Mental Illness Does Not Equal #HeadClutcher - Get The Picture?!

As if to prove the point, I even had to have someone else take this picture

because I can't even take a selfie with both my hands in this position!

Today is a great day because the #getthepicture campaign has been launched by Time To Change in association with Mind and other mental health charities. I was blogging away yesterday in a post I will no doubt publish sometime in the future (because it's about anxiety, and I seem to get that quite a lot) but I couldn't feel passionate about writing about my continuing struggles to feel well and, to quote Star Trek to live long and prosper.

It's hard to describe what life is like if you're suffering from a long term mental health condition, because we cannot actually experience life as someone else, however much we try to find similarities in our experiences to join us together. When I was a teacher we used to talk to the children in our English classes about empathy as 'putting yourself in someone else's shoes'. Now, aside from practical and logistical challenges (wrong shoe size, width, or the possibility that they're just f***ing ugly shoes) we cannot experience any kind of illness as another person experiences it and know that we are feeling exactly the same thing - from headaches to heel aches from those darned shoes, we will never know what another's pain feels like, only our own.

Erin's right. There is never an excuse for ugly shoes.

When it comes to illnesses, it's fairly obvious when some people are suffering in a particular way. For example, you may see that someone has a cast on his arm, or a boot on her foot. Or stitches in a prominent position. These are all physical manifestations of a medical condition. It's lucky for the media that these kinds of things exist as their life is very hard. Yes, they have to search through literally one or two image searches to find a perfect picture of someone with a broken leg to write their report on a skiing accident or one of those better accidents where you have it at work and LawyersForFreeExceptWhenWeWinAndFleeceYou.Com come and help you to sue your employers for leaving that big yellow sign saying 'Wet Floor' right where you could trip on it.

"You're going to charge me how much?!"

Appropriate example of a #headclutcher shot

For mental illness it's rather different. (And I shouldn't forget about the hundreds of non-mental-illness conditions that are also invisible.) You can't always see on the outside what someone is feeling on the inside. There are guidelines on how to try to identify when your friends, family or colleagues might be struggling to maintain their mental health you may have seen, some more helpful than others... such as frowning or looking angry, increased frown lines or visible signs of stress, looking sad, tired or being tearful or frustrated easily. (I know, some of these sound a bit ridiculous. It really is all you might have to go on...or nothing at all.)

Bradley Cooper shows us that people with mental health challenges

also sometimes wear bin bags to exercise in. I bet you weren't expecting that!

But that cousin or co-worker could just as easily been dumped recently, seen Still Alice at the movies or stopped using Protect and Perfect anti-wrinkle serum as be depressed. There are no hard and fast, tell all signs that someone is definitely suffering from a mental illness.

"Back off buddy, those wrinkles don't mean a thing."

If you say so Jen. If we looked like you we wouldn't even care about photoshopping.

This makes things tricky for our dear friends in the media, who want everything to be black and white. Is Kim Kardashian's bum too big or not? Well, the answer to that is, both, or one of the two depending on what day it is and how many hits the sidebar of shame is getting on any given day. But they can always accompany this with badly taken pap shots of Ms Kardashian's shapely rear as evidence for their badly written articles peppered with the odd typo and grammatical error in the writer's haste to get Ms K's ass hot off the press, if you know what I mean.

Spot the difference. Yep, it's the addition of *clothes*. you got it in one.

Luckily for the media, Time to Change has come to the rescue. There is no longer any excuse for using pictures of people who are gripping their heads for no apparent reason as representing the mentally ill. You know that cannot be true after all, I mean, I didn't type this post with my nose, that would have taken all day. I typed it with my hands, while feeling moderately anxious because yesterday was one of my 'no sedative' meds nights, and because I'm wondering how much more carrot juice I can drink to keep me from becoming a hippo on my weight-gaining antidepressant pills, and whether actually a Marks and Spencer's chocolate chip cookie is actually calorie free if I eat it standing up. (Course it is.)

Time to Change has launched its campaign and with it a whole host of media images which show people struggling in a more realistic way. They are for the media to use, and are endorsed by the UK Picture Editors' Guild. They worked with people who suffer from these illnesses and medical professionals, among others, to represent mental illness in more sensitive, life-like graphics. I'm guessing none of them will show up in the Sidebar of Shame, but that's only cause KimmyK wasn't available to model for them. The glorious Mr. Fry, though, was, and here he is, showing us all how it's not done. So, media, you're welcome, Time To Change has helped you out. Now #endtheheadclutcher already. And those of you media types who are struggling to keep your mental health in good nick can breathe a sigh of relief, because no one's expecting you to use your toes to type anymore as you clutch your head all day at your desk. See, everybody wins.

#GetThePicture

Auntie Comes Round for Tea and Conversation...about My Experiences with Stress and Depression

Almost certain to be true in my case.

It's Friday night as I write this and I have to say it's been a strange day. I've made my second trip into the office since my accident - by taxi as I cannot use public transport.  This time, though, required me to be in the office for 9 am rather than sauntering casually into the place at 12, so I had rather a rude awakening for me, the worker-at-home and walking wounded.

Champagne soaked floozie? Never. Well, not a floozie. I have (some) dignity.

