R: It's OK. I'll just... It's a nice interlude. [Jessica laughs]
J: Gonna start this video by saying: I have a terrible cold
J: I might sniffle a bit.
But I've got tissues ready.
J: So we're good. R: I am not sick for now.
J: Well, you're sitting next to me for quite a while! So we'll see how you feel at the end of this, Rowan.
J: This is lovely Rowan. She has come to join me on the channel today.
J: Because it is...
R: Mental Health something Day!
J: I should have probably clued you into that.
J: No, it's actually World Mental Health Day.
R: For the whole world? J: Yeah!
R: In which case, good timing on your part. J: Thanks!
J: People often ask me why I don't have
things on my channel where I talk about mental health.
J: And that's partly because I don't feel it's my place to
because I don't have any mental health stuff.
J: Although, if you grow up or have any kind of chronic illness or disability,
I think there is always going to be some kind of trauma that is attached to that.
J: Even if it's not itself something, like a mental health condition,
that you get independently.
R: Mm.
J: It's just - you go through stuff! And you feel--
you have some kind of trauma at the end of it.
J: But Rowan talks very openly
J: about mental heath stuff. R: I do.
J: So I thought you were probably the best person to talk to.
J: You can kind of tell me a bit about why you think it's so important that we do talk about these things.
R: It's useful for people to be able to talk about their mental health conditions
and then also for people who don't know about it
to feel like they can ask questions and talk to their friends about it.
R: A lot of mental health issues can feel quite isolating, and so talking can often help.
R: And it's just empowering people to talk about
what they're going through in the right way, but also for their friends and family
to be able to feel empowered to talk to them and not think they're gonna make it worse by mentioning.
R: 'You look kind of depressed or you seem to be depressed.' J: It's OK. It's OK.
R: 'I can't say it because then I'll remind you that you're depressed
and then you'll feel more depressed and...'
R: Not quite how it works. J: Yeah.
J: I find talking about my disabilities on my channel
has made the relationships that I have in real life
- day-to-day life -
with people, even my family,
they now find it easier to talk to me about my disabilities.
R: Yeah. J: Because they know what it is now.
J: Do you find that you've had
people in real life who are like, 'Oh, I watched your video about that and now I actually get it'?
R: So I made a video about having OCD and I think that it's one of those things where
people who kind of had something similar to it
or who had experienced it before
felt a little bit more confident
talking to me about it because they knew that I'd got it.
R: I think that anxiety and depression, in particular, are ones that
although still stigmatized, have been talked about a little bit more
because I think that they're extensions of emotions that everyone has.
J: Yes. R: So depression is like, 'Oh, I've been sad before,'
R: so I know it's not quite the same, but I can kind of understand what depression might feel like.'
R: Or, 'I've been anxious or scared before; I kind of feel what anxiety might feel like.'
R: Although they're not totally the same,
it's definitely a good kind of starting comparison.
R: Whereas with things like OCD,
because they don't make any sense
and they're often not related to what anyone's gone through, and similarly
with personality disorders, or anything that involves psychosis or
not being able to tell what's real and what's not,
a lot of people have no basis for comparison.
R: They have no idea what that would feel like.
R: You feel crazy saying it. You feel like it's like, 'This is what crazy people say.'
J: But also the only things that we see about OCD
in the media are those kind of--the same representation of the person who has to like obsessively tidy
and wash their hands a lot; it's that kind of 'Monica' from 'Friends'
R: Yeah, exactly. J: -style.
J: Whereas OCD isn't just that, is it?
R: People do have OCD where they need to tidy and they need to clean obsessively,
but that's the only outward thing, so all that people see is, 'Oh, OCD is just you need to clean.'
R: What you don't see is the process that leads up to that point,
which is often obsessive thoughts.
R: So, the thoughts with someone who cleans a lot might be about contracting diseases,
as an example.
R: And so a way that these thoughts that keep going on and on in your head,
that you kind of know aren't real but they feel like they are,
and the only way that you can stop those
is just to sort of give in and be like, 'OK, I'm gonna--' (in that case) 'I'll wash my hands again.'
R: It starts with these intrusive thoughts,
which are these obsessions
- which is 'obsessive' - and then the compulsions are the things that you do to alleviate the thoughts.
J: Oh, OK.
R: And so you can have something called Pure O OCD,
which is only obsessions.
R: So, it's not physical things that you can do and compulsions that you act out,
but everything happens mentally.
R: So my OCD, I have a few different ones,
but the one that was most recent
and has been the most on-going is an obsessive thought that people can hear what I'm thinking.
R: It's weird, because I know logically they can't, that's nonsense.
