Stigma

These are the things that I want from a holiday:

·         A lot of food – esp unnecessary bread with proper butter before each meal

·         To be mildly drunk for all of the PM hours

·         To read several books, preferably on a sun lounger, at the same time as the above

·         More than eight hours sleep a night, with my special neck pillow that I haven’t left at home

·         For my child to do loads of fun activities, occasionally with me, but mostly supervised by somebody else

We had a lovely time in Suffolk. But we didn’t have enough of the last two.

It would be terribly out of character for me to focus on the positive (beautiful  grounds, 2.5 days sunshine, all that bread), rather than the negative (decorative shutters instead of functional curtains, therefore Logie woke at 5am every day).

It would also be churlish to admit it seems slightly unfair that I’m not on honeymoon with my brother and brand new sister-in-law (or without them, frankly, so long as there’s decent bread) in Italy.

So I’m going to move on to something else, quite serious for a change.

Time To Change is a campaign which does excellent work in tackling the stigma around mental health. Remember that brilliant advert with Ruby Wax? “1 in 5 people have had dandruff. 1 in 4 have had a mental health problem. I’ve had both.”

They’ve done a survey revealing that a quarter of young people say the stigma attached to their mental health problem has made them want to give up on life.

Just think about that. It’s bad enough having depression, or an eating disorder, or hating yourself so much you take a knife and cut your arm. But being made to feel so ashamed of your illness that you contemplate checking out is unspeakable.

And that’s the bit we can do something about. So next time you come across a teenager with a mental health problem, please treat them kindly, but like a human. As you’d want to be treated yourself if you were ill for a bit. It shouldn’t define them.

And definitely take no notice of anyone who whinges that their holiday wasn’t luxurious enough.