Let's talk mental health

Mental health disorders affect one in four people. These are their stories. Curated by the Guardian. Banner illustration by Chloe Cushman.

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Forget the gold bikini. For people with mental illness Carrie Fisher was a queen

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Orli, a 17-year-old girl from north London, talks to her friends about her anxiety and how she plans to beat it. 

See her story

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Every step I have taken in the past few months has been a step away from pain, a step closer to feeling better. When I run, I know that at some point endorphins kick in, positive brain chemistry happens, and I feel brilliant. There is science behind that, obviously, but to me it is a simple equation that needs little explanation: I feel crap, so I run, and afterwards, sometimes for days, my depression lifts. It is not a magical cure, and I’m sure it doesn’t work for everyone, but it keeps a lid on it for me. I never expected running to lessen my depression and am surprised, daily, that it does. For me, it is truly a lifesaver.

Running saved my life | Zoe Margolis

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“This is not who I am. Where is my compassion?”: a mental health nurse on the stresses of her job in today’s NHS

“A typical day at work: I’m in early at 8am, typing 60 words per minute to get a tribunal report completed for a deadline tomorrow. At 9am the phone starts to ring. A desperate patient has had a bad night and says she wants to kill herself. I glance at my diary for the day. Full of appointments, the first is an initial assessment at 9am. He’s probably already in reception as I can hear someone crying. A child protection meeting at 10.30am. This will give me 20 minutes to type up a whole assessment, develop a care plan and make any necessary referrals. This should take about three hours. I take five minutes to find out how suicidal my patient is. I need to assess if I have to find a way of seeing her today. The child protection meeting will hopefully finish by midday as I have four home visits from 12.30pm.

When I assess that my patient is actually planning to kill herself today, I find myself sighing. I hope she hasn’t heard. I look at my home visits and decide who to cancel. I manage to get my patient to agree that she will keep herself safe until 1pm when I will be able to visit her at home. It’s only later when I am in my car and have a minute to myself that I am able to reflect that this is not the type of nurse I want to be. This is not who I am, someone who sighs and finds it inconvenient that a patient is so low they want to end their life. Where is my compassion?

The government is focused on us meeting targets but we have no resources. The precious commodity of time no longer exists for us. My trust has introduced training days on compassion as if this was something that could be taught. That’s why most of us went into nursing. Please do not drown us in a sea of targets, statistics and paperwork. Please do not take away our time to be compassionate. I left my nursing career in 2014 and still grieve for the NHS I knew in 1997.”

Read more: Working as a mental health nurse in today's NHS drained me of compassion

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Fake It 'Til You Make It: Bryony Kimmings has made a drama out of her boyfriend's depression

My name is Bryony Kimmings, I am a performance artist from London. I met Tim in June 2013. I had been hidden away in a massive country house in the Yorkshire Dales for weeks, desperately making a show for Edinburgh. Walks, healthy food and long days of writing, going a little stir-crazy.

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One Friday afternoon, after I’d been out for a very nice lunch, I found myself in a dark place brought on by nothing in particular. I went into my boss’s office and I said, 'I have to talk to you.' I didn’t tell him everything – just that I sometimes find myself sitting at my desk while it crashes down a ravine, and that I might need a quiet space sometimes. I was nervous, because my illness tells me I’m a burden on everyone and couldn’t possibly be worth the enormous undertaking. But to my surprise, he said: 'I don’t want to lose you.'

Each time I start a job, I dread the day I'll have to tell them about my mental illness | Anna Spargo-Ryan

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Each time I start a job, I dread the day I'll have to tell them about my mental illness

“Sometimes that day has never arrived. Sometimes I’ve been in a job and I’ve gone to work and I’ve been a valuable member of a team. But sometimes I’ve been sitting at my desk and a dark cloud has come over me. I’ve sat under the cloud and thought, oh no, here it comes, I’m at my desk and the dark cloud has arrived. Now I’m going to have to tell someone because it’s not acceptable to run screaming from an office building for no reason (allegedly).

The problem isn’t that my mental illness has stopped me from being great at my job. On the contrary – in many ways it has helped me become a more insightful, intuitive and creative thinker. The problem is the words that go around it. I’ve not yet found a way to say, “I’m depressed” without it sounding like, “I want to have some time off because I’m lazy.” It doesn’t sound like that. But the thing about depression is that it tells you lies right to your face, and one of those lies is that you should be able to just go to work and function like everybody else does. You should be able to go to work without chaos.

And so, I’ve spent years making excuses for my brain. To appear “normal”. To be ordinary.”

Anna Spargo-Ryan on coming out about your mental illness at work. Read the whole piece here.

