Experiences of bipolar disorder: "Every day it feels like I must wear a mask"

Anonymous
I am once again in the mental health treatment sausage machine. Plucking up courage to approach a GP to admit defeat, being shoved on drugs to stop me topping myself, told that there’s a huge, long waiting list for treatment, the false hope of a “gateway worker” assessment followed by another interminable wait of undefined length. Then I know I will have my allocated batch of treatment before being deemed “fixed” and dispatched back to the world again. I am sick and tired of the roundabout. I suggested that instead of this system, once a mental health patient has had their allocation of therapy, they should remain on the books, so when they feel themselves slipping back down, they can call up for a booster session instead of having to go through the whole rigmarole again.

I’ve just quit my job of six years because, following a disclosure to my new boss that I have bipolar tendencies she proceeded to bully me into submission. She had absolutely no understanding of how to get the best out of (a very talented) employee who has mental health issues. I was stopped from working at home, an important aspect to being able to manage my condition. I had unreasonable targets imposed, with no support offered to go about achieving them. My job was chopped and changed, hours cut and autonomy removed. I have been pushed back to the brink of suicide and had to go on antidepressants to simply survive.

Anonymous
From September 2015 until December 2016, while I waited for an NHS referral, I was so ill I didn’t know how to cope and resorted to self harming. These aren’t all of my scars, but they’re the ones no one ever sees; so it’s easy to think they’re not there. One year of my life, and I will have to be reminded of it forever.

Cat, 24, South Yorkshire
People often mistake bipolar disorder as your mood rapidly changing from up to down. It’s not like that. That would be my other illness, borderline personality disorder (BPD) or as my psychiatrist put it, emotionally unstable personality disorder. It’s complicated telling people you have both bipolar disorder and BPD, as they both involve intense mood swings. Well, that’s when I do tell people – social anxiety sort of puts a brick wall between me and people. BPD makes your mood change within seconds and it is a strong mood swing. Like fire, it can destroy you and those around you. With bipolar, the mood swing sort of creeps up on you. It’s when the mood gets high (mania) or low (depression) that it becomes destructive.

Every day it feels like I must wear a mask, however, hiding never did me any good with these illnesses. It just becomes more of a shock to those around you when the symptoms start to leak through. Even as I write this, it’s hard to concentrate, thoughts and emotions are saying one thing, while that one bit of mind that tells you “everything will be ok”, is telling me to push on.

The rendition of a darker moment. A painting of a depression experience by Cat, South Yorkshire

I’ll admit when I’ve been at my lowest I’ve done things I’ve regretted. The overdose, which sent me into hospital, was one of the things. I know there’s a stigma around psychiatric hospitals, but I did meet people who it’s worked for. When I was admitted into hospital the first time, I had psychosis – a female voice was constantly screaming in pain in my head. I don’t even bother to count how many times a year I have to go through this. Medication helps keep me in some control, especially with the manic side. I prefer the manic side to the depression side. Mania brings with it the thought that you’re this amazing person, who can do anything, someone who deserves to be with people. The bad side of mania is that loss of control. Nights become sleepless and the thoughts running through your head won’t stop. Every time you try to grab one, it just slips through your fingers. Health and safety also goes out the window.

I managed to get through my art degree. I have to remind myself that I’m more than my diagnosis, but with the right help and support it does become a lot easier.

In the UK, the Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123.
In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-8255.
In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14.

Experiences of bipolar disorder: "Every day it feels like I must wear a mask"

Politicians who make porn stars wear condoms disregard the real HIV fight | Nichi Hodgson

If porn performers had a wellness and safety mantra, “your wellness is your wealth” would most likely be it. Which is why it truly is well worth taking seriously the many “porn stars” who oppose a California bill allegedly designed to better safeguard their health and security by mandating condom use and the reporting of sexually-transmitted infections tests in the porn market.

The legislation – which the state assembly passed in May possibly and cleared one particular of two needed state Senate committees right here on Wednesday – needs that performers use condoms in the course of filmed anal and/or vaginal sex scenes that employers shell out for HIV testing and that workers report their check benefits to the state’s occupational security board. The stated objective of the bill is to lessen the transmission of sexually transmitted infections and HIV because, its authors claim, “the sector has by no means supplied a single affordable suggestion to universally shield its employees and now opposes the quite STD testing protocol that they developed and inconsistently use”.

Aside from the civil liberties issues raised by reporting highly inflammatory individual wellness details to a government company, there are two key questions raised by the legislation. The initial is whether the private porn market genuinely wants to comply with a new law due to the fact legislators want to “shield” them, given the low rate of business HIV infection in contrast to the population at massive. The 2nd is why the California State Senate is so concerned about porn business prices of HIV infection when, as porn performer Jiz Lee testified on Wednesday, “this work isn’t helping communities who are actually at chance”.

