About Me

Hello!  This is the new version of this page.  The old version is here and is a bit more indepth.

Here is a self important FAQ for you.

First of, this blog is almost solely about mental health, rather than a day to day blog.

Who are you then?

Hello!

Well, the long story is here. Here’s the short story.

I’m Seaneen, a twenty four year old Irish girl, originally from sunny West Belfast in Northern Ireland. I moved to London when I was seventeen, and currently reside in North London with two cats.

I’m 4ft 11″ tall (I gained two inches being measured at the doctor, much to my shock) with “…” insert colour of hair here. I dye it a lot. I’m pale, with cold hands and feet. My style is “charity shop” and if you were waiting for the “chic” then don’t hold your breath. I’m a big old leftie and an atheist, if you don’t mind a bit of pigeonholing.

This is my face:

I like reading, photography, smoking and comedy (such as The Day Today, Brass Eye, A Bit of Fry and Laurie, Saturday Night Fry, Not the Nine O’Clock News, Monty Python, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, Eddie Izzard, Bill Hicks, George Carlin and such).   I like music, too, particularly The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, The Divine Comedy, Vivian Stanshall, Neil Innes, Manic Street Preachers, Kate Bush, PJ Harvey, Suede, Pulp, PiL, XTC, Dory Previn, David Bowie, Mansun and larks. Oh yes.

I have four siblings and only one of them is remotely normal. My dad died of alcoholic liver failure in 2006, so there’s also a lot about alcoholism on this blog.

I am a writer and spend my spare time insulting the cats, smoking, forgetting everything (especially the lyrics to songs, about a decade of my life, the ability to respond to emails, what I said when drunk and people’s names) and drinking tea.  When I’m not writing here you may find me writing at BBC Ouch and One in Four magazine.  This blog was also made into a play for Radio 4, called Dos and Don’t for the Mentally Interesting.

I know your name!  Shouldn’t you be careful in hiding that kind of information?

I get asked this a lot, as I’m very open here about who I am. I am Googleable, if that’s a word, and sometimes I am a bit unnerved that people can find out so much about me before they even know how to pronounce my name.

Although I went through that period of, “Mentally Interesting Over-Identification” when I was first diagnosed (i.e talking about it constantly, reading too much), I generally don’t introduce myself with, “Hey, I’m Seaneen, and I’m manic depressive…” But… I have this blog, which kind of does that for me!

I am open about who I am here.  There are a few reasons for this. The first is that I don’t want to be an anonymous person with manic depression. I want you to understand and know the person behind the illness. I also don’t want to add to the stigma of suffering from mental illness by hiding behind the internet.  I don’t have a little shell protecting me from you.  I want to show people that the stereotypes attached to severe mental illness are simply not true.

I do have a severe mental illness that affects my functioning but I’m also a living, breathing person, with faults, and follies. People with mental illness, like people with any illness, are not a faceless crowd of dribbling fashion disasters. Being mentally ill is not rocking back and forth all day.

Having a mental illness affects an awful lot of my life, but it doesn’t make me more creative or gifted than someone else, nor does it make me more violent or criminal than someone else. People with manic depression are not all geniuses, nor are they all total headcases.  They’re just people.

So, you have manic depression then?

I do! My clinical diagnosis is Bipolar I disorder rapid cycling with psychotic features. This means I have what some would call classic manic depression (I prefer “Manic Depression Gold”), with alternating periods of mania and depression and both of them encompassing psychosis (delusions, hallucinations, paranoia and the like). The rapid cycling part means that I have frequent episodes with little or no gaps in between when I’m “normal” or euthymic. In my case, I tend to “switch” from one episode into another. They’re not always extreme but they are continuous, which is kind of like jumping from one patch of quicksand to another. I’m also a frequenter of the peculiar hell of mixed episodes.

