Sinead O’Connor and THAT video
Again, another blog post booted off to next week. But you know what? This is more important. I felt like I wanted to support Sinead O’Connor’s decision to film herself in a clearly distressed and ‘I have had enough’ state. The minute I saw it online, before even watching it, my heart sank. The immediate need to want to give her a hug and say she wasn’t alone was quite overwhelming. It pains me to see complete strangers suffering, let alone my nearest and dearest.
But I knew she had done the right thing. For her. And for others. It was the topic of conversation yesterday wasn’t it? Another conversation about mental health :-)
There will always be mixed views on mental issues, everybody will want to put their two pence in and they have. You Tube comments such as ‘why does she need attention’ and ‘kids see what drugs can do’. Tsk. But like Paris Lees says in her Guardian article, we have come a long way when it comes to mental health conversations, but everything is very glossy and sugar coated.
In fact, as a well person, I can quickly forget how awful and lonely it can feel to be mentally ‘off’. It can be so easy to judge when you are in a ‘happy place’. What Sinead has done, has shown the world how messy and fucked up mental illness can be. To a point it is all about helping yourself before others can help you, but those desperately seeking help are those who put their dignity second and their life first. They wave their SOS flag via social media. Quite brave no? But mental illness isn’t dignified and that’s where the stigma sets in. Mental illness doesn’t usually have anything to do with intelligence, personality, status or how cushy your life is. It doesn’t have to do with how sensitive or hardcore you are. That’s utter bollocks. As a 12 year old kid, one of my friends was diagnosed with bipolar and I was too young to understand. I judged my friend by her illness and it overshadowed why I became friends with her in the first place. Adults have no excuse. And as Sinead says it’s the stigma that is often causing more pain than the illness. I know some people who have confided in me in the past about how they feel yet they have been too afraid to do anything about it for fear of how people around them are going to be. It’s hard to understand pain when you don’t feel it but imagine how hard it must be to feel the pain and feel isolated too.
