What do I have to say?

So here I am having sat at my computer for the last 30mins trying desperately to write something witty and engaging, something of noteworthiness, because I want people to read what I have to say, but in doing that I’ve already lost sight of why I wanted to write this blog.

To say the things that so often I have not said but still feel need to be heard.

A simple premise so why is it so hard?    It’s just things I want to say and I’ve always had opinions and generally I’ve given them to, and not only that, I’ve felt that I’ve been listened to as well, yet there are still things I have wanted to say and have pushed them aside.

    Why?    because for years I have honestly believed that people in general are not interested in hearing about them, that they are not topics of conversation for the general populous but only for the select few; the minority that are affected by them:-

These being a few:

‘My mental health issues’

‘My concerns over the treatment of people with these issues’

‘The level of care available or not, it’s random/ patchy nature and the lack of information given about the services’

‘The difficulties of stigma in general and in particular related to getting back to work’

Minority.     Ha! Who am I kidding when the mental health foundation are quoting that 1 in 4 people experience 1 or more mental health conditions each year (from the national statistics morbidity report 2007). A report that is of households and does not account for those in social exclusion, so instance prisons where it is reported that more than 90% of the population has at least one mental health disorder.  And in-patient admissions for mental health have risen 5.1% from 2008 to107,765 admissions in the last year (Goldberg, D., and Huxley, P. (1992) Common Mental Disorders - A Bio-Social Model. Available: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Common-Mental-Disorders-Bio-social-Model/dp/0415059879.)

So I think it’s high time that I got over my reticence and put some of my thoughts to the world because it seems to me, and particularly here in the UK where only 1 in 10 people are actually reported with a diagnosis (national stats uk), that so many people see, think, say, and do virtually nothing until they absolutely have to and then they often complain bitterly that things are not as they would want them.

The simple fact is that I have so many things that I want to say that to have conversations about all of them seems impossible and to put them in blog a better alternative. So here goes.