Breaking the silence

Are you scared of driving?

By Joanne Mallon

Panic attacks aren't fun at the best of times, but imagine how much worse it is to experience one when you're driving along the motorway.

Incidents like this were part of my driving phobia, which kept me off the roads for seven years.  I have written about how I overcame my fear of drivng on my blog, and now I've been commissioned to write a book about it.

 Since speaking out about it, I've had many many people contact me to say that they've experienced a fear of driving too. I think it's one of those fears that's more common than you might realise. But there's very little help or information out there for people like us.

Irish women speak out

LYN Jenkins introduces the new collection of Irish Women's stories from the West Midlands Irish Women's Friendship Group.

After many months of hard work by the West Midlands Irish Women’s Friendship Group, Breaking the Silence: A Collection of Irish Women’s Narratives is finally available to the world at large.

The group has been supported in its quest to share extraordinary experiences between themselves, with a wider community and with anyone responsible for providing services to Irish women by Kinship Narratives’, Lyn Jenkins, (in her role as West Midlands Regional Co-ordinator for Mind’s Open Up project) and Katrice Horsley, an internationally renowned storyteller.

It has been a pleasure to work with this group, to support them as they developed and to help them nurture their fledgling ideas into life.

The booklet they have created contains not only the sometimes hopeful, sometimes heartbreaking, always straight and to the point stories of the experiences of these women alongside photographs of the beautiful fabric collages they created telling their stories visually. To read the booklet yourself

Don't Mind Me

 Thanks to Judith Haire for taking the time to share her story with us here and tell us about the book she has written about her experiences...

I'm 54 and at the age of 37 I experienced an acute psychotic episode which saw me hospitalised for six months. I was catatonic, mute and refused all food and drink for the first eleven days so I had to be sectioned under the Mental Health Act. 

The consultant told my parents he was saving my life rather than my sanity. I had six treatments of electro-convulsive therapy while sectioned. 

I'd grown up in a dysfunctional family and at the age of fourteen my grandmother died and I was not allowed to go to her funeral. I became depressed and, as a grief response, started to hear voices.

Without my knowledge, my mother arranged an appointment for me at the Child Guidance Clinic and one morning, when I thought my father was driving me to school, I was taken there against my will.

I was too frightened to reveal what was really going on at home and so was my mother so I was medicated and labelled a psychiatric case.

Speaking out on bipolar in a book that's gone down a storm

THE following article was written for the women's community Judith's Room. It's an inspirational story. 

I AM crazy.

There, I said it.

This is the opening line in my book. Now, I know it's not politically correct to use the term crazy when referring to someone with a mental illness, but I wear the label like a badge of honor.

I feel I've earned it. The first commandment in writing is: Write what you know. Well, I know crazy. My kind of crazy is known as bipolar disorder.

I was diagnosed fifteen years ago. Within that time, I've experienced relentless cycles of severe mood swings and psychotic episodes. I've been committed to a psych ward more times than I can count. I've been treated by various doctors and have been on countless medication regimens.