Mental Health 3: A Catch Up
Hello my beautiful friends!
Trigger warning: I discuss anxiety, depression and suicide as well as general mental health issues in this post.
I aimed for this blog to be about both academia and mental health, so today I am going to have a mental health catch up. I wrote a blog post about the history of my mental health in January, so feel free to read this post for context.
In my last post, I had recently referred myself to counselling again, specifically CBT. This was my second round of this sort of counselling. I completed this course, but, personally, I feel this approach was not effective for my own situation as many of the techniques suggested were ones I was already using in everyday life. I want a form of counselling which focuses on dealing with my internal turmoil rather than the external symptoms of my anxiety and depression. If anyone could recommend any forms of counselling or general techniques that could help with this, please contact me.
Since this counselling, my mood has deteriorated. This is due to depression more than anxiety (although these things are often interlinked in my situation). I have struggled to focus on schoolwork and revision, which has impacted my grades. These impacts are minimal, but do cause further distress. I cry and feel down a lot as well as generally struggling to get up and be productive during the day. I have experienced peaks in my depression before (although I'd say this is the worse I've felt) and I realise that I will eventually feel better, but this is how I am feeling currently.
Due to this low mood, I have felt increasingly suicidal. I have not acted on nor seriously considered acting on these thoughts, but I wanted to share this symptom of my mental health. Sometimes I do feel really, really low and unfortunately experience suicidal thoughts. It is okay to feel depressed and/or suicidal and people should not be shamed for it, so I'm partly sharing my experience to raise awareness. However, it is important that you have access to the relevant help, which in my case was counselling, my doctor and my parents.
Although brief, I hope this mental health catch up has been insightful. I want to use my platform to raise awareness for mental health and to reassure people that they are not alone. As mentioned in my first mental health post, I am not a doctor, nurse or counselor and I have no training in helping mental health. However, if you want to reach out to me, then I am here to listen and advise relevant help. Equally, I am interested in hearing your own mental health experiences and advice if you are comfortable sharing that.
This post may seem melancholy, especially considering many people are now on or nearly on summer holiday in the UK, but I thought this was an important issue to talk about. Either way, I hope everyone is having fun in the summer weather! 😎
"If you are feeling suicidal, there is hope."
Helplines - UK:
Samaritans (for everyone) 116 123
Papyrus (under 35s - Mon-Fri 10am-10pm, weekends 2pm-10pm and bank holidays 2pm-5pm) 0800 068 41 41
Childline (under 19s) - 0800 1111
Another option is booking an emergency GP appointment with your local GP.
Other mental health resources:
GP
NHS website
Trigger warning: I discuss anxiety, depression and suicide as well as general mental health issues in this post.
I aimed for this blog to be about both academia and mental health, so today I am going to have a mental health catch up. I wrote a blog post about the history of my mental health in January, so feel free to read this post for context.
In my last post, I had recently referred myself to counselling again, specifically CBT. This was my second round of this sort of counselling. I completed this course, but, personally, I feel this approach was not effective for my own situation as many of the techniques suggested were ones I was already using in everyday life. I want a form of counselling which focuses on dealing with my internal turmoil rather than the external symptoms of my anxiety and depression. If anyone could recommend any forms of counselling or general techniques that could help with this, please contact me.
Since this counselling, my mood has deteriorated. This is due to depression more than anxiety (although these things are often interlinked in my situation). I have struggled to focus on schoolwork and revision, which has impacted my grades. These impacts are minimal, but do cause further distress. I cry and feel down a lot as well as generally struggling to get up and be productive during the day. I have experienced peaks in my depression before (although I'd say this is the worse I've felt) and I realise that I will eventually feel better, but this is how I am feeling currently.
Due to this low mood, I have felt increasingly suicidal. I have not acted on nor seriously considered acting on these thoughts, but I wanted to share this symptom of my mental health. Sometimes I do feel really, really low and unfortunately experience suicidal thoughts. It is okay to feel depressed and/or suicidal and people should not be shamed for it, so I'm partly sharing my experience to raise awareness. However, it is important that you have access to the relevant help, which in my case was counselling, my doctor and my parents.
Although brief, I hope this mental health catch up has been insightful. I want to use my platform to raise awareness for mental health and to reassure people that they are not alone. As mentioned in my first mental health post, I am not a doctor, nurse or counselor and I have no training in helping mental health. However, if you want to reach out to me, then I am here to listen and advise relevant help. Equally, I am interested in hearing your own mental health experiences and advice if you are comfortable sharing that.
This post may seem melancholy, especially considering many people are now on or nearly on summer holiday in the UK, but I thought this was an important issue to talk about. Either way, I hope everyone is having fun in the summer weather! 😎
"If you are feeling suicidal, there is hope."
Helplines - UK:
Samaritans (for everyone) 116 123
Papyrus (under 35s - Mon-Fri 10am-10pm, weekends 2pm-10pm and bank holidays 2pm-5pm) 0800 068 41 41
Childline (under 19s) - 0800 1111
Another option is booking an emergency GP appointment with your local GP.
Other mental health resources:
GP
NHS website
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