Hello!
This is a blog from Lyn Jenkins and Linda Jones.
Lyn is a documentary artist and regional co-ordinator with Mind and Linda is a journalist.
Both are involved with a mental health project in the Midlands and this will be their blog to chart progress, discuss issues and highlight articles and resources they hope may be of interest.
Thanks for reading.
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Mind, a leading national charity for mental health, is looking for the Mind Journalist of the Year 2010.
Here last year's winner, Eleanor Harding, talks about the work that won her the award and the effect writing about mental health has had on her and her career:
"The award was in recognition of articles written for our newsgroup's campaign, "Mental Health, It's Everyone's Business". We published fortnightly features which aimed to destroy the myths surrounding mental illness, something we learnt much from ourselves. The articles explored a range of illnesses including body dysmorphic disorder, schizophrenia and post traumatic stress disorder. Through interviews with experts and case studies, we were able to create concise, fact-based articles which we felt raised awareness of mental illness while showing the local community where they could go to for help.
"One year on, so much has changed. I'm now a senior reporter and health correspondent at the Wandsworth Guardian, and I've been working on some really exciting side projects too."
Continue reading "Do you know the next Mind Journalist of the Year?" »
PHILIP contributed to a piece I wrote about depression among journalists.
He also sent me the following piece, which now that I am well, I look at differently. When I was depressed, I read Philip's words and nodded along, agreeing that happiness was dependant on your life, work and friendship.
But now as I read it, I find myself wanting to butt in, and tell the writer it's okay to be sad and that sometimes this is a health issue and nobody's fault.
Introduced by Lyn Jenkins
'BECOMING a carer' suggests some kind of conscious decision but for most people that isn't the reality...they have not chosen to become a carer.
They had their own goals, dreams for the future and emotional needs to be met. Someone they loved reached a stage, physically or emotionally, where they needed help. Being a carer, in more cases than not, has little to do with choice, ability, preparedness and everything to do with being the nearest human being that 'cares about' this person.
Here, carer Nickie O'Hara talks honestly and movingly about the frustration, distress and dedication of becoming a carer of someone experiencing mental distress:
WHEN you are the partner of a sufferer of mental health there is not an awful lot you can do to help them. You have no idea what is going on inside their head as, a lot of the time, it is impossible for them to explain it. Even if you do have personal experience of mental illness it will not compare. Depression is a silent illness. It has no outward symptoms and can easily be dismissed. My partner has officially had severe depression for ten years and for five of those years there have been many occasions where I have wanted to scream.
Continue reading "A carer's cry for help: The reality of living with someone with mental distress" »
Introduced by Lyn Jenkins
Part One of Emma's Story can be found here.
Part Two of Emma's Story can be found here.
This is the third and final part in Emma's incredible recreation of living with borderline in written form...
Truth, you want to talk truth? Whose truth, yours or mine? Is there a truth between? No, my truth is truth. Your idea of truth is a lie. I don't lie. If I don't lie and our truths aren't the same that makes you a liar. Does so...just does. If I am right then you are wrong. Yes you are. No I'm not. If I am good then you are bad if you don't agree with me or see things my way. My way isn't just right, it is the only way. What matters is what I want and need. That's my truth. And my truth is the truth. Don't you even try to lie to me, don't...
I know things but they seem fleeting. What is real and important one minute is fragile and or gone and or misunderstood-misperceived and misinterpreted by me the next minute. I don't know why? You were here a minute ago and it mattered. But then you left. While you were gone for three minutes and fifty-four seconds (clock time -- forever in my own sense of the reality of time) I forgot that you mattered to me and now I find it incredibly impossible to believe that you could love me and leave me just like that for three minutes and fifty-four seconds...to wait and to suffer like that, alone, isolated and afraid. Don't ever do that again. Promise me! Do you have any idea what you put me through? My parents left me like that. It's not alright for you to just be you and not be me -- while I'm being you too. I know things seem fleeting. Things keep changing. I can't hold anymore than I am whether I am holding anything or not.
