppy, and treat yourself as such, with love, care, and maybe even with a little belly rub thrown in.

Self care puppies

Demystifying The Mental Health Act…With Penguins

July 11, 2016 / bornwithoutmarbles / 12 Comments

If there is ever a widely reported act of violence on the news orchestrated by a single individual, the majority of the time it will be equally widely reported that said person was mentally ill and most likely “detained under the Mental Health Act”. Understandably then, when people hear of people being detained under the Mental Health Act, they associate the Act with danger. To be fair I can understand why people may jump to this conclusion.
If every time I heard about some violent crime I simultaneously heard that the perpetrator was addicted to coco pops, I may naturally make a connection between violent knife attacks in the street and coco pops. When the coco pops are simply mentioned as a “thing” and there is no explanation to tell me that coco pops are actually little puffs of cocoa sugar covered wheat based cereal with the key ability to turn the milk chocolatey, how am I to know any different?
Therefore, seeing as I am currently “detained” and have recently been given a load of forms explaining the official legal terms of it all, I thought I would do a post to clear up any confusion and to give a purely factual explanation of what the Mental Health Act is, what it does and what it means.
I don’t however want this to turn into some boring school lesson, so to liven it up I am going to provide my explanation via little examples involving “Patricia the penguin”. You know what they say: “When life gives you lemons you make lemonade”, so when life sections you under the Mental Health Act, you use the lump of paperwork dumped on you to make a post explaining what it means, with pictures of penguins to help clear up confusion and reduce mental health stigma. I think that’s the saying anyway…so here goes…

What is the Mental Health Act?: It is a law that enables professionals to admit and detain patients for a compulsory admission to hospital. It doesn’t have to have involved any incidents of violence, much like the consumption of coco pops does not have to be involved with criminal activity. Alas, unlike coco pops, the Mental Health Act does not turn the milk chocolatey, for there is rarely any milk involved.

How does one come to be sectioned under the Mental Health Act?: This is a question that will vary between the sections of the Act and individual circumstances, but as a basic principle a Mental Health Act Assessment will be called by professional people (I am not sure what they are professionally qualified in exactly, but they are usually people holding clipboards, stroking their chins, squinting/looking thoughtful), and they will interview you and ask questions in order to assess your health.

Are there different sections of the Mental Health Act?: What a marvellous question dear reader and one I can respond to with the knowledge that indeed there are several, the differences between which I will explain below with the help of Patricia…

Section Two: Recently, Patricia the penguin has been acting unsafely (skating on thin ice as it were), and is suspected to have a mental illness without the capacity to see that she is putting herself in danger. She is not however diagnosed with one, nor has she been in hospital before, so a group of professional penguin Doctors with specific training may place her under a section two, aka a legal detention to hospital for an assessment of her mental health, in order to establish whether or not she needs treatment. It can last up to 28 days and in that time they aim to discover if she has a mental disorder. Under this law she can be treated against her will if it is deemed in her best interests, and discharge or transfer to another section can happen during, or at the end of the 28 days.

Section Three: A section three is a detention in hospital for treatment, so if Patricia were to be put under this section it would mean that she were well known to hospital services, would have a diagnosis and not require assessment. In the section two admission, the focus would have been more about finding out why Patricia was found skating on thin ice in the middle of nowhere and deciding whether or not her reasons were rational, but for the section three they already know why she was skating in such a reckless way, for she has a diagnosis of “Skating on thin ice syndrome”, a common mental health problem in penguins that requires treatment when severe. On this section Patricia can be held for up to 6 months, but may be discharged sooner, or later if the section is renewed for further treatment. Again under this section it is possible for Patricia to be treated against her will (e.g. in her case, forced to skate on thicker blocks of ice even if she doesn’t want to).

Section Four: Section four is pretty much like a section two in that again it is a detention for a short period of time (72 hours) for an assessment of one’s mental health. This is more commonly used in emergency situations as you only need one special doctor to enact it, unlike a section two which requires two. For example, if Patricia is skating on thin ice at 5am in the middle of the arctic and two doctors with the ability to enact the Mental Health Act have been sent for, but one got lost by turning left at the second igloo (use your imagination kids), the doctor with superior navigation skills could potentially hold Patricia under a section four for 72 hours until the other Doctor hurries up to give his second opinion, which then may result in her being placed on a section two.