I--no one can hear what I'm thinking.
R: But the anxiety that they can keeps going
so a lot of my compulsions are internal in my head, where I will have to
actively think back at them, back thoughts as if--so I'm kind of like thinking something;
they'll hear my thoughts, and so I'll have to just apologise to them.
J: Ooh! R: Be like, 'I'm really sorry that you just heard what I was thinking.'
R: And intrusive thoughts can be really awful. J: Yeah!
R: So, you know, often they're around what will make you feel most panicked.
So, parents will get intrusive thoughts of killing their children.
R: It's people with intrusive thoughts-- J: But it's not because you want to do it.
R: Not at all. J: It's just because you're so scared of that.
R: Exactly.
R: So it's often you'll get the thing that you definitely wouldn't do.
J: OK. R: Because that's the thing that will cause the most anxiety.
J: Yeah.
R: I'm like - from our point of view, there's a really interesting one, which is
homosexual OCD
where people who are brought up in environments where being gay is like the worst possible thing
will have intrusive thoughts that they're gay.
J: But they're not gay. R: They're not gay.
J: They've just got intrusive thoughts about being gay. R: They've just got intrusive thoughts about being gay.
J: Ooo.
J: You were saying how people can kind of understand depression
because we've all had a moment where we're quite sad,
and we can kind of think about that magnified,
but with intrusive thoughts,
don't we all sometimes get those kind of
J: sort of experience? R: Yeah, so imagine that,
R: but imagine the--you cannot get rid of that thought.
J: Sure. R: You just have to keep thinking it.
R: And also, the level of distress that it causes is much higher.
R: Here's a thing that you think sometimes, but actually, you think it all the time,
and it really stresses you out when you think it.
R: That's sort of, I suppose, the equivalent.
R: And then I also have Seasonal Affective Disorder,
which is "the winter blues."
R: I think it probably used to be known.
R: Which is really funny, because it makes me sound like a sort of fainting Victorian woman,
where it's like, 'She's got the winter blues - quickly, we must holiday in the Mediterranean!'
J: 'Oh, no! Oh, no! Send her away!' R: 'We must take her--send her for sun by the coast.'
R: It's one of those things I got diagnosed with and I was like, "Oh, I guess I have this."
J: Claudia has a quite mild SAD.
So I had to get her a sun light.
J: Was advised. R: Yep, yep.
R: I've got the lightbox.
J: She--she could not wake up before it.
J: Her one is an alarm clock, so it slowly gets brighter, R: Ooo. That's really cool.
J: so that wakes her up,
but then also, if it's just like 4PM and it's pitch black outside in the middle of winter,
then I can just put it in front of her on max for twenty minutes.
J: All year round now the sun light to wake up.
Otherwise, she doesn't properly wake up.
R: Yeah, so, sun boxes are really interesting; they're something like 60-90% effective. Like, most people.
So it's a really effective way of treating it.
R: I used to, when I was studying, have to just like have it next to me.
J: While you studied? R: While I studied.
R: I think it's interesting, because there must be such differences in mental health depending on
where you live.
J: Mmm. R: Because this wouldn't affect people to the same extent
R: in a country where it was hot for a lot longer or sunnier for longer and the days were longer.
R: Mental health is interesting because it's such a spectrum of something that you were born with,
chemical stuff, but also experiences you've had; trauma you've had,
and predispositions.
J: Like you can have something that runs in your family, R: Exactly.
J: but it needs to be turned on for it to actually
activate.
R: Talking about it can help in terms of treatment, so it's
you will still feel this way, but here's a way of alleviating those symptoms.
R: But then that's why, for other people, the sort of taking a drug--drug use is more useful,
because if it's very chemical, taking antidepressants
/ anti-anxiety medication makes sense, because it's just fixing the chemical element
J: And talking to someone isn't gonna change the chemistry of your brain. R: Yeah, exactly.
J: When I first got diagnosed with having a genetic condition, I got sent to therapy.
R: I mean, did you feel like that was useful?
J: No.
J: I got sent to therapy for nine months or something, I had to go.
And oh, my God. I got diagnosed when I was seventeen, so I was still technically a "child."
R: Mmm. J: So I got sent to a child therapist!
J: I was like, "She talks to five-year-olds!"
J: "How is she gonna help me?" R: Did she have puppets, like...?
J: She had clown shoes. [Clown's nose honks] R: 'How do you feel, Jessica?'
J: She had clown shoes.
J: This woman is NOT going to help me.
J: In any way, with anything.
J: I probably wasn't the best person. R: You weren't ready for therapy.
R: You're like, 'No, I'm done.' J: I don't [inaudible]
J: For me, the best way for me to cope with sadness or with
something traumatic, like - I've been through trauma!