Like a lot of other people with manic depression, I have other psychiatric problems, like the little fish drifting alongside the big blue whale.  In my case, I also suffer from Body Dysmorphic Disorder which is FUN!  I did CBT for about a month but was ironically too depressed for it to continue.

Aaaaaaand finally, I have issoos with social anxiety, bulimia and self harm, although the latter two are largely under control, so hurrah there!

My diagnosis of bipolar disorder came after a period of hospitalisation. Naturally, I didn’t believe them and sought a second, third and forth opinion.  I had been diagnosed with a “mood disorder” when I was 16 and given carbamazepine, but, neither knowing what a mood disorder nor carbamazepine was, I didn’t stick with either.

This entry goes into more detail concerning my treatment.

What led you to being diagnosed with this?

In short, I had a complete psychotic breakdown and was hospitalised. In long, read this.

It wasn’t out of the blue, I’d been ill for years, rather badly so since I was around twelve. I was first diagnosed with the vague term “mood disorder” when I was sixteen.   I didn’t receive the concrete, staggeringly obvious diagnosis of bipolar I disorder until 2006.  I’d been suffering from fairly extreme manic depression since I was twelve.  My teens, they were… interesting.

Like a lot of people who went quite a while before geting help, I was Proper Mad for a good long time, up until my early twenties (very early, about aged 20).  I had very little insight into my mental state and was extremely reluctant to get help.   When I did flirt with the idea, I took medications for about two weeks before never been seen again.   I was massively distrustful of the medical profession.  I thought they wanted to drug me into numbness and HEY!  I’m a writer!  I NEED to  be totally insane!  That old chestnut.

Some people ask me why I take medication- believe me, it was my last resort, not my first.  I had to be dragged screaming.  Literally, because, like many before it, it took a hospitalisation before I accepted help.

I’ve always been a very manic manic depressive.  I suffered through very frequent and very extreme bouts of mania (and dysphoric mania), which nearly always progressed into psychosis.  Consequently, I’ve said and done some downright bizarre things in my life and depending on when you’d met me, you might have dismissed me as a loon.  A charming loon, but a loon nonetheless.  I lost a good ten years to being undiagnosed and without insight.  I don’t remember large chunks of my life.

That is difficult to cope with.   The unsung impact of extreme episodes of illness can be memory loss.  There’s probably a good hundred people out there I should be explaining myself to, if only I could remember what I did!

I’m not a different person to how I’ve ever been.  I’m still, well, a bit odd,  just calmer, with more self awareness and less extreme mania.  The medication is worth it.  For the most part, my medication controls mania.  I do still get mixed episodes and hypomania but haven’t walked down the street declaring that people worship me for a while now.

Now it’s the depressive part of things that is a total pain in the backside.   I’ve also seen more doctors than I even knew existed.   A few of them have been weird too.  All shoulder pads and tiny notebooks and speaking to me in a very slow, studied way.  Hmmmmmm?

You’re being treated, I guess?

Yes, I am. I see a CPN weekly and I take medication. It took me a long time to get here as I was bustled around the incompetent edges of the mental health system for ages. Now I am in good hands and I’m on medication that is slowly curbing the worst excesses of my condition. Having competent medical care makes all the difference; my current CPN is extremely helpful.

I’ve taken a lot of medication and I’m at that crossroads now in deciding whether it’s worth me taking anymore as, so far, two years into treatment, I’m still not stable. I recently had an Effexor induced flipout which landed me in hospital.  I am one of those very lucky manic depressives for whom antidepressants are probably off the menu.  It means I’m fairly screwed when it comes to treating the quite crippling depressive side of my illness.

I’m currently taking Seroquel and seeing what happens, as I’m out of mood stabilisers, and antidepressants are by now the worst idea ever, but in the past few years I’ve taken Lithium, Depakote, Olanzapine, Risperidone, Effexor, Seroxat, Setraline, Zopiclone, Lamictal, Haloperidol (in hospital) and a few others.  Yes, I do rattle when I walk.

