• Question: have you experienced or had to help someone with a bad mental health disorder before? if so what was it like?

    Asked by anon-204423 to Sally, Lucy, Louise, James, David, Dan on 2 Mar 2019.
    • Photo: Sally Tilt

      Sally Tilt answered on 2 Mar 2019:


      Unfortunately many people in prison also have difficulties with mental health. Just as outside prison, it is getting easier for people to talk about mental health difficulties, and this makes it easier to support people. Many of us will have a mental health difficulty at some point in our lives, or will be close to someone who has. I’m really glad that I am alive today rather in the past – the way that we view mental health problems has changed a great deal.

      As a psychologist, hearing about and supporting people who are going through tough times, it is important to look after yourself too. I have people that I can talk to, to work things through, so that I look after my own mental health as well as those I am working with.

    • Photo: Dan Taylor

      Dan Taylor answered on 2 Mar 2019:


      I think this is a wonderful question because it highlights a very important point – having a mental health problem doesn’t mean you cannot be a scientist or a researcher. There are very few things that you wouldn’t be able to do.

      I have experienced poor mental health and am currently doing my PhD so I know from personal experience that it’s possible. I also teach a lot of students who may have mental health issues also. They persevere and whilst things may be tricky at times many of them do well!

      Mental health problems can be scary, for both the person experiencing the problem and the people who loves them. Sometimes people can feel helpless, like they can’t do anything to help. Whilst you should always leave it to a mental health professional and not try to take control of care yourself. Doing things like texting someone to check they’re okay, or helping them with school work if they struggle with concentration can help to make that person’s life easier. It’s also important to remember to be patient and understanding. Often it’s the person’s illness acting up not the personal being cruel.

    • Photo: Lucy Maddox

      Lucy Maddox answered on 2 Mar 2019:


      In my previous jobs, I’ve worked a lot in mental health hospital wards for teenagers. These are wards for when people are experiencing a mental health crisis, and so the things they are thinking and feeling can be really intense and extreme, and often very scary for them.

      I really enjoyed working in this setting with these young people, partly because they were really honest about what helped and what didn’t help, and partly because really big changes usually happened and I saw people leave hospital feeling really differently to how they had felt at the start.

      These young people were really brave and very inspiring to work with, and I felt lucky to be hearing their stories and trying to help them to make sense of things.

    • Photo: David Chadwick

      David Chadwick answered on 4 Mar 2019:


      I had a relative that spent some time in a home for people with mental health problems. She suffered from delusions, although when we visited her she seemed to be OK. It was strange to think that she was in there, when she behaved normally with us during our visit. But when we subsequently received a letter from her we could tell that she was imagining things from what she wrote. So it is very difficult to handle a situation like this, when things are not quite what they seem to be.

    • Photo: James Munro

      James Munro answered on 10 Mar 2019:


      Lucy and Sally work in environments in which these things are very common, so I think their answers have a lot of experience behind them compared to mine.

      I have worked with students with some complicated mental health conditions, and I have tried to help members of the public who were showing signs of things being wrong. However, my job is not focused on mental health disorders, except to research how the brain might act differently in people who are more or less likely to have them.

    • Photo: Louise Rodgers

      Louise Rodgers answered on 11 Mar 2019:


      Hi Karis, good question – I think a disorder is quite a serious mental illness or condition, whereas lots of people experience mental health difficulties of some sort or another (and of course they don’t always last for your entire life). In my job, I certainly don’t make a diagnosis of anyone as having a disorder of any type, although I often work with people who have mental health difficulties or have received a diagnosis from a Clinical Psychologist (such as ADHD).

      There’s a bit more information about it here https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/types-of-mental-health-problems/. If I’m working with someone, I try to make sure I know as much as possible about the condition beforehand but I also ask the person themselves what it means for them. It worries me if people believe that having a condition puts a limit on what they can achieve … at school or in life, so that is something I would try to explore with the hope of removing barriers for them.

      Personally, I haven’t had a diagnosis of a mental illness or mental health disorder, but I have got close family members who have diagnoses of depression or anxiety and one who committed suicide, so I have seen how this can affect people’s day to day lives.

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