Happy Birthday

Since I can't do so directly, I'd like to take a moment to wish my grandad a happy 74th birthday.

How Schools "Deal With" Mental Health

Anyone with any experience of life in a typical British secondary school will know that it is not easy - large workloads, less than understanding teachers and anywhere between 100 and 2000 teenagers crammed into a building that was definitely not designed to accommodate so many people is hardly a picnic, but add a mental health disorder to that already terrifying mix and you will often be left with what can only be described as a living Hell. 

When I first developed obsessive-compulsive disorder at the age of eleven, I was coming to the end of my time at primary school and beginning to prepare what would undoubtedly be a daunting move into year seven. Now, I'm not saying that everyone else found this thought easy to deal with - moving to a school more than twice the size of your current one where almost everyone around you is a scary process no matter what your circumstances, but in my case, there was one factor that was about to make the switch ten times harder. I could not - and, in fact, still can't - sit or stand with my back to anyone without experiencing serious anxiety, and without any kind of explanation for what I was experiencing, I was stuck. And once I got to secondary school, I was faced with the prospect of having every lesson in a different classroom, and with a different teacher. This meant having to face new classes full of people I had never seen before, walk down crowded corridors several times a day (no mean feat when you're trying to keep the back of your head invisible to every other person) and, worst of all, sit in a different seat in every single class. I specifically remember that I was not sat at the back of the room even once in the whole of my first year, despite the fact that the seating plans were changed every half term. Which meant that, every six weeks, I would walk into each lesson in turn and have to face the news that I would be sitting at the front of the room again.

This continued until the end of year nine (the third year), when I finally managed to figure out what was going on inside my head. When I came back to school at the beginning of year ten, I was genuinely hopeful that things would change for the better. I had a diagnosis, which meant that I could explain my situation and hopefully gain some support and understanding. And, at the beginning, it seemed that I was right. My head of year sent a message to all of my teachers telling them that I would need to sit at the back of the class, and I even managed to explain it to one or two of them myself. So, when I walked into my French lesson at the start of this term and saw that I had been placed right in the middle of the room, I nearly collapsed. If I hadn't known better, I would have run straight out of the room. French is the only lesson I have in which I am physically incapable of explaining my situation to the teacher, who insists that every student must speak only in French from the moment they enter the room. I was angry - why would she do this, when not only my parents but a fellow teacher had specifically told her that I needed to sit at the back? I told myself that she had probably just forgotten, but then I realised that that was not an excuse. If I had a visual impairment and needed to sit at the front, my teachers wouldn't forget. If I was a wheelchair user, they wouldn't suddenly decide that I could handle having a lesson on the top floor. Why should it be different just because I have a mental health problem, rather than a physical one? I decided that I needed to do some research, and find out what rights I have to be given support from my school. The result? It would appear that I have none. I couldn't even find a guideline which suggested that people like me be offered a certain level of support from any kind of primary school, secondary school or sixth form college in the UK.

The issue of schools and mental health was brought to my attention last weekend, when my cousin Clarissa texted me to tell me that her mum would be meeting with her head of year about the panic attacks she'd been having at school. I texted her again yesterday to find out how it went, fully expecting to be told that she'd been referred to her local mental health services and that she was going to get the help she needed. Did that happen? No. Apparently, the best the school decided they could do was to provide my cousin with a red card that she could "wave at her teachers to get her out of class if necessary". Which is fine in the short term, but from a long term perspective actually solves nothing at all. And when I heard that the teacher who allocated said card dismissed her panic attacks as "moments", I was angry again. Is anything actually being done to help her? Seemingly not. Does no one realise that untreated anxiety disorders do nothing but worsen? What we need is genuine support, and when that support isn't given by an establishment where we spend so much of our time, it can almost seem like it's not worth having at all.

Happy New Year - Let's Make A Change

Usually I find that New Year is one of the hardest times of the year for me - everything around me seems to be changing, a new school term looms and it always feels like the past year has gone more quickly than the last. So this year I decided that I was going to try and make new year a positive experience, perhaps by learning a new skill, or actually doing the homework that I had forced out of my mind for the last two weeks. But, after completing a biology task on the alleged benefits of sports drinks and learning both the alphabet and the numbers 1-100 in British Sign Language, I still didn't feel any better, so I decided to do something I had been considering for a while: I set up a petition urging Channel 4 to finally do something about their awful series Obsessive Compulsive Cleaners, which I also complained posted about during OCD Awareness Week way back in October. Well, actually, two things, because I also bought a clarinet.