How does it affect your life? Why do you let it?

By reading this blog, I hope you come to find the answer.

It affects my life in pretty much every way you can imagine. And, although I sometimes think of the positive aspects of this illness, it’s kind of messed up my life so you won’t find much, “Hurrah for bipolar disorder!” here. It’s wrecked absolute havoc on my relationships, my jobs, my finances, my having somewhere to live and torn through my family and pretty much everybody who cares about me.  Recovering from this, attempting to find a middle ground, as I am trying to do, is taking a long, long time.

It tosses up my energy and makes me very inconsistent. During times of depression, I have little energy, sleep too much, suffer from anxiety and panic become paranoid about leaving my flat and withdraw socially. In my most severe episodes of depression, I have become psychotic and suicidal. During hypomanic, manic and mixed episodes, the paranoia is still there, but coupled with mad irritation, anger, rage, grandiosity, aggression, a total lack of sleep and inhibition. During those times I have far too much energy and nobody can really follow me so I am hell on wheels to be around. Again, in my worst episodes I’ve ended up suffering from psychotic stuff.

My memory is utter toss and I kind of put this down to manic depression. I don’t have solid memory of any of my manic or severely depressed episodes. Week to week, with fluctuating moods, my memory is pretty bad, too. I don’t recall verbal things very well. I can’t properly recall either the good or the bad, and I have to write down things a few times and keep them in prominent places or I will forget them.

I must stress, though, that although I do suffer from mania, increasingly, it’s not the much famed euphoric kind. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I have believed I’m famous, penned novels and attempted to seduce half of Britain in the throes of euphoric mania but in general, my upswings are bitter and peppered with irritability dysphoric manias. They frequently leave me more suicidal than even my most severe depressions. So, not fun.

I have rapid cycling, which is irritating.  Part of my personality is that I’m mercurcial and moody but there’s moods and there’s moods.

I think of mental illness as akin to a physical one; it is something that I have, rather than something that I am. Nothing happened to me to make me have manic depression, likewise, I did not do anything wrong to get manic depression. It isn’t a case of “letting it” affect me; mental illness is like any other type of illness, its effects tend to be uninfluenced by your own desires. If you had cancer, you could not stop its ravages by whispering, “Stop” to it. Only medical treatment will do that.

(You just compared mental illness to cancer! How could you? Well, it may be a crass comparison, but if you consider the mortality rate of mental illness- for example, 20% of people with manic depression commit suicide- you’ll see that it’s not all that crass).

Many mental illnesses, manic depression included, are thought to be biological in nature. Episodes can be influenced by external circumstances but can also be caused by nothing.

One cannot switch into an alternative mindset by wishing alone. It’s an illness that will affect your life and if it’s messing your life up, you need to treat it, in whichever way; with medication, therapy or whichover other methods you want to try, such as meditation.

However, I do try to help myself. I take my medication (most of the time), I try to get sleep, I eat healthily and I try to avoid stress as much as possible. I’ve swotted up on mental health and know more about manic depression than I really should. I try to stop episodes before they become unmanageable and my boyfriend helps in that sense.

My life isn’t awful. I have good friends, I love my family, I have an extremely smashing boyfriend. Living with this illness is very hard, though, so I won’t bullshit you there.  I’m not “mad”, however.  I’m sensible, eccentric, shy, creative, clumsy, a bit dense sometimes, and restless.  Just mentally ill, too.  It’s rubbish sometimes, but there it is!

How does your medication affect you?

Let’s put it this way; I don’t have many late nights. I take an antipsychotic and until recently was also taking an antidepressant and a mood stabiliser.  I can become tired very easily because of it. I am useless in the morning and covered in bruises from banging into stuff.

They affect my concentration quite often. I feel nauseous for a few hours after I’ve taken them.   I have tremors, i.e shaking like a twig in the wind.  In the morning my speech is slurred.  I can also be, let’s say, uninhibited?  after taking medication.  It’s a good thing I live alone as I have often been caught walking around naked and drugged in the past.

