When people just dont understand.

Depression and anxiety has many causes, and as we know there are lots of different forms of emotional disturbances with many different triggers. They range from Bipolar to Post traumatic stress and as in my case, hormones. When speaking to other sufferers I've noticed how many have not been believed, and many have been labelled attention seekers, or worse, shirkers and malingerers.

The worse story so far has to be the sad case of an adolescent who had attended a mental health unit to be told that he was 'putting it on' and later went onto take his own life. How awful that those that were supposed to be helping him, and had the most experience of mental illness didn't believe and support him in his darkest hour. To me that is incomprehensible and even unforgivable when you consider the circumstances surrounding this all too familiar case.

It is extremely difficult to describe how depression can make you feel, how dark everything becomes, and how acutely ill you can be. It is also extremely difficult to look after and care for the sufferer, and requires an abundance of patience and understanding. Quite often the sufferer is misunderstood, deemed lazy or even accused of making it up, and trying to make sense of your illness and explain it to others is tiring and stressful. This is often why people hide their feelings and even the illness itself, for fear of not being believed or understood. As I have written so many times before this can only exacerbate the sense of isolation and loneliness that the sufferer will be feeling.

When you read my book, you will see how I myself wasn't believed, was accused of being a drama queen and even had to convince my own GP that I needed help. This was despite the fact that some ten years on my diagnoses was confirmed by biological blood test. (I had almost non-existent hormone levels in my blood stream). How frustrating, and what a huge waste of time and effort to get the non-sufferer to understand my condition and get the help which I so desperately needed.

If you are a non-sufferer and you encounter someone that's poorly with any condition, regardless of its origin, PLEASE bare in mind that you have to have a chronic illness to understand it, and if you don't have that illness, it doesn't mean that it isn't there. Say something kind, it really does help.
Have a great day x

S x