Taking 5 for Mental Health

I've been wanting to write about this subject for a while, and today is the perfect day as it's time to change and end mental health discrimination.  Prince is also the perfect opener for this, as he's been accused of being crazy many times over the years, but I suspect he's in the same boat as me...

Rethink.org                      Mind.org

Up until last August, I'd never suffered from depression or any other kind of mental health issue.  Then, events conspired to make it so that I was under so much pressure, from so many directions, that I crumbled and found myself being admitted to a mental health unit in September 2014.  I was never a danger to myself or anyone else, so this is just my own personal story and isn't intended to give a complete overview of all forms of mental health issue.

During my recovery I've had a lot of time to reflect and research into my "new way of thinking", which has caused so much upset in my personal life.  The strange thing is, that I feel like a much improved version of my former self (and pretty much without exception, every new friend I've made thinks I'm ace - and they're absolutely right!  Obviously!!), but every single relationship in my life has been affected by my breakdown and 3 week stay in hospital.  I've lost some friends, other friends find it difficult to identify with me, and even family members have found it incredibly hard to deal with what's been going on with me.

One of my earlier blogs talks at length about a movie called "I Am", which documents Tom Shadyac's mental health issues, and it was during the watching of that film that I discovered a phenomenon called "Wetiko".  It's actually really difficult to find a proper definition of it online, but in the film it's described as a mental illness which causes a person to "devour another man's way of life" by way of a sort of spiritual cannibalism.  It's a term used by Native Americans to describe the illness that the settlers were infected with, and it all makes a lot of sense to me.

The Native Americans had a wonderful way of life and respected nature and treated the earth as a living organism that needed to be taken care of, and the Iroquois people in particular had a philosophy whereby they would consider the ramifications of their actions for seven future generations.  Then along came the Europeans, and started killing the so-called savages and stealing their land.  

In the time since then, the Western way of life has spread across the entire globe.  Villagers in Eastern and African countries have mobile phones, access to the internet, we've chopped down entire rainforests, uprooted indigenous people from their homes and made them live the way we do because "we know best".  Now our entire planet is in danger thanks to the way we've been living; there are wars raging all over the place, and for any atrocity we hear about there are people baying for blood or even death, and thinking that's perfectly acceptable.

When I started thinking about the planet, and all the wars, and the child abuse, and the injustice and everything else that's wrong with the world, I wanted to do something to help.  I came up with an idea that could change things in my local area, and from that sprang ideas that could change the world.  Then I got put into hospital because I was clearly insane*... 

Wait... what??  I want to help make the world a better place so there's something wrong with me?  Somebody told me recently that what I went through (which I refer to as a nervous breakdown so that other people have some idea what I'm talking about) is seen as a good thing in many indigenous communities.  It's celebrated when someone wakes up from their acceptance of the lies and violence, not punished. 

I've found an article written by Paul Levy and he refers to it as a "psycho-spiritual disease" but listening to a radio interview he's done, he pronounces it "diss ease" which makes far more sense than my usual understanding of "disease" which I'd see as a bad thing.  Dis-ease is more of a discomfort, and yes, it was extremely uncomfortable, but not unbearable.

Another thing covered in I Am, is the fact that we're all connected.  In fact, many of my blogs cover this subject.  We are all part of a collective consciousness, whether we like it or not.  At the moment, a large part of that collective thinks it perfectly acceptable to fight violence with violence, and our own governments are more than happy to spend trillions on war whilst we have people dying in our own countries because they can't afford to live.

I'm seen as being weird (and was diagnosed with mental illness) for taking time to meditate and for believing that we can change our world, and yet our governments are allowed to keep on neglecting the people they're supposed to be looking after, waging wars, killing innocent people, allowing their own soldiers to die for their country, ad infinitum...

So who has the mental illness?  The girl who wants to save the world, or the people who sit back and allow the world to be destroyed?

*OK, so I was actually put into hospital because I was manic and I'd sent some emails to a famous person in the hope they could help me, but you try explaining everything that's wrong with the world, and how to put it right, and all the things you've learnt in the past 40 years, all in one conversation with people who are already worried about your mental health and see if you can do it without talking fast and jumping about all over the place lol.  I can do a better job of it now, but only because I put it in writing rather than trying to say it all in person.