J: Bad stuff happened. Like I had a lung puncture that went wrong.
And for two years I had to lie down, flat on my back,
and I couldn't have any light or sound or touch.
J: So like that's probably quite a traumatic experience. R: Yeah! But
R: I suppose it's kind of what is, in terms of mental health,
a reasonable reaction to a really awful thing.
R: At what point does that become a mental health issue?
R: Or is it just a really awful thing happened to you, while it was happening and a little time afterwards
you were kind of messed up about it.
J: Yeah, and so people - I remember, at the time, they were like, "You've got to talk about it."
"You've got to go and see a doctor now
and like really feel better, and it'll help you to get it out there" - and I'd think "It will not!"
I would just go every week;
I'd cry; I'd feel bad for a few days.
What was the point? I don't feel like--I never felt like anything got resolved.
R: Yeah. J: So I kind of just, mentally,
J: I always - I still do this, mentally - whenever anything bad happens,
I put it in a box, and I put it on a little shelf
in my brain,
and then I just leave it there.
J: Ten to fifteen years later,
I go back, take the little box down, open it up and I'm like,
"Pfft! Why was I upset about that?"
R: Doesn't feel the same? J: 'Cause that's the thing about that kind of
J: the brain chemistry again, like we were saying, 'cause you can set it off.
J: Because obviously everyone has very different ways of, you know--brains are amazing things.
R: They are. J: And we all have really individual brains.
J: And the way that we cope and the way that we deal with stuff is all so different.
R: Mmhm.
R: I think some people think of it as being like an either/or. So it's like you get the drugs or
J: Or you go to therapy. R: you go to some hippy-dippy therapy
and like those are your two options.
R: And I think oftentimes it's a massive combination of the both.
R: That's, I think, an issue for a lot of people, is that you don't have those resources.
R: You can't afford them or your health care doesn't offer them.
R: And so it's quite hard to try and triangulate.
R: And that can be really difficult. J: Yeah, it's really similar to
J: the process of getting diagnosed
R: Mmhm. J; Because you go to all these different departments
J: and they're all like, 'Oh, that's not MY department.'
J: 'That doesn't fit into my box.'
R: So being diagnosed is really interesting, because with mental health disorders.
some of them still carry huge amounts of stigma.
J: Yeah. R: So you really wanna know what's wrong with you,
R: which I think is for whatever kind of health issue you have,
you wanna know because you want to know what's wrong so that you can start to
treat it, or so you can
R: understand that it can't be treated and accept that. J: Yes.
R: But sometimes being told what's wrong with you,
is still awful, because it's a thing that you're told, "Oh, this is..."--
so personality disorders are very known for people to have these reactions, because
oftentimes when you read about it online,
it's like, 'These are awful people. People who have this will not be good friends.'
J: 'These murderers...' R: Yeah, it's like, 'You won't be able to have good relationships with them'
R: 'They don't have enough empathy,' like
all of this kind of stuff, which can be devastating to learn.
R: And then there are some disorders that will last forever
and they are difficult to deal with because they are part of your personality.
R: If you have anxiety, where does that anxiety stop and your normal - "normal " -
worrying begin?
J: I got diagnosed with anxiety
once.
J: For like three months.
J: This is my life. I get diagnosed with something R: Just, you know, you were like, 'I had a phase.'
J: and then some other doctor was like...
R: 'No. not that.' J: 'No.'
J: But literally like I was living in hospital at the time,
and going through a really traumatic experience
So I didn't actually have anxiety, I was just anxious about the fact I was dying.
R: Makes sense. J: So I was like, "I really don't think I have anxiety, I think I'm OK."
J: And then I saw another doctor who was like, 'Nah.'
J: 'Psht, You don't have that.'
And I was like, 'Great...did you guys go to the same school?!'
J: 'How are you people trainer?!'
J: 'What is this?!'
R: Physical health and mental health stuff gets pit against each other a lot. J: Yes.
J: Largely, a lot of that is from doctors,
because there is that fear that they will say, 'Oh, that's mental health.'
[Sarcastically] Uh-huh!
R: Nope. J: Like you're in horrific pain;
J: you'd go to your doctor; you'd try and get it sorted; and they're like, 'Oh, I think it's depression.'
J: Er, I got misdiagnosed
with having a psychosomatic illness.
J: Which, by the way, is where you think something and then your body makes it happen.
J: I had to go and stay in a special ward
that I wasn't allowed to leave.
J: With some other people.
J: Who had some other interesting conditions.
J: And we got locked in at night, as well.
Each room.
J: And then people would run up and down the corridors, screaming.
