How has mental illness affected your life?

I hope they do something, if not I'll ask them to refer me.

I hope they do something, if not I'll ask them to refer me.

I had this problem the first time I went to see a GP. He decided that if I wasn't losing touch with reality, I was plainly fine. Lol.. no, not so much. Eventually, I decided I really did need help, and got myself an appointment with a different GP at the same practice, who was nice enough to refer me to a psychiatrist.

I was not directly replying to your post. I should have made it clearer that it was a question for my own benefit.

I had this problem the first time I went to see a GP. He decided that if I wasn't losing touch with reality, I was plainly fine. Lol.. no, not so much. Eventually, I decided I really did need help, and got myself an appointment with a different GP at the same practice, who was nice enough to refer me to a psychiatrist.

I might just do this instead. Some doctors just don't understand what you're saying.

Yeah, this is my situation exactly. i hope they refer me but I'm worried about walking in to a new practice and saying 'yeah, hi I'm new, and I've done this, this and this to myself. Fix me.' I suppose they see it all the time though yeah?

If it wasn't a social thing, then people wouldn't self-harm in such a limited amount of ways. Slitting ones wrists would not be so common. Obviously there are other ways in which to self-harm, but if it was actually psychological, then the methods wouldn't be so limited - fact.

Also, just because it is influenced by society, doesn't mean you have to tell people about it.

Gp's are kinda jack of all trades, master of none to some extent, which doesn't help at all. I think the Dr who was meant to be my GP, insofar as he was specialised, was specialised in minor operations, and that sort of thing. Sometimes, they just don't know much about mental illness outside of the really obvious cases.

Not only that, but if you're 17 you might find it difficult to find care anyway. NHS mental health services for kids end at 16 but start at 18 for adults. I've known several people spend a year being literally bounced back and forth between the two, until they turn 18 and suddenly they get treatment!

I was really shocked when my GP dismissed my symptoms as 'being silly'. It meant that I spent the Christmas holidays miserable, thinking that I was overreacting to something that wasn't really a problem. Only now, after several suicidal thoughts and a lot of (albeit mild) self harm, am I able to realise that my GP was the one who was in the wrong. I've changed surgeries and will see a doctor next week.

As for people making the mental illness worse, I can definitely see that. My friends have previously referred to me as a "mental b*tch" and it definitely did not make me ANY better whatsoever. It felt like those closest to me were not supportive even though there was something clearly wrong with me. I've found that (cliche though it is), talking about and admitting I have a problem was the first step to acceptance. My friends were much more understanding than I thought they would be.

I'm not even scared to post this non-anon. I'm glad I'm admitting this; it's a relief.

I think I have obsessional OCD and some other social/general anxiety. It's been such a pain because it "mimics" other mental disorders The only thing that's really alerted me to this is my constant rumination over mental illness for a month or so. Going to a doctor about it.

Hmmm, I've become slightly 'obsessed' (not in that sense) with mental illnesses in general recently. It's not like I think about these things all the time, even in the periods of normaity between the ****-ups, but I'm becoming convinced that it's my thinking about it that is making it happen, at the same time as thinking that there might actually be something wrong with me...

The problem is that these thoughts seem to coincide with and integrate with the "symptoms", so I ruminate more on mental illness when I am actually struggling. So I can never tell. IDK. I'm just troubled by the possible harmfulness of the ready availability of information about mental illness. At least if I didn't know anything about it I would be able to rule out this possibility.

How can your friends have been understanding if they called you a 'mental b*tch'? And I'm still struggling to believe some of the horror stories on here, are people just making it up?

The thing with me is, I believed that the way I thought was normal, until I took things into perspective and realised just how screwed up it is to say... ruminate about these things constantly unless I do something productive before such thought patterns can set in. For example, at a party last year. I wasn't thinking so much about my family or presents or even the food, I was thinking obsessively about the possibility that I had [insert serious mental illness here] and its implications. All my thoughts were centred around it. And no this isn't hypochondria because you could replace that with worrying non-medical topics, it would be the same.

Yeah that's the thing - even if you can tell the way you're thinking about things or have been thinking about things is not right, you can't seem to change the thoughts themselves, and changing the thoughts themselves wouldn't have an effect on anything (you'd just be doing the same things concerning something else.) But at the same time (for me) because I know about the possibility it's something that I don't forget when my mood changes (I have always had a tendency to overanalyse myself and intellectualise things), so I can't always be sure things *would* be different, and I can't tell to what extent these thoughts *are* influencing my behaviour.