If you've read my OCD Awareness Week posts, you will most likely know why I dislike Obsessive Compulsive Cleaners, but it may surprise you to know that my petition does not call for the show to be removed from our TVs entirely - all I'm asking them to do is change the name and the comments made during the episodes so that it no longer has any association with OCD. I think you'll agree that if they can't bring themselves to do that, they are very low people.

To find (and preferably sign) my petition, simply click on the button below:

Minds Like Ours and the 24 Hour Sponsored Talk

I'm sure I've posted before Minds Like Ours - a non-profit organisation dedicated to ending the stigma that surrounds mental health disorders (that I also do volunteer stuff for). Well, in order to really get people talking about mental health, they have decided to do just that, for a whole 24 hours! The talk starts tomorrow at 6pm and is the first event of its kind in the world. There's still time to donate to the sponsorship fund and check out the schedule for the event to find the bits you want to listen to, both of which can be done by clicking here. And don't worry, Doctor Who fans, the talk finishes at 6pm on Saturday, leaving plenty of time to watch The Day of the Doctor if you so desire.

The Philippines and Typhoon Haiyan

The recent super typhoon in the Leyte province of the Philippines has been all over the news recently, and hundreds of fundraising initiatives have started up and down this country and many others to try and raise money to help those affected.

One of the reasons I have been following news of this typhoon so closely is because my aunt and two of my cousins - one of whom hasn't even been born yet - live in the Philippines (my uncle is currently working away in Malaysia), and although they're alright, they could so easily not have been. With over 10,000 people feared dead in the immediate aftermath of the storm and many more left homeless or injured, it's not hard to see why my relatives are so lucky. A friend of mine is currently worrying for members of her own family, who she hasn't heard from since the disaster, and no one knows what the outcome will be.

I was also shocked at just how much damage the typhoon caused. It wasn't simply a few trees falling down and a lack of electricity for a few days - entire villages were flattened, and many people were left begging foreign aid workers to give them food and shelter that they just didn't have. What they need is money; more specifically, those providing aid to these people need money so that they can bring everything that is needed over there as quickly as possible. There are hundreds of ways to donate, so please at least consider it. Thank you.

OCD Awareness Week Day 7 - A Final Thought

So, OCD Awareness Week 2013 is drawing to a close, and I have to admit that, although I've done a lot to try and raise awareness throughout this week, there is still a part of me that thinks awareness weeks like this one aren't such a great idea. Why? Because they give people the idea that they can be "aware" for the duration of seven days and then go back to their everyday lives as if nothing ever happened. It unwittingly makes people believe that everything goes back to being fine and dandy at the end of the week, when in reality it doesn't. OCD doesn't go away just because we reach October 21st. I won't be magically cured of my illness at midnight tonight, and neither will any of the other 700,000+ people in the UK alone who live with OCD. It does not cease to exist just because the general public ceases to acknowledge it. So while I support OCD Awareness Week wholeheartedly, I also support OCD awareness for the rest of the year, when it is just as important.

That being said, my life does not solely revolve around my OCD. It controls a lot of what I do, but there are a lot of things in my life that this disorder can't touch. It can never take away the value I put on my family, or change any of my likes and dislikes. It is barely affecting me at all right now, as I sit on my bedroom floor typing this post while listening to Evanescence on iTunes. So yes, it is a serious illness that severely impacts my life and the lives of many other people, but it isn't everything. That's why I think mental health awareness is such an important thing; I feel that people need to see the side of it that I see every day. I want people to know that, even though I have this awful disorder, I also have likes and dislikes, hopes and dreams, one sister, a cat, a dog and ten (soon to be twelve) cousins. I live without the ability to control my irrational thoughts, but I also live in an English suburb with my parents and my little sister, just like my friends, my neighbours and the majority of the people at my school. I am mentally ill, but I am not mental, and neither is anyone else like me.

OCD Awareness Week Day 6 - Sources of Support

There are loads of places online and beyond that people with OCD can go to for support. I've listed a few here - just click on the pictures to visit their websites.

Minds Like Ours is a non profit organisation that supports those with mental health problems and raises awareness of mental health in general. I talk about them a lot, mainly because of their awesome forum.

OCD Action and OCD-UK are the UK's two charities that support people with OCD. They both do some really awesome work. OCD Action also has a website specifically for young people (if you look hard enough, you can find the article that I wrote for them recently), which you can find via their main website.

The Samaritans and Childline are both charities set up to help people in times of crisis or emotional distress. The only real difference is that ChildLine is specifically for people under the age of 18 (hence the name).

Mind is arguably the UK's biggest and most well known mental health charity. Their website has some great information about different mental health disorders, and I'm pretty sure they have a helpline as well.

Do you like my special "Click Here" buttons? I discovered picture effects presets on Microsoft PowerPoint today and it felt like Christmas.