Mental Health Awareness

Mind BLMK

2 days ago

Kelly, our Recovery Worker, explains why gardening helps her to support her own wellbeing and gives us an insight into what our services currently look like in Luton.

"Gardening helps me to relax, distracts me and allows me to get creative. I love watching my plants blossom, and enjoy knowing that I can help them to thrive by caring for them.

It gives me the space I need to calm my mind and some much-needed fresh air and time outside. I also grow my own food in the garden – currently I’ve got tomatoes, strawberries and golden raspberries, and its been worth the wait to watch them develop into deliciousness! Gardening has definitely helped me to support my own wellbeing.

At Luton Wellbeing Centre we’ve adapted our support to ensure that we can be there for those who need us most. I’m currently providing mental health support over the phone to services users and people in our wider community. Alongside this I run Lighthouse - our Young Person’s Support Group for 18-30 year olds.

We’ve adapted the group so sessions are now over video conference calls; this has enabled our young people to feel less isolated during these times, and given them a space to talk about things like relaxation, self-esteem, sleep and anxiety, and receive support around these."

If you feel that you or someone you know would benefit from having someone to talk to, you can find out how to access our Emotional Wellbeing Support here - bit.ly/3bQkPay

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Mind BLMK

4 days ago

Steve, a long time supporter and volunteer in one of our peer support groups, has recently written a book of poems and is kindly donating profits from the book to us.

He's shared this poem with us that was inspired by people who attend the group. He says "Group members often express frustration that people simply don’t listen to them, especially medical professionals."

His book 'Extraordinary Times Extraordinary Rhymes: Recollections of 2020 in Verse' is available on Amazon.

Do you have a poem, story, drawing or song related to your own mental health journey you'd like to share? We want to give everyone in our community a platform so they too can be heard. Also, not limited to this - we're open to any way you can think of to express yourself creatively. Message us or send an email to [email protected]

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Mind BLMK

2 weeks ago

"After school I moved to London to go to university. The first two years were really good, I was enjoying it and made loads of friends. 18 months in, something life-altering happened. I didn’t know where I could go to get help, so I just tried to push it to the back of my mind.

A year later - even though I was doing well at university and was working in a job I liked (at Selfridges) - everything just went to pot. I found myself drinking a lot, which made me see things that weren’t there. It made me feel like I was going crazy.

I now know I was drinking often as a way of self-medicating, which led to me experiencing alcohol-induced psychosis. But because I was only 22 at the time and everyone I hung out with was drinking, I carried on despite this. This led me to feel like I’d really hit ‘rock bottom’. My friendship group began to realise the serious impact drinking was having on me, and that drinking all the time wasn’t all fun and games.

After that, I decided to move back home. Only then did I start getting the help that I needed, mainly because my mum pushed for it. I went to my GP who put me on a waiting list for therapy. While waiting, I was just trying stay safe and stable by keeping myself busy. I was also put on antidepressants; the first type made me put on a lot of weight which made me feel even worse about myself (really defeating the point). But after trying different ones, I’ve finally found one that works for me.

12 weeks later and I was seeing a therapist; the sessions lasted 12 weeks and I had monthly reviews with a psychiatrist, which was really helpful. I was diagnosed was depression and alcohol misuse, the alcohol misuse being what led to the psychosis.

Usually I hate talking about how I feel, but I can honestly say the therapy I had changed my life. At first I remember thinking "I don’t think this is going to benefit me at all" but it really did, and it completely changed my mindset on a lot of things in life.

The sessions finished about 9 months ago and everything’s been good since then – really good. I’m now in such a better place and haven’t drank for a month, which I know doesn’t seem like a long time but for me it feels like a year. It’s been so good for my mental health, and I can see now that alcohol clearly didn’t help overcome the depression.

I went back to work in September and am also finishing my university course, which they were happy for me to take the time out and come back to. I’ve definitely learnt I’m not in a rush to graduate, that I can take my time and put my mental health first.

When the lockdown was announced, my work put on furlough. I like to keep busy and thought to myself right, I’m in a place now where I can use the skills I’ve learnt from my university course to do something that can help others. That’s why I started the blog.

The blog gives me the space to write, in my own words, with a message that hopefully people can take something from – yes, things can get really bad, but only you can do something to change it. That you can’t just expect things to change on their own or magically disappear.

I used to hate writing so much, but since working on this I’ve realised I actually like the time spent alone, sitting down and working through the thoughts in my head, to create something. It’s a big thing for me to open up and publicly share what I’ve been through, what I’ve written and put out there is truthful and unfiltered – I’ve really poured my heart out. So finding out that it’s helping people in some way, even if it was just one person, feels worthwhile.

Plus, I like the presentation side of it – having something nice to look at – that’s why I wanted to create the book. I wanted it to have a lot of bright graphics and typography, so it could be something nice and interesting that people want to actually flick through, rather than the boring, mundane leaflets on mental health that we normally get given. The art in the book is done by a friend of mine; her drawings are beautiful and interpretative so people can look at it and take what they want to take from it. In modern times like this, I feel like younger people would rather read less and have something more visually stimulating.

I’m so happy to have sold all 35 copies of the book, and that I could donate 50% of profits to Mind BLMK to carry on the great work they’re doing to support people in my local community."

Thank you Joseph for kindly sharing your story and for your support. You can read Josephs blog by visiting his website: www.josephtebbutt.com

If you think you could benefit from therapy, find out more about our counselling service: bit.ly/3imSIUD

We're here for you.

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