This Mental Health Awareness Week (MHAW), SWM’s Senior Sustainability Advisor Alan Carr talks about how both themes of MHAW, physical exercise and accessing support, are vital for good mental health.
I have lived in the fabulous city of Edinburgh (you know, that famous West Midlands place) for the past 15 months, and have lived through one of the city’s wettest early springs in history. But for once, this is not a post about climate change adaptation and how the UK is failing to get to grips with the climate crisis, but rather a tale of incident, injury and isolation.
For I was going for a walk around the wonderful Holyrood Park on 07 April and slipped on a highly saturated (as a result of said wet weather), muddy, grassy bank. Seemingly innocuous and most likely hilarious to passers-by, but unfortunate in the consequence. I ended up dislocating my shoulder and fracturing my humerus bone. The fabulous but terribly undervalued and under-resourced NHS fixed both issues, and I am now partly robotic, having had metal fitted into my shoulder. Yes there’s been pain, and yes there’s been general frustration as a single occupancy renter, with my inability to open a can of beans with my left hand, along with having to use a litter picker to feed washing into the machine when I need to clean my clothes. But everything is recovering well, at least on the physical side of things.
On the day the accident happened, the nurse in minor injuries kept saying “how do you feel about what I’ve just told you,” when he broke the news about how bad the injury was and what would need to happen next. I was like, “well it is what it is and what needs to be done needs to be done,” at the time not considering the wider impacts, having been fortunate enough to never have had an injury like this before.
But now I know why he kept asking this question. Because the physical stuff and the recovery, yes, is challenging, as is the practical challenge of basic day-to-day tasks, desperately trying to become ambidextrous as quickly as possible. But the hardest thing has been the emotional impact, and unlike years ago when I suffered badly with chronic anxiety, I would never speak about it for fear of being perceived as weak, or being judged. But I know that that is the worst thing that you can do, so I thought I would use Mental Health Awareness Week to my advantage here, to highlight what this impact feels like and to reiterate the importance of not suffering in silence.
The mental toil is essentially caused by a combination of things. First of all, how long this sort of injury takes to recover and, therefore, how long you have to deal with everything taking forever due to your inability to use more than one arm. Secondly, the fact that I am single and live on my own; of course, it would be nice to have someone here who could help with the practical mundane stuff, but actually it’s more about not having someone by my side who can become my ‘recovery rock,’ to coin a new phrase. Despite phenomenal support from friends both back in the West Midlands and up in Edinburgh, there is no escaping the feeling of isolation, especially during the long nights.
Which leads me on to the third point; the insomnia. I have long since been a terrible sleeper and was actually in the process of looking into options to sort this out just before I went arse over head, and it won’t surprise you to know that this incident has not made things any better in that regard. I spend most of my days feeling like a zombie, looking like a zombie, and most probably sounding like a zombie as well. Insomnia can also make you more emotional in the first place, along with being an extremely frustrating thing to have to deal with in itself.
And I think there’s a fourth point that I’m reflecting on here. I spent 15 years dealing with chronic anxiety, over 5 years as a part time carer, and then since moving to Edinburgh I have had quite bad illnesses and injuries. The word resilience is one that I use very frequently in my job, but usually in the context of climate change. Here, I mean it in the context of the ability of one being able to withstand being crapped on from a great height. Given how I’m feeling at the moment, it may be that I’ve just been crapped on a few too many times and I need a bit of a break.
This year’s theme of Mental Health Awareness Week is movement, and the importance of physical activity to improve mental health. I think that’s another reason why I’m not in the best place at the moment, because I am an active person; I walk, cycle and swim every week and at the moment apart from a brief tootle around the block, there’s not much I can do. That probably affects my sleep, too, and in itself can lead to you becoming mired in your own thoughts.
Point being, I am the embodiment of what can happen to your mental health when you can’t get physical exercise. There is absolutely no question that there is an intrinsic link between good physical health and good mental health and as usual it’s unfortunate that those who live in more deprived areas are the ones who suffer the most in this regard, either through lack of opportunities, chronic long term health problems or living in unsafe areas. If you can, I challenge you to get out there because the saying ‘blow the cobwebs away’ really means clearing your head, and there’s often nothing better than physical exercise to do this.
My final message would be as follows. Inevitably, there will be somebody reading this who is suffering, or knows someone who is suffering with their mental health. There are far too many of us with a mental health problem for that not to be true. If one of those people is you, please reach out for help.
Mind’s Mental Health Awareness Week theme is on ensuring that everyone gets support for their mental health problems, and of course at the moment we know that those people who cannot afford to pay for therapy unfortunately mean that they often can’t get the help they need because the NHS services are too much in demand. So, it may be that you have tried to reach out for help but have been unable to get it.
But reaching out for help doesn’t just mean accessing therapy. It can also mean speaking to your family, friends, colleagues, or anybody you randomly meet in the street. There’s no rule as to who you should reach out to, but I guarantee that opening up about what you’re experiencing will help. Just writing this post has helped me to some degree, getting it out there, not being ashamed and, yes, some people might judge you but most will receive what you tell them with warmth, kindness and empathy.
In the absence of a functioning and fair mental health support system, we need to use our most powerful resource; each other. I’m certainly trying to do that, because I know I need all the help that I can get.
Alan Carr, Senior Sustainability Advisor, SWM
