Tag Archives: mental illness

“Dignity In Mental Health” What It Means To Me – My post for World Mental Health Day 2015

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Happy World Mental Health Day

The theme of this year’s World Mental Health Day is “Dignity in Mental Health”  What does “Dignity In Mental Health” mean to me?  To me, it means lack of stigma.  It means not being treated differently because you have a mental illness.  It means not being looked down on, or treated as less than others because you suffer from a mental illness.  It means being treated with equality.  It means feeling that you are “good enough”  Most of us with Borderline Personality Disorder feel as though we are not good enough.  We have been made to feel that way by our parents or our peers or whoever.  It means not feeling ashamed of having a mental illness.  It means being strong enough to say “I have a mental illness and am not ashamed of it!”  It means being in therapy or taking medication or both and not being discriminated against because of it.

“Dignity in mental health” means talking about mental illness and not being shamed into silence.  It means making our voices heard.  It means talking about the issues that people are afraid to talk about.  Such as suicide.  Silence kills.  Talking about suicide does not put the idea in people’s heads, contrary to popular belief.  It lets people know that if you are dealing with depression or any mental illness and it feels like it’s too much to bear, that you can talk about it to someone and it can get you the appropriate help, and lessen the pain.  It means saving lives.

What does “dignity in mental health” mean to you?  Does it mean any of the things that I’ve listed here?  Did I miss anything?  What would you add to this list?

I look forward to hearing your comments.  Till next time,

— Joyce.

Sorry, no room at the Inn!

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I told you that I’d update you all on some information I learned at my shrink appointment Tuesday.  Well, here goes:

Where I live, they have hundreds of children and adolescents with psychiatric disorders.  How many beds to you think they have for the whole county?  SEVEN!  Or maybe eight.  Seven or eight beds for hundreds of kids who desperately need help!  This is unacceptable! Some of these kids are psychotic and have totally lost touch with reality.  Because they only have a few beds, many kids who really need help, like our daughter, are turned away.  They have to figure out who are the worst and give the beds to them.  I’m sure that many really need them, but they just don’t have the beds.  What happens to them?

We’ve tried to get our daughter help.  But she had to want help, and she doesn’t.  She’s missed a year-and-a-half of school.  I feel so helpless!  This is ridiculous!

Dr. P said that it’s because the government figures that it’s up to the families to look after their kids and pay for it, not them.  Bullshit!  Who else calls bullshit on this?  Are families equipped physically or mentally to handle psychotic kids because they don’t have a bed available for them?

We tried filling out a form to get our daughter admitted to the hospital.  We were told the police have to take her to the nearest hospital, which is the county hospital, which has no psychiatric unit.  Dr. P said that they have to take her to the nearest hospital with a psychiatric ward.  But it doesn’t matter because she wasn’t psychotic at the time and there are no beds available!

Who else is pissed off by this?