World Mental Health Day 2013 *Possible Trigger Warning*

So, as you probably figure out from the title, today is World Mental Health Day, and, as a person who lives with a mental health disorder, I thought it would be a good idea to post about it.

World Mental Health Day is undoubtedly the biggest campaigning day of the year for many mental health organisations and charities, who take advantage of the special occasion to launch new initiatives to break down the mental health stigma (which could arguably be capitalised). I know I spent many hours creating an
awareness video for Minds Like Ours (although this will probably not be uploaded until tomorrow due to technical difficulties) in the form of a song that I wrote with my cousin Mary.

And since it is World Mental Health Day and we are aiming to share our stories free of judgement, I suppose I should admit that I really haven't had a good day today. If you've read my first post, you'll know that I suffer from obsessive-compulsive disorder, and let me tell you, when you have this particular illness, the price for forgetting a specific ritual is pretty horrendous. This time, the realisation that I had forgotten a complex routine the day before triggered an even more complex set of intrusive thoughts that literally compelled me to tear at my skin with my fingernails constantly for six hours straight. So now you see why this post has a trigger warning. By the time I got home from school I was more tired than I have ever been in my life, and I still have several pieces of homework, many of them due tomorrow, that I haven't even started yet. Which means that I should probably go and do that...