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To illustrate how horrible it was, being in jail in a wheelchair with four broken limbs after the car accident that prompted me to get sober ... was much, much easier and less painful.

Comedian Rob Delaney’s description of severe depression is enough to stop you in your tracks. How can a mental illness, a disorder of thought and emotion, feel so much worse than the most intense physical discomfort? And yet it’s not unusual to read about metaphorical bouts between illnesses in which the black dog always wins. “It’s a piece of cake in comparison with depression,” saidMajella O’Donnell, of breast cancer. Even in the realm of mental anguish, it pummels all competitors into submission. Lewis Wolpert found it “more terrible even than watching my wife die”. A pain worse than fractured bones, cancer and grief. What is this state, which around 10% of us can expect to experience at least once in our lives? Where does it come from, and what can be done about it?

Read the full piece: what is depression? You asked Google – here's the answer

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They really made me feel like I might be a serial killer rather than someone with a common and treatable illness. I wasn’t the only one this happened to – in a place full of fairly quiet girls whose main hobbies were self-harming and wearing black, we were handled with a caution more suited to violent criminals. We alternated between laughing and getting frustrated by it all. It’s hardly ideal to be treated like delinquents when your identity is still forming. I quickly stopped thinking of myself as quiet and became increasingly aggressive.

I came out of a teenage mental health unit worse than when I went in - Fern Brady

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Need help? Here are some people you can call

We get a lot of anonymous asks through from people asking for help with specific issues. Unfortunately, we are not professionals so we’re not qualified to give you the advice you need.

But we can point you to some people who can. We’ve tried to include contact details from as many different places as possible, but if you think we’ve missed someone off, just let us know and we’ll add it here and to our resources page.

UK & Ireland

Samaritans - 08457 90 90 90 - jo@samaritans,org

MIND -0300 123 3393 - [email protected]

Papyrus - 0800 068 41 41

Lifeline (Northern Ireland) - 0808 808 8000

Beat (Eating disorders) - 0845 634 1414 (adult helpline) - 0845 634 7650 (youth helpline) - [email protected]

America

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline - 1-800-273-TALK (8255) (also covers Canada)

The National Eating Disorders Association - 1-800-931-2237

Canada

Canadian Mental Health Association

Australia

Lifeline - 13 11 14

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Re-upping as we’ve had a few asks for advice recently. We’re currently putting together some posts with more specific resources soon - if you know of a good site/helpline for specific mental health issues, feel free to send them our way.

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Everyone has “mental health” because we’re highly evolved animals with big, complicated brains, and we all have undulating reserves for the stresses of life. As Mark Salter, a consultant psychiatrist, told me recently, “becoming mentally ill isn’t a full stop in a sentence – it’s a comma”. No one is 100% “well” all the time, but unless the stigma is challenged with openness the wider conversation will never change. Anyone who has experienced mental health problems will remain “other” and we’ll stay stuck in awkward loops of shame.

Should you tell your boss about mental illness? Absolutely Eleanor Morgan

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If you become mentally ill, don’t – whatever you do – tell your boss. That’s Ruby Wax’s advice. The comedian and author, who was recently awarded an OBE for her services to mental health, told the Times: “When people say, ‘Should you tell them at work?’, I say: ‘Are you crazy?’ You have to lie. If you have someone who is physically ill, they can’t fire you. They can’t fire you for mental health problems but they’ll say it’s for another reason. Just say you have emphysema.” Mental illness, she added, “is like the situation used to be with gay rights. Like being in the closet, but mental illness is now the taboo instead.” For Wax, a prominent advocate of mental health awareness and visibility, to tell those of us who experience a mental health problem – one in four in the UK each year – that we’re still stigmatised seems a significant regression. Because as a nation we’ve got much better at not looking on those with mental health problems as weird. Yes, there’s still no true parity between physical and mental healthcare in this country, and rates of suicide continue to increase. Clearly, many of us are still ashamed of reaching out when we’re not feeling right, and fear being judged, or what it means to become mentally unwell. Yet attitudes are improving. If a colleague struggles with anxiety, we’re less likely now to describe them as “a bit nutty”, drawing an imaginary spiral near our temple. I’m writing a book about anxiety, and the general consensus among the psychologists, psychiatrists and GPs I’ve spoken to is that the discourse is evolving – even if it feels like the pace of change is glacial. There is tangible optimism, even within a sector of the NHS that has come apart at the seams under public spending cuts, that people are more open about how they feel in their heads. What certainly won’t help is campaigners such as Wax – who has battled depression over the years – telling us to keep our mouths shut or, worse, lie about our illness.

