If you're on Twitter and are passionate about mental health, then please follow and take part in +MHChat every Wednesday 8PM UTC.
This week it's all about the relationship between physical health and mental health and as a blogger, I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to share my opinions on how they are treated so differently.
I may have touched up on this very briefly in another blog post, but I haven't really put it into a lot of detail so... here we go.
Physical health, to me, is treated with more respect than mental health. Maybe because you can actually see the problem, whereas with mental health "it's all in your head", but if you cut yourself or stung yourself on something and visit the local hospital/walk in centre, they are completely fine with it. If you tell them that you self-harmed or overdosed, it's a completely different story and I think that's wrong on so many levels.
Mental health is just as important as your physical health but i'd rather have a broken arm or leg than a broken mind which I've been doomed with.
When I visit hospital because of either self-harm or if a paramedic comes out to me who has seen me before for my mental health (overdose or self-harm) I'm instantly judged, and they don't even say anything but you kind of sense the atmosphere is really awkward but when I dislocated my knees, they just joke about and it's a great atmosphere. Don't get me wrong, that's not EVERYONE'S experience, this is just my own, the NHS is great but my experience hasn't been very positive. I'm sitting in the waiting area for hours on end, seen by a doctor then wait another few hours for the crisis team to assess me which results me wasting my time because they just send me home in a taxi as "normal" so... my experiences weren't very great but no doubt that the nurses and doctors in the NHS are just the best!! :)
Just like the paramedic on 999 What's Your Emergency said "we go to someone who's having a heart attack, we can treat that. We go to someone who's having a stroke, we can do something about that. We go to someone with a broken arm, we can sort their pain out. We then go to someone who's having suicidal thoughts or feeling depressed, there's no magic cure for that."
And it's very true!!!
Catch the @MHChat on Twitter on Wednesday at 8PM UTC and you can tweet me also using @cjoanward_.
Miss Catherine x
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