In 2004 I experienced depression. This had been creeping up on me for almost a year, like a dark shadow, insidious and foreboding. Eventually the shadow totally eclipsed me and I gave in. I had 'masked' the symptoms for so long my depression had become a way of life - I accepted it without question.
Men - particularly young men - often find it a struggle to express their feelings. In the region in which I live, we have the second highest rate of suicide and self harm among young men in the country. This is something that I have always strived to change in a number of ways.
I walked away from my empty office and my tidied desk that night not knowing when I would return. I had endured a year of an insidious meltdown into depression, I was in a state of denial to myself and I had become blind to how ill I had become. My manager had encouraged me to seek medical help and a break from the stressful work routine. I now realised the time was right to dutifully oblige.
Having nursed thousands of people with mental health conditions over a 30 year career in the NHS suddenly I found myself on the other side of the psychiatric fence. Stress was something that wasn’t alien to me, or many of my colleagues, in fact it went with the territory so to speak. This though was different. I had over a span of about a year slipped slowly but irreversibly into severe depression.
This had been creeping up on me for almost a year, like a dark shadow, insidious and foreboding. Eventually the shadow totally eclipsed me and I gave in. I had 'masked' the symptoms for so long my depression had become a way of life - I accepted it without question.
I walked away from my empty office and my tidied desk that night not knowing when I would return. I had endured a year of an insidious meltdown into depression, I was in a state of denial to myself and I had become blind to how ill I had become. My manager had encouraged me to seek medical help and a break from the stressful work routine. I now realised the time was right to dutifully oblige.
Having nursed thousands of people with mental health conditions over a 30 year career in the NHS suddenly I found myself on the other side of the psychiatric fence. Stress was something that wasn’t alien to me, or many of my colleagues, in fact it went with the territory so to speak. This though was different. I had over a span of about a year slipped slowly but irreversibly into severe depression.
