Hello.
I’m Christine and I live in Brighton and Hove and I’m bipolar.
I was diagnosed, not until I was in my forties and I guess, I’m here today because I wanted
to talk about the importance of having LGBTQ, specific services for people with mental health
issues.
I feel that people with mental health face a lot of issues, face a lot of discrimination
but I find that when you’re gay and you have mental health issues, it’s like a double
attack, sometimes.
People can be really off with you because you’re gay and then they’re even more
off with you because you’ve got a mental health issue and the thing you need most when
you’ve got a mental health issue is support and compassion and understanding from people.
So, I’m going to talk more about my own personal story.
I met someone, I fell in love and I had a wife for 18 years and, about 11 years into
our marriage and our relationship, she was diagnosed with cancer and her name was Chrissy
and Chrissy was my rock.
And Chrissy was what…
She kept me quite stable.
So, while we were married, it was very rare that I had any kind of an episode.
There was something about our relationship that kept me quite stable and when she was
diagnosed with cancer, and we were told that she was going to die within weeks, I had a
very, very bad episode.
I did kind of manage to keep it together for about a year, to help support her but then,
I did really have an incredibly bad episode and that…
In the form of a mania, and that I fixated on an idea that if I was dead, or if I was
away from her, that she would live.
So, I left and I tried to commit suicide and I happened to mention it to a friend who said
that maybe I should tell my GP that this is where my mind was.
So, I spoke to my GP about it and my GP was very dismissive of what was going on in my
life, at that moment wouldn’t recognise that I was in a married relationship.
Marriage wasn’t yet legal in this country.
When we moved to Brighton, not long after this, somebody, a friend of ours down here,
who I confided in that, again, I’d been trying to kill myself, said that, maybe you
should talk to these people at this charity called MindOut, just to see if maybe they
can help.
And my life completely changed.
I was given an advocate and his name was Jason and he came to a doctor’s appointment with
me and immediately, the doctor completely changed and suddenly, wanted to help me.
And suddenly, listened to me and sent me for an evaluation and this is how my bipolar diagnosis
came out.
Through the charity, they…
Not only the advocacy service, but I was in a…
Not put in but I wanted to be in.
I was able to join their Out of the Blue group, which is for people with mental health issues
and suicidal distress.
And that just taught me loads and loads of ways of coping so that, for the next year
and a half, I was able to support my wife and be there for her, as we went through that
trauma.
Unfortunately, I lost my wife but I continue to use the LGBTQ mental health services that
we have in Brighton and Hove, that is MindOut and seek out other services like that for
continued support.
I don’t know.
I just really want people to know that I feel very blessed to live in the city that I do
because it offers that but I think more cities need to get involved in this kind of thing.
They say one in four people suffer mental health issue at some point in their life and
I know the statistics for gay people are even higher and I know the statistics for gay people,
attempting suicide are way higher than heterosexual people.
So, if you are gay and you’re suffering with a mental health issue, that things tend
to be a lot darker and we need more support because of the prejudice that we suffer already,
and the isolation.
So, I hope this helps people.