Section Five: In this circumstance Patricia has realised she may have skating on thin ice syndrome and has voluntarily admitted herself to hospital. However, twenty minutes into her admission she is overwhelmed with the desire to skate on thin ice and asks to discharge herself. The Doctor does not think this would be a good idea in terms of Patricia’s safety though, so he can put her on a Section 5(2), aka use his “Doctor’s holding power” for up to 72 hours. If there are no doctors available at the time Patricia is asking to leave however, a nurse can enact a section 5(4) which lasts for 6 hours or until a doctor arrives. This section will be used if there aren’t specially qualified doctor/doctors around to enact a section two/four available and can take place in general as well as mental hospitals.

CTO: This isn’t technically another section it is tied up in it all, as a CTO is a community treatment order that it’s possible for someone who has been detained under a section 3 to be discharged on to. Basically, it’s a legally binding order of conditions someone has to meet in order to be allowed to remain in the community (e.g. Patricia must attend weekly appointments/hand in her ice skates, cancel her membership to the local ice rink and take her antifreeze medication.)

And there we have it! Now of course this is a very brief explanation as to what the Mental Health Act is and there are far more details and legal jargon/complexities that go into each section, but hopefully I have demystified The Mental Health Act somewhat, albeit with a very basic, penguin centred outline. Hopefully if you are reading this you will never have to have anything to do with the Mental Health Act personally, but at least you will know what it actually is that is being referred to when an article brings it up in relation to something unpleasant that doesn’t put any effort into explaining the Act itself.

Finally, I just want to let everyone know that if anyone is concerned, I can confirm that Patricia the penguin is merely a fictional character created for the purpose of educating and reducing stigma, so please do not go away and worry about how she is doing after having been through all these sections. As a product of my imagination, I can assure you that Patricia is just fine, and I hope you all are too. Cheerio.

(I hope the above picture serves as enough evidence that Patricia is safe and sound/not in any danger. As you can see she is merely enjoying a bowl of coco pops in her safe ice igloo and has not been ice skating, nor will she be doing so in the near future.)

The Problem With Eating Disorders And The Desire To Achieve

July 4, 2016 / bornwithoutmarbles / 13 Comments

In life I think it is safe to say that most people are born with a desire to achieve, a need for purpose, for something that they feel will make their life worthwhile. If you are an expert in biology as I am, with many qualifications in human body expertise (I did biology GCSE), you will know that this space that craves a sense of achievement comes in the form of a little hole that is located just below the liver, and when humans are born, it is empty. Naturally people want to fill it in order to feel complete, and the way in which to do this is to fill it with achievements, achievements like getting a good grade in an exam or breaking the world record for the number of potatoes you can balance on your head at one time, whilst enthusiastically taking part in a salsa class with a lady who keeps clacking maracas. The difficulty comes in finding what it is that fits in your hole (by which I of course mean your sense of achievement craving space and no other hole in the body), because when that hole is empty it can get awfully draughty, especially if you are wandering around the blustery moors like Cathy searching for Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights.
Unfortunately, a lot of people with eating disorders somehow manage to wedge an almighty bout of anorexia right in their sense of achievement space, and this is in no sense as good an idea as filling it with a world record relating to salsa and potatoes.

When you have an eating disorder, you automatically obtain goals, and purpose (dangerous horrible ones that are no good to achieve, but when you are caught up in the illness they feel as important and legitimate as someone else’s goal to become an astronaut.) There are always rules and things you are striving for or you are trying to beat, a new number of minutes on the treadmill, a lower number of calories than before or a new target weight, and achieving these goals fulfils that need for purpose. Ultimately each goal you set and then achieve can feel like validation that you are doing something with your life, making your existence meaningful and making life worthwhile.

