Having spent the last two days on a mental health first aid training course, I find myself exhausted and shocked. Exhausted by the sheer intensity of the two days, shocked at the epidemic of mental ill health in this country.
I knew things were bad, but not this bad. Three times as many people take their own lives every year than die in motor car accidents. I didn’t know that. What an incredible statistic. And one in every hundred people suffer from psychosis. One in every hundred. One in four people will suffer a mental health issue this year. What is the world coming to?
We covered every single aspect of the subject and I feel battered and bruised. There was so much of me written on the white boards and on the sheets prepared in syndicate exercises, it felt at times it was all about me. But my problems, currently in remission, of sorts, are simply nothing compared to others.
Suicide is a subject which continues to pain me. I have lost friends and many acquaintances over the years and not just a few. All were under 40 and most were under 30. How desperate were they? More desperate perhaps than we could ever imagine.
At the heart of most suicide is mental illness because you would not want to end your life if your mental health was good (unless you were some brainwashed religious fanatic who was under the misguided impression his mince would meet all those virgins in paradise). The worst I have ever got – on many occasions, if I am being honest – is the “I don’t want to live but I don’t want to die” state of mind. Things were bad, sometimes very bad, but the nothingness of not being here at all appealed far less.
I knew why some of my friends killed themselves but there were suicides I never understood, nor did those who were left behind, which must have been awful for them and probably still is today.
I shouldn’t have started this really because I’m coming to the end without a conclusion. I felt the need to write about my sadness at the growing epidemic of mental illness which the government is addressing by slashing funding. Makes sense. I wish the hapless (hopeless?) Mrs May would speak to the relatives and friends of those who have taken their own lives. She might still not care, but maybe just for once a politician might act with heart and conscience.
