This week is apparently "Mental Health Awareness Week", and I saw a fairly good article on the BBC Website regarding mental health "role-models", suggesting that the "traditional" famous role-models with mental health issues (Winston Churchill, Stephen Fry etc.) are perhaps not the best ones for those of us less exceptional folk with mental health issues due to their unusual circumstances and that we need more everyday role-models. Or at least that was my reading of it, possibly somewhat distracted by a ham roll and some soup, given that I was reading it while lunching at my desk.
But it got me thinking (Nooooooo! Not that! I hear you cry...) I'm no sure that I need any role-models - I am quite capable of being depressed and coping (mostly) with life without someone to show me how. Necessity shows me how. I think that what we still need is less fear, more understanding and for a lot of people with mental health issues a lot more support. I am lucky - I get a lot of support from my wonderful friends and family and have also benefited from a succession of understanding managers at work. I have also been helped by medical professionals and the medication that it seems I will probably be taking for the rest of my life. There is no all better, as I have said before, but there is better than before.
An analogy for the way that I experience depression came to me the other day. I think that it is like being tired - that exhausted, bone-weary tired after you haven't slept properly for days. (Lets pretend that going for a kip is not an option!) You can force yourself to carry on, you can do your best, you will have times where you get a kind of "second wind" and can almost forget just how tired you are, and of course you can drink coffee or energy drinks etc. to lessen the symptoms - but you cannot simply decide not to be tired, you cannot just "buck your ideas up" and just be well rested. That, for me, is pretty much what depression feels like - without the "good night's kip" get out clause.
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