A thread for people to learn some more about mental illness

I wonder just how many woman were as capable after treatment as your wonderful mother Grannyknot?
I had a childhood friend whose mother had profound PND after her third baby and sadly never recovered. My friend was left to bring up her baby brother from the age of 8. Today's therapy is certainly more refined than then, ECT was really the only resource if Valium or other medications didn't work.

I agree Grannyknot.
When I was younger, I somehow had the impression that it was not recoverable from. Once a depressive person, always a depressive person.

I think that that is why I dont like labels to stick. It can be unfair, and untrue.

I am learning how people feel when they have a mental illness. How their day to day life feels. Which can be a difficult thing to explain. And often, when a person is going through it, they do not necessarily want to tell people that. It can be the last thing they want to do.

I hope my contribution has shown that someone who has a pretty severe episode of mental illness can successfully recover and raise a child to be a perfectly sane adult

Interesting questions kittylester
Although mine wasn't anywhere nearly as bad as some, it was triggered by, I think, taking on too much because I could 'cope', not saying 'no' and becoming utterly overwhelmed. I thought if I said no I'd be thought unable to do my job (twice it involved being bullied at work).
I didn't learn from this either, not until it really hit me and I had to change my work/life balance.
My GP told me too many people think they are Superwoman/man and try to keep too many balls in the air.
Unsupportive managers in my case didn't help.

I meant it isn't insanity.

I don't mean that depression isn't a mental illness though.

I could write a book about schizophrenia as a close family member suffered from it. It is a horrible, incurable and frightening disease. I can never think of depression as a mental illness after witnessing years and years of this type of insanity.

This thread has helped me to understand how mental illness can manifest itself though, absent. I have never suffered (apart from a very short bout of PND that was nothing like anything on here!) and now have an insight of how it can affect people.

Are some people more susceptible? Is it part of our physical make-up or just as a result of life experiences? Or both? GK mentioned her serotonin levels - is that all it is?

Not a story for children.

jingl and Ana I didn't know about the urine thing but it is a bit of a random fact (if it is a fact, given that it is quite an old piece of research). I am not sure it goes anywhere towards helping me understand more about mental illness(es) –any more than the rest of this thread.

Yep! I can believe that! I think I had blotted that story out.

I haven't dared to google it, but when I was little and stayed with my granny my bedroom had a great big wardrobe in it, and I know I associated that with the Room...

OMG!!! No wonder I had bad dreams. I knew there was a room in it somewhere. That's brought it all back!

So did I. But I can't remember it now! Will google.

I did hate that Bluebeard story...

That looks like the pictures that used to come up when I used my kaleidescope as a child! I wish I'd kept that, it was so much better than the flimsy things you can get these days.

Or a story about Bluebeard.

I don't remember that at all and I used to work in a psychiatric clinic but that was about a hundred years ago.

Although there was a weird animal right in the centre of mine.

I think there were connections with a Rupert Bear annual.

Whe I was a small child, I had a recurring dream a lot like this picture of a DMT trip

I was ahead of my time obviously.

I did read it quite a long time ago now. About fifty years actually. So they have probably changed their minds about it several times since then.

I don't think DMT would have been discovered then.

No, I don't think I have learnt anything new, but that doesn't matter except about the markers in the urine which is interesting.

And perhaps that six sherries was an exaggeration as I have never drunk six sherries in one go.

Although having googled it seems that from one small study it was found that 47% of the schizophrenic patients tested had evidence of DMT in their urine, so not an infallible guide.

Well, that's something I've learned from this thread then jingl (and to absent)

That's lovely, nannieroz. Keep smiling