Semantics are everything......

There are many stigmas attached to psychiatric illnesses and I'm always doing what I can to expose them for the fallacies that they are. My dream job, and one I hope to be doing at some point once I figure out how, would be working as an advocate with companies of any size; teaching what it really means to have a psychiatric illness and what companies can do for their employees who suffer from these conditions. These illnesses are the number one cause of time lost on the job in North America and there is much that companies could do to decrease this loss.

But as I said, semantics really are everything and I think the first thing we need to do is stop using the term mental health. Mental refers to the mind, not the brain, and it is the brain that is the genesis of psychiatric diseases. People tend to think of the mind and brain as being the same and they are not. The mind is a function of the brain, they are not the same thing. Depression, schizophrenia, anxiety disorders - these diseases and disorders begin in the brain and from there affect the mind. They do not begin in the mind. I believe that they are neurological diseases no different than Alzheimer's or Parkinson's. I'm not sure when and how they were labeled as mental and at this point I really don't care. Alzheimer's isn't referred to as a mental health issue but it's really no different in origin than depression or schizophrenia - the brain malfunctions and that malfunction spreads to the rest of the body in various ways.

I'm a little cloud-headed today and feel like I've been more coherent on this subject previously but here you go. I think if we can be more accurate in how we refer to psychiatric diseases and disorders that would go a long way in relieving some of the stigma that surround them. Alzheimer's isn't known as a mental health issue and Parkinson's isn't known as a muscular disease. Psychiatric diseases need to be labeled for what they are, diseases of the brain. Refer to them as neurological diseases , psychiatric diseases - please just don't refer to them as mental health diseases. Doing so keeps us all in the closet of ignorance and it's getting pretty stuffy in here.

Until next time, be grateful, be happy and if that's out of reach right now, reach out to someone who can remind you.

Well, it's been a week now.....

....and I have to say that there has been a definite shift in the internal dialogue. I am feeling more engaged with myself and the world in which I live. This is the forgetting time, when how I felt two weeks ago fades and it hard to explain exactly how I felt. The difficulty with the dark time is that there is no energy to chronicle how it feels and by the time I start to feel the energy, the sense of how I felt is fading away. It's like trying to remember an amazing concert - as time goes by, you remember the feeling of the concert but the small precise moments have slipped away. And the further away I get from the dark time, the hazier the details are.

But I do know that when I wake up in the morning, that sense of dread is gone. The sense of oh crap another day and how am I going to fill it this time and how will I pass enough time before I can go back to bed....... even going to bed has gotten better. Instead of laying there cataloging all the things I didn't do I can go over the things I did do and the things I'd like to do tomorrow. I'm still not doing everything I'd hoped to - the bedroom is still unorganized and there are still boxes to be unpacked, but the thought of these things doesn't overwhelm me like it did two weeks ago.

Yesterday Tom and I did a major grocery shop in celebration of our new mini fridge. (The house we moved into last December didn't have either a fridge or stove..... but we have a stove and a mini fridge now woohoo!!!!) After we got home and put it all away, I did the dishes, made corned beef hash for supper and a lazy daisy cake for dessert AND THEN I DID THE SUPPER DISHES!!! So I figure either the Lithium is working or we have a new sign for the coming of the apocalypse...... and it was nice to get up today and go into a kitchen that wasn't a disaster zone. Please don't rat me out to Germaine Greer or Betty Friedan for my little woman behavior....

And then after supper I made a small folding book for Tom for Valentine's Day that turned out well and being me I gave it to him last night. We usually don't bother much with V-day, I would have made it for him regardless of the season. It's not easy for him by times and that is another thing I struggle with - the guilt I feel over him having a wife that isn't always there the way she'd like to be. But I did find an incredible quote that was said to Tsar Nicholas by his wife Alexandra:

"I love you - these three words contain my whole life"

Here's to a whole life!