Today I have been filmed by the BBC - twice - for their BBC Breakfast show on BBC One. Once, to be in my office (and office garb), and a second time at home in my usual attire. [I asked them if a reindeer onesie was okay but apparently that's been done before. Darn it.]. This I was told by the producer I spoke to yesterday. The funny thing about TV (news) is that you have to believe it's not really going to happen. I can't remember how or where I picked up this notion, but it is absolutely true. If you ever wonder what a PR does for his / her company, look no further than spending hours on the phone trying to convince this or that paper, TV show or website to feature their cause, their celebrity, their largest cabbage in the Cotswolds. Whatever. As I said I don't know how I got to know this - I can hardly believe it to have come from my brief flirtation with student journalism, but I have now an innate sense of disbelief that any programme or feature I'm involved with will actually, well, happen.

Cute...scary...cute...scary...?

Still, after a 'possibly but probably not' email from Mind on Wednesday, that turned into a 'definitely' on Thursday afternoon with filming to take place the next day: the other thing to note is how fast these things are arranged. As you know I've been fairly vocal here and on TV / with Mind about my commitment to supporting mental illness advocacy, so now Mind has me on its books, as it were, as a case study they can roll out. "Jessica, yes, she's mad as a bag of snakes," is something that they are extremely unlikely to say when asked if they have someone to feature on this or that show, or in an article on whatever. On the other hand, I do have a string of mental illness symptoms to my name. Stress, tick, depression, yes, anxiety, oh definitely, loneliness (causing one or more of the former) for sure. On these grounds it does make me rather easy to ping to mind when wanting a willing spokesperson. And after all, I haven't invested in Botox stocks for nothing, you know.

Lovely Leah. I made her a cup of tea and she drank it. Win.

The beautiful and petite (ugh, I must remember this is a blog, not a personal ad) Leah Boleto is my interviewer. And fabulous, super nice Pete is our camera man. A compact but great team for the interview. We do a couple of shots at the office. One is of me typing with an incredibly close shot of my fingers as I submit the exciting message that is my weekly time sheet. I probably did it wrong because all I could think about was the fact that I hadn't painted my nails and in the words of Arsenio Hall in Coming to America, "I am badly in need of a manicure." You said it Arsenio.

"I am badly in need of a manicure."

At home, we do straight conversation style interview, with me talking to Leah and Pete filming, with just me in shot. We seem to talk for a long time so I certainly hope they got something to go on!

(Incidentally, friends and close blog reading amigos, let me be clear about what is required if someone comes to film at your house: cleaning and tidying. Neither of these are daily on my to do list, so it was with something reminiscent of a spinally injured, broken elbowed whirling dervish that I swept around the front room with help from the lovely Mat to make sure that we had vacuumed the rug and arranged the cushions properly. At the very least. And taken the recycling out. Let's just say that I felt I really deserved my dinner and glass of wine last night after whipping round. But I did my exercise for the day, sponsored by co-dydramol and Gabapentin. Why thank you.)

Leah and me, after filming. Jessica = relief

Leah was sensitive in asking whether it was difficult to talk about my past experiences. Reflecting on this, it gets easier the more that I do it, and honestly, it's not like a therapy session, so I don't end up crying all over her (I'm delighted to say, and I'm sure she's pretty pleased about that too!). I was saying to Mat this week that I don't want to become a broken record where depression is concerned. I do have other stuff going on. I'm most of the way through watching Lie To Me and contemplating The Good Wife and Scandal as the next box set-cum-Netflix-must-watch.

Bed bound and Netflix-addict. Thank you Tim Roth.

The difference in talking this time was that this was a recorded interview, rather than live. It was also a lot longer, so that my words can be chopped up into bite-sized segments describing my life experiences. I wonder how it will come out. I'm guessing about 20-30 seconds of content, so will be amazed if anything more is featured. That's TV, folks. They also took some footage of me 'doing something normal' for potential use in the segment.

Pete - awesome. Me - trying to look relaxed = not really relaxed!

Luckily the suggestion of me making tea was ditched in favour of me reading a book. I did make them tea - the poor two had travelled all the way from east London to Teddington and it took them nearly three hours. Perhaps a neat Scotch would have been more appropriate! But I don't drink it, or coffee. (I know, English, you're ENGLISH. Must drink tea...but I'm sorry to say that I'm letting the nation down, one de-caffeinated diet coke and orange squash, or glass of Veuve, at a time.)

 So we opted for me reading a book. I couldn't undertake this exercise in our personal gargantuan library without choosing my very favourite book, Possession, by A.S. Byatt. This is worth a blog in itself, or a book, or more, but suffice to say that I felt almost relaxed (almost) with a camera being poked in my face as I turned the page on cue and made sure I quickly moved on from a page where the (surely pre-watershed embargoed) word 'penis' appeared!

Time for a relaxing read. Just me and my camera crew.

 After all that time to get over here it was all worth it in terms of the tidying and cleaning. Everyone who sent me a get well card - look out for your cards in the background, and thanks again! You know what my favourite book is now, you can tell I need a manicure (possibly, if they use that shot) and I got to meet two great professionals - presenter and film expert - in the process. It just goes to say that depression can lead you to new and positive things. I really hope that the end product - to be broadcast on Tuesday 25th November to coincide with the Economist's "Global Crisis of Depression" conference. I believe we have to keep talking about this. But for now, I'll take a rest and wish you all a very healthy weekend. Get some rest and get out there if it's not raining...take care, most of all.

Camera lighting is very cool. Just saying.