This title actually made me laugh as at 4’10” I am frequently being teased about my size. But in honest truth, I very much feel small when it comes to dealing with my mental health.
Coming to terms with being diagnosed with a personality disorder can at times make you feel less of a person or somehow faulty. But my personal experience is not really about my diagnosis, but about how I have been treated because of it. I work in a very large organisation and due to the complexities of my situation, I have found myself up against it. I truly have felt small, but I have also discovered an inner strength I didn’t know I had. I have found the strength to singlehandedly take on this huge organisation and challenge them on every level. I have faced negligence, ignorance, incompetence, discrimination, bullying and stigma over the last four years and all of this with no support from even my Union, who ran a mile when they discovered it was a mental health issue.
This is the power of small if ever there was one and I only hope I can make serious changes so that in the future no one suffers as I have done.
We have to find the courage to talk about our diagnoses openly and help people to understand that we are no less of a person because of it. Unless people understand what is happening to you and why, then they can’t even begin to help and support you. I long for a future when mental health is treated the same as physical health. This COVID situation we are in has certainly exposed many people’s mental health issues and there has never been so much demand for help out there.
I hope this country of ours will wake up and realise that there needs to be a much bigger investment in mental health services. I was so disappointed to hear that Time to Change was being discontinued in England as there is quite obviously so much more work to be done with fighting stigma. I will continue my fight and feel very proud of the ‘power of small’.