I know that personally I struggle with this a lot, especially as I appear to be friends with a lot of people who all seem to know what they are doing with their lives and are very successful. On countless occasions I have been to parties with these friends and in the general “catch up” chatter I have heard them talk about all of the fantastic universities they have got into to do their masters, all the plans for their PHD dissertations on complicated topics I didn’t know existed, and the fantastic relationships they are all happily involved in, already planning to move out of their family home, elope to New Zealand and get mortgages on houses with their partners.
Meanwhile at these parties I tend to stand there looking a little bewildered and feeling incredibly inferior. I have not been to Oxford university, been to New Zealand (or Old Zealand come to think of it), and the closest I have got to moving into my own house so far is my attempts to build my own pillow fort under my bed, which isn’t going well because planning permission is a nightmare and I am struggling to sort out the plumbing situation. Does anyone have any advice for supplying a pillow fort with running water, when the only materials you have at your disposal are a few cushions, a blankets and giant cuddly penguin who has a surprising lack of DIY skills? Even if that works out, this house is being built under my bed within my parents house, so I wouldn’t really have moved out, even when I do get things up together. I know it is disordered, but in these instances at these parties, my eating disorder is of great comfort to me, because when I am feeling like a hopeless failure, I can comfort myself with all the things I have “achieved” through my anorexia, all the hard work and goals I have reached, even if in the real world things like “only ate X calories for lunch and have a BMI of Y” means very little.

This is but one of the many reasons I find the act of challenging my eating disorder and overall recovery so difficult, because in doing so I am carving out the well crafted plug filling my sense of achievement space and leaving it empty again with the gale whistling through my abdomen.
I know that the key to all of this is simply find another thing to fill that space, but it is a lot harder than I ever anticipated because when it comes to making new goals or setting out on new pursuits that you are not very experienced in, there is a high chance of failure, something that is reassuringly lacking when it comes to the world of having an eating disorder, as I have had it for so long now that I know the rules and I know that when I put my mind to it I can achieve the goals it sets. Setting my hopes and dreams on becoming a lawyer or something is a lot more complicated because it relies on so many outside influences and there are so many places for error. What if I don’t get into law school? What if I fail my exams? What if I manage to make it as a High Court judge and then at the biggest case of my career I lose my big hammer thing that judges use after they have announced their verdict, and the jury and I are left until the end of time unable to put a murderer into prison because I cant bang my hammer on the table? With eating disorder goals, I have to rely on nobody but myself, and I don’t need to be mindful of where I am keeping my hammer.

From speaking to other people with eating disorders I know it is fairly common to use anorexia to serve your sense of achievement, and in a way it is great. The anorexia or whatever else serves the function of filling that sense of achievement and blocking that gale, but it isn’t a particularly healthy filling, because once lodged in there the eating disorder grows bigger, spidering slithery tendrils away from the hole in which is was originally placed to take over and kill the whole body altogether. Therefore when it comes to recovery, it is vital to think about and work on making a new life and set of dreams to pursue and goals to achieve alongside eating a healthy diet and getting to a health body weight.

If you are currently in recovery or contemplating it and are struggling with this issue then I guess my advice is to be brave and rip that eating disorder plug out to feel that abdomen gale for a bit. I know it sucks. It will be chilly, and put you at risk of failing whilst attempting to fill that desire for achievement with things you have never tried before. Maybe things you might be bad at, or heaven forbid, things you may fail in. But maybe that is ok, and nobody can get these kind of things right the first time. Maybe in reality, achieving or failing at anything in life is far better than fooling yourself into thinking you are achieving in an illness that is basically just starving you to death, which is not an achievement at all.

Therefore I want to challenge everyone reading this with an eating disorder to try and find something new or give a random hobby a go to try and replace the one you have that is potentially killing you. Take up chess, or tiddlywinks, collect magnets shaped like penguins in hilarious poses, hell try and beat that world record for dancing the salsa with potatoes on your head. That last one especially is a great one to start with because to let you into a little secret I have learnt from my research, nobody has even set a record for that yet, so you have a pretty good chance of winning (I still cant believe no human has dared to attempt such a feat before.)
Yes it is silly and yes it sounds pointless but I urge you all to give it a go anyway, because in life there is so much more to devote your efforts and attentions to than a silly number on the scales that doesn’t tell you anything anyway. You will never lie on your death bed and reminisce about the greatness you achieved by starving yourself and wasting your life, but by God wouldn’t it be wonderful to lie there in your final moments, and to reminisce about salsa dancing amongst all your trophies and Guinness world book of record certificates, a little pile of winning potatoes gently settled at your feet. That my friends is success. Go and get it.

salsa

	AHumbleSocialJustice… on Another Apology
	appleslover on Another Apology
	rivershadow6 on Another Apology
	hollywells9 on Another Apology
	AHumbleSocialJustice… on Another Apology

Born without marbles

The person who runs this blog has no idea what they are doing.

MentalHealth