J: 'Cause psych wards at night. What you gonna do?! R: Which definitely feels like it was helpful
R: for someone with a mental health condition.
R: To be treated like a prisoner
R: and to feel unsafe, what-- J: There was a woman in my room who thought she was a rabbit.
And I was like, 'I don't feel like we have the same thing."'
R: Not quite the same thing. J: I'm really sorry.
J: It was because they had this one new doctor who came in
and he'd just got a PhD in psychosomatic illnesses.
R: That's it. J: So he started diagnosing them in everyone.
J: And there was another girl who had kind of a similar genetic thing
and he was like, "I think her pain is also psychosomatic."
R: What a coincidence. J: Amazing!
J: 'Really?'
J: And we're like, 'We're teenage girls, so, yes, of course
that's what's wrong with us.'
J: Um, and then I managed to get out because she rolled over my hand
in her wheelchair.
J: So I was like, 'Laters!'
R: 'I'm out of here, I have some physical evidence of injury.' J: 'I'm injured! Off to A&E!'
J: Then they were like, 'Oh, yeah, you have that genetic--you have a genetic thing.'
'You weren't faking it.'
J: I was like, 'Oh, really?'
J: What would--what do you think? What's the right way?
J: Money. Money is probably always the best answer.
J: Better funding. R: Yeah, spend money on...
R: All of these kind of problems
that exist are gonna have various levels to them.
R: Way up in the 'How do we change the entire system?' thing is always useful
J: Mmhm. R: Like, 'This is where funding needs to go.'
R: And you need to have communication between different people who might be treating you in different ways.
R: And you need to have these de-stigmatization
campaigns and kind of talking about it,
which I think also links to education.
R: From a very early age, not only are you teaching people
like healthy mental health coping mechanisms and stuff like that,
but you're talking about the kind of mental health conditions people can have
in a way that's just like as if you would talk about the physical conditions people can have.
R: You acknowledge the fact that if you're doing art and you're doing van Gogh,
that he had mental health conditions,
J: Yeah! Talk about it. R: in a way that's like, 'Hey, we're not saying that this is
R: what created his genius, but we're not gonna ignore it, either.'
J: What do you say to your friend who's just been diagnosed with something?
It's like...do I talk about it?
Do I not?
J: And I think that can create quite a wall between people.
R: Talking about suicide with someone -
asking if they've thought about it or asking if it's something that they're concerned about -
is not gonna make them suicidal.
R: I think that it's that talking to someone about the way that they prefer to talk about it
is gonna be useful.
R: So, not assuming, like, 'Well, I read up that everyone loves to talk about it with people they're close to,' or,
'I read that no one wants to talk about it with people they're close to.'
R: If there's someone in your life who you feel like
their mental health may have changed based on how they interact with you and other people,
then just bring it up. Like, have an honest conversation with them.
R: And that doesn't have to be face-to-face.
If you feel like it would be less pressure for them
and less awkward and stuff, and you wanna start it by just sending them a text message.
R: Be very, very honest.
R: 'I wanna be the best support to you that I can be.'
'Please let me know what that is.'
J: And, also, if it is getting to a point where it is quite serious,
it is always good to reach out, as well.
R: Completely. Yep. J: To your GP;
to someone who you trust.
J: There are various helplines that I'm gonna put down below R: Yeah.
J: that you can go to.
J: I think also as a friend, as the partner, as the other half of someone,
if you're helping someone and they're going through a crisis,
whether that's going through trauma based on something else
or through a mental health crisis,
you can also remember it's not just on you, and if you feel like it's getting really serious,
and a bit out of hand,
and you don't feel like you can properly support them,
you can also contact these various helplines
R: Mmhm.
J: Because I think people forget that it's not just on you.
R: Like one of the worst experiences of my life was being with a friend who would not let me call an ambulance
when she'd been self-harming, and I was like, "We need to get you to a hospital."
R: And it was 'I kind of have to not care how much she hates me right now.'
And I had to make that decision in my head
to be like, 'If she never speaks to me again, will this be worth it?'
R: If I'd had a conversation with her beforehand, like, 'If this happens, what do you want me to do?'
It would have been better, because afterwards - by the time we'd got into hospital, she was like
R: "I'm so sorry, I take back everything I was saying." J: Yeah.
J: I think probably the take away message is make sure that everyone's safe.
J: Thank you so much for joining me, Rowan. R: Thanks for having me.
J: This has been a really interesting conversation.
R: I'm glad. J: I have really enjoyed this.
J: If you'd like to see more from Rowan, please go and check out her channel.
J: Thank you so much for joining us.
J: And talk to your friends
about everything.