You live in a 'big picture'. Life, so I am told unfolds in some 'big picture' of reality. I live in millions of little pictures. Millions of pieces of reality. Snapshots from the whole, fragmented seconds of minutes that seem to encompass hours. I can't tell what is going on around me like you do. No, it does not make sense to me. Part of this picture lined up with part of that one...what am I supposed to see? What can I know from these mixed up jigsaw puzzle messages? I get part of it. I don't understand the rest. First you seem to make sense, then you don't so I get angry and frustrated. In one part of the picture I care about you but in another part of the picture I remember out of context when you said this or that and then I can't trust you anymore, or not until the next moment when two picture pieces fit briefly together.
This is my experience.
So one minute I want you close, from a distance and the next minute I want you distantly-close.
This is what is going on inside of me. I don't want to hurt you like I do. I just don't know how to make sense of all of these jumbled messages and fragmented pictures that bombard my mind constantly with images and thoughts that do not fit together, not now, not ever, hardly ever anyway. If memories are pictures of the way things were (or the way things are?) then my memories, like strewn screams, echo to a voided-abyss in a cavernous canyon. Imagine all that sound overlapping itself.
Could you hear me then, any better than I can hear you now?
Welcome to my world,
Em xxx
Introduced by Lyn Jenkins
Part One of Emma's Story can be found here
Here is part two of Emma's exceptional story about living with borderline...
I have remained trapped inside this isolated, and insulated place of youth stunted in my emotional growth. I am a victim. It is not my fault. I hurt and I hurt and I hurt. Why don't you care? Why don't you care? Make it go away. Make it stop, just love me from over there. Love me, but don't you dare really care. It would hurt too much if you were to care. I wouldn't understand who you are caring for or about because I don't know who I am. I hate who I am and what I am. I hate whoever the hell I am. I have come to hate what it is that I might be, or sometimes am. I don't like the voided vacuum within which I feel like my being exists under a glass bubble. So close, yet so far away from others am I. So close, yet so far away, from whoever I am, am I.Who are you trying to care about? What does that mean, that you want to care about me? It would mean that I needed you to care. I don't need you to care but I am dying for you to care. Still, care from over there and don't act like I need you.
Rescue me,
Continue reading "Living within the confines of borderline - Part Two" »
Introduced by Lyn Jenkins
When I first read Emma's story, I struggled. I struggled until I realised that as a piece of autobiographical writing it is incredibly effective at communicating the experience of living with Borderline Personality Disorder not only through its words but also through structure, pacing and punctuation. It is the product of a truly talented writer which is even more inspiring when you find out that Emma is dyslexic and had to go through every sentence repeatedly until the work was complete.
Reading it on screen may add to the feeling of disconnection, making it even more powerful. It will reward you for every minute of the effort you spend on it though. Now, over to Emma...
Rage from nowhere, attached to nothing...floating-freely from deep within me and ready in an instant to spew forth in what seem like instantaneously-effortless bursts of unbridled entitlement to give me a sense of power amidst the feelings of helplessness that are my every waking moment. If I am helpless you are too powerful, no, I will be powerful. I will take your power away so you can be helpless. I don't do helpless. I am power. I must have the power. We can't both have the power. I want what is mine. You are mine right? I am not yours though, I cannot be anybody's because I am not even my own. I gave myself to you. We are each other right? I mean, what's the difference?
Continue reading "Living within the confines of borderline - Part One" »
By Lyn Jenkins
SHARING our stories is an act of rebellion against those who would rather pretend that we and our 'problems' do not exist. It is also an act of trust. We trust that people will use our stories for good...that they will offer the same support to us that we have offered to them.
A few days ago I gathered together a group of people to share their stories with each other in a safe way, with no-one watching and no-one judging. We were there only to witness the stories and experiences that those present wanted to be heard by someone, anyone who would treat them with respect.
One person in the group spoke about their experience of a difficult relationship that had eroded their mental wellbeing until they experienced a long psychotic episode. Hearing her speak with such clarity and calm about the moment when she realised that the events, the conversations, her life for months had been created within her own mind, was inspirational and astounding.
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