Mullets for Mental Health

I’ve decided to join ‘Mullets for Mental Illness’ and get a fully sick hair cut for September. It’s my way of raising awareness and hopefully some funding to help those less fortunate with mental health issues. You see while my mental illness affects my daily life and makes everything just a bit harder, for others it can be extremely limiting, isolating and even devastating. It’s something that touches us all but I have seen those with great social and professional support make amazing progress.

If you or someone close to you suffers from mental illness or thinks that might be what’s going on I highly recommend you look into a support program called Grow. It’s basically a 12 step program for those that have a mental illness but the best part for me is attending a group where everyone knows what ‘brain fog’ is. No one judges you because you forgot to brush your hair that morning. No one thinks you’re less intelligent because you forgot what you were saying half way through or cried that morning because your partner looked at you the wrong way.

If anyone is still on the fence on whether mental illness is something that needs our attention I’ve got a few points, just somethings I picked up in my journey over the last 20+ years. There’s no references, I can’t remember where I heard them all but they’ve proved mostly true for me over the years so here they are:

* A person with a mental illness is more likely to be the victim of a crime, statistically, than the perpetrator. I know for myself when I’m unwell I’m more likely to blame myself when others treat me badly then I am to pick up that their behaving badly.

* One in four will experience mental illness at some time in their life.

*Supportive friends and family make a big difference to how quickly one is able to recover and if they are able to avoid a relapse. I am lucky to have very supportive friends and family that check in with me regularly as well as my Grow friends. It really does help.

* people with mental health issues aren’t ‘just making excuses’. I fucking hate having to use depression or anxiety as a reason for anything. 1. Because I feel like the disease ‘wins’ when I do this. 2. Because I don’t want to seem like I want ‘special treatment’. However this is how I became quite stressed out and unwell this time so maybe I should have been more honest about my limitations.

* Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not real. I don’t have time to educate every person who says insensitive things about mental illness and they probably wouldn’t listen anyway. There’s plenty of science now to back it up.

I’d love to hear from anyone with mental health issues about there experiences or if there’s any issues in particular you’d like to see raised in the blog.

If you want to support the fundraiser go to my Facebook page ‘A Bit Shit’, scroll down and find the link. If not you could share the link, comment something supportive or just generally educate yourself and please make sure you’re checking in to make sure your family and friends are coping okay during these challenging times. It’s a bit shit but we’ll get through it together.