Like, after the fact, I can tell the way I was thinking in an "up" mood (they quickly turn irritable for me and I end up having stream-of-consciousness unstoppable arguments with myself centring on whether some thing in particular that I am doing is or is not a symptom and whether or not I am in fact making it up and whether or not the racing thoughts that I am having at that particular moment are "on purpose" or not and my attempts to prevent myself doing other things that could constitute "symptoms" are just "my brain" trying to make out that they are symptoms and thus prove I am mental even though I am in fact NOT mental it is just my brain playing tricks on me, or I get very paranoid about whether or not everyone else can tell that "i am, in fact, mental" etc... although this is not all they constitute), or in a "down" mood I just tell myself that there is nothing wrong with me and I am simply a lazy bastard and so on, though then I mostly think absolutely nothing.

I can tell the way I'm thinking about this *now* is much more level-headed, I'm confused and unsure about it, yeah (even the characterisation of "up" and "down" moods which just seems like self-validation), but I'm not doing either of those things and I'm much more able to stop myself running off on some self-damaging tangent either way, and just think about something else. (Which is odd because since yesterday evening I've been incredibly low and I've just dragged myself up to a functioning level within the past ten minutes - the transience is something that makes it very difficult to believe the reality of the moods and quite ****s with your identity as well.)

Like, after the fact, I can tell the way I was thinking in an "up" mood (they quickly turn irritable for me and I end up having stream-of-consciousness unstoppable arguments with myself centring on whether some thing in particular that I am doing is or is not a symptom and whether or not I am in fact making it up and whether or not the racing thoughts that I am having at that particular moment are "on purpose" or not and my attempts to prevent myself doing other things that could constitute "symptoms" are just "my brain" trying to make out that they are symptoms and thus prove I am mental even though I am in fact NOT mental it is just my brain playing tricks on me, or I get very paranoid about whether or not everyone else can tell that "i am, in fact, mental" etc... although this is not all they constitute), or in a "down" mood I just tell myself that there is nothing wrong with me and I am simply a lazy bastard and so on, though then I mostly think absolutely nothing.

Like, after the fact, I can tell the way I was thinking in an "up" mood (they quickly turn irritable for me and I end up having stream-of-consciousness unstoppable arguments with myself centring on whether some thing in particular that I am doing is or is not a symptom and whether or not I am in fact making it up and whether or not the racing thoughts that I am having at that particular moment are "on purpose" or not and my attempts to prevent myself doing other things that could constitute "symptoms" are just "my brain" trying to make out that they are symptoms and thus prove I am mental even though I am in fact NOT mental it is just my brain playing tricks on me, or I get very paranoid about whether or not everyone else can tell that "i am, in fact, mental" etc... although this is not all they constitute), or in a "down" mood I just tell myself that there is nothing wrong with me and I am simply a lazy bastard and so on, though then I mostly think absolutely nothing.

I spent ages typing out a post about how depression and anorexia have affected my life and the post got lost.
But depression= people telling me to 'snap out of it' and people calling me lazy because I burst into tears at the sight of a sink full of washing up (amongst other things) because it looks too hard to do. When it gets to the point I can't cry, I'm not functioning and I'm probably deeply entrenched in my anorexia, so am not sleeping, not eating, not going to school and will be hospitalised in a while.

Anorexia= doctors telling me it should be easy for me to get better because I haven't been ill for like 5+ years but it's coming up to 2 now and I still feel like ****. Fighting the urge to kill yourself is even more hard when you hate yourself for every mouthful of food you put into your fat worthless body. My parents make it harder by asking me what I've eaten/if I've eaten. It's winter, which is bringing on 'What the **** are you doing? Stop eating! STOP EATING!' thoughts because I was (apparently) very ill this time last year but all I remember was weighing less and feeling dizzy. I'm scared of all the new year diet talk which is triggering as **** because the cultural message is basically 'Eaten too much over Christmas? Lose weight!' and I think that applies to me. Right now I'm fighting the urge to OD on laxatives/painkillers/both because I've just had a plate of chips and I can't stand the guilt. I just basically hate myself more than I did when I was 'just' depressed. And anorexia makes it easier for me to hurt myself because it's made me pretty used to physical pain. Oh and because my perfectionism isn't 'really' being directed into starving myself anymore () it's basically destroying my life because I hate myself for being a **** anorexic and not doing it properly and actually dying, I hate myself for eating 'too much', I hate myself for not losing weight and I hate myself for not being able to start essays and revision because I'm scared it won't be perfect and that I'll fail anyway. But I'm going to fail if I don't start. I NEED straight As in the same way I need to eat less than X calories a day and because I'm not restricting I feel like I'm going to fail my A levels because not only am I 'fat' without anorexia (It needs to be stamped on my forehead that I'm not actually fat!), I'm also stupid. Struggling at the moment. I do have a treatment team but apparently I'm supposed to be fine until January.