Really merely, the porn-condom mandate is a red herring in the real battle towards HIV/Aids. And on pride weekend in San Francisco, you may even contact it a sham.

In accordance to the San Francisco Aids Basis, one.7m Americans have been infected with HIV given that 1981, and California ranks 2nd only to New York in the sheer cumulative number of instances. Approximately seven,000 Californians will turn out to be infected with HIV this year, the vast majority of whom won’t work in the grownup industry. Even Senator Holly Mitchell, who voted for the bill in committee on Wednesday, did so only following producing the stage that the legislation does not seem to be to address “the demographic in fact at risk” for HIV transmission – African-Americans, and African-American ladies in certain. (Notably, Aids Lifecycle reviews that survival prices soon after HIV diagnosis is is lowest amongst African-Americans.)

The tabloids love to titillate with tales of an infection-riddled Pornland, but the handful of HIV circumstances that have prompted filming moratoriums in the previous decade have been just that – a handful. Any infection that influences performers, regardless of whether it originates off-set or on, has to be taken seriously. But to place the market danger into point of view, as of 2010, there had been 57 documented transmissions and 143 achievable transmissions of HIV amongst healthcare workers in the prior 3 decades, a count described by the Centers for Condition Control and Prevention as “extremely uncommon”. The porn sector, meanwhile, has not had a confirmed situation of on-set herteosexual transmission since 2004 and LA County confirmed a total of 22 performers who had been confirmed good in between 2004 and 2009.

Supporters of California’s condom bill frequently argue that requiring condoms in porn is akin to requiring challenging hats be worn by development staff. But, as Lorelei Lee put it on Wednesday, “hard hats never harm their wearers”, but condoms do: they can lead to “floor burn up” (or excessive irritation of performers’ mucus membranes), and therefore enhance the risk of any STI transmission between performers. Beyond which, condoms (even when undamaged and utilized effectively) never offer absolute protection against a assortment of STIs, including herpes, syphillis, genital warts and pubic lice.

But even if all the arguments in favor of the bill had been demonstrably correct, all the money and other resources invested to argue for and pass this legislation – let alone defend any resulting law in court – would nearly undoubtedly be far better invested providing added HIV education and testing (like addiction care), on a lot more analysis for a vaccine and/or a cure, for therapy programs for individuals contaminated, and on palliative care for those with Aids.

Get, for instance, the district of Assemblyman Isadore Hall, the bill’s sponsor: he represents Compton, a Southern Californian district with an alarmingly substantial fee of HIV infection – where the Aids Healthcare Foundation, which supports Hall’s legislation, does not even have a clinic. (The foundation itself prioritizes funding for treatment method more than any remedy-centered investigation, and its chief, Michael Weinstein, personally denounced the pre-exposure prophylactic drug Trovadour as a “celebration drug”.) Hall’s personal constituents are far more very likely to advantage from funds spent on other, verified techniques of stopping HIV transmission and caring for people who contracted the virus than they ever will be from forcing California-based porn performers to wear condoms on set.

Registered nurse and veteran porn performer Nina Hartley informed the state assembly in April that the bill is “a remedy in search of a problem”. It truly is a headline-producing distraction from and a pat solution to a actual crisis – ongoing HIV and other STI transmission – that many Californians encounter, (a crisis that only Senator Mark Leno recognized as a compelling cause for opposing the bill). It is also has the possible to actually enhance the prevalence of STIs amid the population it purports to aid, in addition to decreasing their privacy and inflating the stigmatization they already grapple with on a daily basis. But, provided the existing hostility of many in government to these in the porn market, charging ahead with a moral crusade is apparently preferable to listening to performers give proof about their personal jobs.

Politicians who make porn stars wear condoms disregard the real HIV fight | Nichi Hodgson

Neurosurgeon quits NHS right after currently being advised not to wear a view

Regardless of getting one particular of Britain’s most eminent surgeons, Henry Marsh will quit following March to perform pro bono in Ukraine, saying the well being services had grow to be shambles.

Mr Marsh also claimed government cuts had been threatening surgery.

“Simply because of the lack of beds you are typically cancelling operations. I like doing significant surgical procedure in the morning but operations are getting later on than later on since of the shambles,” he extra.

“Not too long ago I commenced an operation at 4pm extremely reluctantly and I made a hash of it due to the fact I was starting up at the incorrect time of day.”

And he claimed that the Operating Time Directive, which limits the quantity of hrs that physicians can operate, created it impossible to adequately train new surgeons.

“They are nevertheless supposed to total their coaching in six years, but that is entirely unrealistic,” he said.

Neurosurgeon quits NHS right after currently being advised not to wear a view