There's Always Light at the End of the Tunnel

The 21 st of march, this year a Friday, the start of the weekend, a night out , this Friday has so many different meanings for each person and that is the same for me. This Friday the 21 st of March marks two years since I was discharged from hospital after spending 4 months in hospital and since that day I have not stepped back into hospital and have continued on my road to recovery. To be honest when I got discharged I didn’t know what to expect. I was scared, happy, nervous, anxious and delighted. There were so many emotions going around in my head I didn’t know what to think however I can vividly recall the moment of relief as I stepped outside of the hospital for the last time, the last time I sat in the dining room, the last time I sat in the common room and the last time I talked to the nurses and doctors who without doubt saved my life, supported me and encouraged me to get on the road to recovery. After being discharged I wasn’t sure what was going to happen. I thou...

Dazed and adrift I found myself consumed by the never ending negative thoughts of self-harming. The idea of relief, begin able to breath and finally getting a break from the thoughts in my head are what I wish to achieve but does self-harming really do that? Yes it does, it allows me to relax, to breath and to have a clear head but of course there is always a negative. This relief, this break from my mind and this chance to breath is always short lived as once I begin to be free from my thoughts the urges and thoughts of self-harming come flooding back. There feels like there is no escape, you begin to feel trapped and you are consumed with the idea of the positives which no matter how small self-harm can provide. It breaks you down bit by bit, ensuring you feel worthless, hopeless and isolated. It challenges any positive thoughts which you may have and ensures to capture any hopes you may have for the future and for overcoming your self-harm. It consumes every part of your life, a...

Around about four years ago I was diagnosed with depression and since then I have gone through years of treatment including psychotherapy and CBT as well as taking medication every day for almost three years. It took a while for me to come to terms with depression and it was not something, which I came to terms with over night, it took weeks for me to accept that I had depression. It challenged my thoughts, provided me with relief putting a name to my feelings, made me think about life and the way I was living and it made me realize there was a hole other world, the world of mental health. Today I attended my weekly appointment with my community mental health key worker to discuss my new treatment plan. While learning about things they used in order to make my care plan something interesting arose. I was told I DO NOT HAVE DEPRESSION, you night think that I would be reveled that I do not have a mental illness but I was then informed that while not having an illness I have a mental...

I have been told that now I am an adult I must take control of my own recovery, my own medication, my own appointments and basically take care of my own mental health unlike the way I child would look after their mental health, and so that is exactly what I have been doing. I ensured I got an appointment with the adult mental health services after little was done by CAMHS to ensure my transfer was smooth, as a result of being told everything was taken care of it took four months until I found out this was not the case and another month trying to get an appointment.   This followed with endless assessments being done by numerous staff members in the adult mental health services to allow them to develop a care plan, a care plan that I am waiting for still after at least a month. When expressing my wishes to be reduced of my medication which was a factor for consideration since being a patient with child services I was turned down because it is not the right time according to...

Something, which I struggle to deal with, is the idea of change. I hate change and would do anything to avoid it yet it is impossible to avoid change. However the certain aspects of your life, which you can control such as your style or your hair colour, are things, which I will never change, or so I thought. In a bid to raise funds in behalf of Label Jars Not People I have decided I would embrace something which I hate, something I struggle to deal with and something which many people too struggle with, I have decided to embrace change and actively change something which I have control over in my life in the hopes of raising some much needed funds for our charity of the year, Console. After some thought I have decided to dye my hair. What was originally meant to be my entire head soon went to parts of my hair as in my current situation with work and placement for college it is not practical to arrive with blue hair. So in a bid to follow through with my decision to dye my hai...

Suicide according to the World Health Organization suicide is “the act of deliberately killing oneself.” This is true and I would never consider challenging this definition I would however elaborate on this definition making suicide the act of deliberately killing oneself when life is not worth living and when you have been trapped in darkness and unable to find hope for an extended period of time. From my experience this is how I would describe suicide. You could say that I didn’t want to die and in one sense I didn’t, had I really deep down wanted to die my first suicide attempt would have been successful and the second and the third, they would have all been successful if deep down I had really wanted to die. You could also say that I did want to die, I wanted to die to end my pain and suffering, I wanted relief, I wanted to be free and I wanted to be with the family who I have lost. You see, suicide isn’t as simple as someone wanting to die, it invo...