If you are feeling suicidal, please consider calling or emailing The Samaritans… I have been suicidal many times. I have seriously attempted suicide several times. My bipolar disorder (which, in me is characterised by deep depression) has led me close to the brink of death by my own hand. I have to say that when […]
Things Not To Say To A Depressed Person 2
June 1, 2012 by 7 Comments
“Pull Yourself Together“ Some people assume that depression is a state we can fall into when not paying attention. A natural, but lazy response to modern life. They assume that if we wished to, we could stop feeling depressed, by pulling ourselves together – by forcing ourselves out of a depression and into the required normal/happy mood […]
Cats as Therapy
May 28, 2012 by 2 Comments
I have always had pets. I started with a goldfish, moved on to a hamster, and now have a cat called Fluffy. Fluffy has been with us for around seven years now, and is, in my completely biased opinion, the best cat ever. She is very affectionate, loves being stroked and cuddled, and spends […]
Things Not To Say To A Depressed Person
May 19, 2012 by 7 Comments
Just a quick post today! There are lots of really irritating things people say to you when you are suffering from depression. I think they are well-meaning, but thoughtless and rather ignorant of our situations. These can come from friends, family, church people, employers, anyone really, but there are few things more irritating. The one […]
Sin, Truth and Me
May 15, 2012 by Leave a Comment
I am a sinner. I have done many things wrong in my life. I have sinned against my neighbour and against my God. We are all sinners. The Bible teaches that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…” (Rom 3:23) Every last one of us has failed God in some way, […]
Sorrow for Sanity
May 13, 2012 by 1 Comment
When mental illness strikes, we experience loss. We have temporary losses, our health, our “sound mind”, our happiness. We also experience longer-term loss, like the loss of friends, jobs, housing, and the discrimination and stigma we face lead to many losses in our lives. When we are diagnosed with a severe mental health problem, one […]
Truthfulness About Myself
May 7, 2012 by 3 Comments
As a Christian I serve the one called The Truth, Jesus. As a human I too often fail to tell and see the truth about myself. As a person with a mental health problem I have trouble seeing truth from the lies told by illness about myself. I speak, now, from a position of wellness […]
Do you have “depression”?
May 6, 2012 by 4 Comments
What I’d like to write about here is, I think, an intense irritant to most mentally ill people. That is, the way people loosely use the term “depression” to refer to things that are not medical depression and get themselves all twisted up and end up stigmatising us. I am making it sound more simple […]
4Thought: Malcolm Bowden on Depression and Faith
April 25, 2012 by 2 Comments
Well, something of a storm developing over today’s 4thought! For those not in the know, 4thought is a short slot at the end of the Channel 4 news given over to discussions of faith, ethics, and similar and where a person is given that time to present one point of view. This week, 4thought has […]
God in Crisis
April 3, 2012 by 3 Comments
The first time I went through a mental health crisis I was not a Christian. I had played with the idea before, sometimes styling myself as a Christian on the internet, but it was not very serious, I’m afraid. I had too many hang-ups, largely concerned with fundamentalist Christianity, for me to take Christ seriously. […]
Believer's Brain 