The biggest and most irritating side effect from my medication was weight gain.  As I also suffer from BDD and an eating disorder, this was bordering on intolerable, and I gained three stone in as many months and weighed almost 13 stone.  A lot of people will find that side effect particularly hard; it is the medication, it affects your appetite and your blood sugar.  I did lose the weight and now weigh a little above 8 stone.  It’s not impossible, so stick with it if you can and don’t lose heart.

I also can’t drink, so I’m a teetotaller. Not a very conducive combination for a killer social life, then.

I think I/a loved one has manic depression/I’ve just been diagnosed. Can you help?

All I can say is take any concerns you have to a doctor. I can give advice regarding that, but in no way can I diagnose you or tell you if you do or do not have manic depression. Manic depression is a spectrum illness and it varies greatly in severity and only a trained professional can diagnose it.

One thing I will point out, though, is that having “up” and “down” periods in life is normal. It is when these periods severely affect your life or become suicidal/psychotic that you have a problem. Simply put, mental illness is normal moods and emotions taken to extremes. If sometimes you feel energised and awesome, and sometimes you feel like crap and it isn’t interfering with your life, don’t worry.

If you are diagnosed…

Firstly, doctors are fallible, and get a second opinion if you want.

Being diagnosed with a mental illness can feel like a slap in the face.  Taken from the most literal point of view, it is, “There is something wrong with your mind”.  Our minds are us, so that can be a staggeringly hurtful insult.  Who wants to be ill?  Okay, it’s good being different, but ill?

There is also the age-old terror of the treatment taking away who you are.  And I’m not going to lie to you- it does affect you.  In the early stages of treatment- especially if you’ve been advised, and agree to, going down the medication route- you’ll probably have to take a few different medications before you find out that helps.  The side effects and the just-effects can be really hard to cope with.  Initially, most psychiatric medications will either slow you down a lot or speed you up a lot.  They can affect your cognitive functioning.  If you take antipsychotics, prepare to sleep.  And if you’re like me and used to being a fast talking, restless spinning top, it’s galling to be told to slow down.

The slurry-speeched slow/fastness of the medications does become less intense as time goes on and you find an equilibrium.  If you don’t- and it is notoriously difficult- then it’s time to adjust doses or change medications.  But do give them a chance.  They’re not going to change who you are.  And if you find that they are, then it is completely your decision whether or not to stay on medications.  But be careful, either way.

It’s up to you whether or not you want to tell anyone, but I’d at least tell your nearest and dearest.  They might be relieved, they might be confused.  Either way, it’s their responsibility how they feel, and not yours.

If you need to take time off work or school, it may be best to be honest.  In the immediate aftermath of diagnosis, you might have a lot of appointments to go to, just to sort stuff out (psychiatrists, therapists, psychiatric nurses or social workers, for example).  However, I completely understand the desire not to tell them, and the fact that there is a massive amount of discrimination against mental illness doesn’t help.  You are covered by the Disability Discrimination Act.  See Rethink’s website for help.

And I’d advise you to read up on it and ask others to do the same.  The links on the right there are a good place to start.  Knowledge is power, although try not to start printing out everything you find and pasting it on your walls then praying to it night after night.  That’s a bit weird.

So, this blog then. Whyfor? Aren’t there enough mental health blogs out there?

There are loads, and some are very good. I thought I’d add my voice to the chorus.  Who doesn’t want a Northern Irish foghorn, eh?

I started this blog in 2007, initially to chart my progress. I’m a writer so this is a good dump for my scribblings on the topic. I keep this blog to serve as a link to myself and my illness, to make sense of it all. I keep it up because some people find it helpful. I also find mental health fascinating and never get bored writing about it. My readers and commenters are cool people, so I’m glad I started this blog.

So, that’s me, then, nice to meet you!