Category: Mental Health Conditions

Living with a mental illness can have a profound effect on your own life but also on family members’ lives, because they often take on a vital role in ensuring their relative has a good quality life. We spoke to Rich and his dad about what it was like living in a house where OCD dictated their day-to-day life. Trigger Warning: This article mentions suicidal thoughts.

Sophie is a 26-year-old mental health advocate who has lived with OCD for 11 years. She won a Bill Pringle Award with Rethink Mental Illness for her poem on managing OCD in 2019 and has spoken publicly about her experience on radio and on social media. She is open and vocal about mental health and mental illness because she knows first-hand how isolating and scary it can be in the beginning.

A new study cites financial worries, entertaining guests and keeping everyone happy as key factors in peoples’ mental health worsening over the festive period.

Our close supporter, James, was diagnosed with the eating disorder Anorexia Nervosa 6 years ago. He is a mental health advocate who raises awareness about how eating disorders can impact men, what some of the triggers are and how to manage the challenges they bring. Watch the video below where he brings his personal story to light, with the aim of improving mental health and reducing the stigma that still exists today.

It’s common for women to experience mental health problems as a result of the hormone changes which happen during menopause. We also hear from Elizabeth, who told us her experience of how menopause affected her mental health and how she’s managing her symptoms.

Adrienne Rennie has recently conducted a postgraduate research study at Swansea University as part of the Masters programme in Abnormal and Clinical Psychology. With help from eating disorder charity B-eat, she explored stereotypes within eating disorders and their effects on non-stereotypical individuals. Here, she gives us a summary of her findings…