Should you tell your boss about mental illness? Absolutely Eleanor Morgan

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This Woman Got A Tattoo To Honour Her Late Father And Started A Global Movement

Project Semicolon aims to encourage and support those struggling with depression, suicide, addiction and self-harm.

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Chronic depression shrinks brain's memories and emotions

Global study finds the more episodes of depression, the greater the reduction in hippocampus size, but it was very likely damage was reversible

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I was diagnosed with anorexia nervosa but I’d always had a combination of trying to starve myself and then bursts of binge-eating. “I have never been able to access the NHS system due to astronomical waiting lists and my own health not meeting the criteria, despite it being a disabling condition. “In December 2012, I went to my GP and asked if I could get some help because I was really struggling. She put a referral letter in for me straight away. “Over the course of 2013, things got increasingly and significantly worse – especially in terms of my mental health. I felt particularly vulnerable because my job got busier and more stressful. I was aware that I’d heard nothing back from the referral. It was about April when I started chasing it. “By the time it got to July, I had a bit of a breakdown. I felt emotionally very unstable and I was fixating on the numbers on the scales. As well as starving myself, I was exercising a lot more and using laxatives and diet pills. I rang my GP to chase what was going on, but I had kind of started giving up on ever getting an appointment. I have a really brilliant GP, but there was nothing she could do. It was very frustrating. “Having fought to get help over quite a long period of time, I was losing the will to get help with my eating disorder. Finally, in September I was told I could have an appointment in mid-October. By that time, I had waited nearly a year to get my appointment; my health had deteriorated and I had lost more weight. The insupportable reason is that with mental health there is no maximum waiting time as with other areas of NHS care. “I had the assessment but afterwards I was told I didn’t meet the really strict criteria for treatment. The criteria includes things like ‘system or organ failure’, which obviously I didn’t have. Everyone knows early intervention is both cost-effective and saves lives, so it’s completely contradictory that they are working off this model in this day and age. The system is so complicated. “It felt like it was a case of ‘not being ill enough, not being thin enough’, and if you tell someone with an eating disorder that they don’t fit the criteria, what’s going to happen? So by the time of the followup appointment in November, I had lost even more weight but I still wasn’t given treatment. After Christmas, I got really unwell again and I ended up in A&E in January. “My parents stepped in and paid for private treatment. We came to the conclusion that the NHS wasn’t going to help. For 14 months, I had outpatient help. I saw a therapist once a week and a dietician fortnightly. The therapist was a trainee, which helped keep costs down as she only charged £25 per session. The dietician was £105 per appointment. I was lucky they were able to support me; not everyone has this option. “By the time I started this outpatient treatment, I’d had an eating disorder for 14 years. Why was it necessary to pay for help privately when I had a chronic condition? It would be different if they were treating a physical issue like diabetes or asthma. “Why do we pay our taxes, which go to fund the NHS, only to get denied treatment when we really need it?”

Kat Pugh has suffered from anorexia nervosa since she was 11. She sought help from the NHS when she had a relapse in 2012. But after waiting 10 months for an appointment and being refused treatment, she paid for private care. Now 26, she is stable and works for an education charity. She lives in Wimbledon, south-west London.

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Eating disorder patients' lives at risk due to long waits for NHS treatment

Overstretched specialists forced to prioritise anorexia patients while delays of up to three years mean those untreated become more seriously ill

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In 2012 I was really unwell – I was having a bad psychotic episode – and ended up in A&E. I told the mental health team there that I couldn’t keep myself safe and asked them to admit me. I was hearing voices telling me to set myself on fire in order to save the world.  “It was terrifying. I really believed that tens of thousands of people would die unless I did what the voices said. “The staff were helpful enough. But they said there was no mental health bed available anywhere in the whole north-east, so they sent me home. They said they would send the crisis team to see me, but not on which day or at what time. I was in crisis there and then. In fact the crisis team didn’t arrive for three days, by which time I had already been sectioned. “When I got home I found a can of petrol in the garage and was standing there with it and some matches. I tried to get the lid off but couldn’t. That’s really lucky, because I planned to set myself on fire. If the lid had been less rusty I’d have done that. That’s how close I came to killing myself. “It was a really frightening experience because I was so close to being dead. I was clearly very unwell and needed to be in hospital, but there were no beds. “NHS care for people having a mental health crisis is really patchy. I’m lucky because I didn’t manage to kill myself and did end up in hospital and did eventually get help from an early intervention in psychosis team. “But it shouldn’t be about luck. It should be about everybody in that situation getting the help and care they need every time.

Kerry Owen, who suffers with schizoaffective disorder, relates her experience of NHS care when she experienced a mental health crisis. Now 31, she is in good health, after receiving help from an early intervention in psychosis team, and works as a scientist in the NHS. She lives in York.