Dos and Don’ts was nominated for a Mind Mental Health Media Award. Hooray!

Cheers, MHM!

Leading mental health charity Mind today announces the shortlist for this year’s Mental Health Media Awards, sponsored by Comic Relief and Shift.Terry Pratchett, Fiona Phillips and Alastair Campbell are among those competing for the full length television documentary prize, and the BBC and Channel 4 go head to head in many of the categories, with top rated soaps Eastenders and Hollyoaks battling it out for the soaps and continuing TV drama award.

This is the first year the prestigious event, which celebrates the best portrayals of mental distress and reporting of mental health in broadcast media, will be managed by Mind following its merger with Mental Health Media earlier this year.

Radio Drama

• (BBC Radio 4)
• Dos and Don’ts for the Mentally Interesting
  Uplifting factual drama based on 23-year old Seaneen Molloy’s acclaimed blog about learning to live – and love – with bipolar disorder.

Yay!

I am proud, though feel somewhat fraudulent (and I do find it tricky listening because of this) as the play was partly based on a relationship with Rob that is no longer (though it’s no-longer-ness does not negate its loveliness and immensely life changing importance when it was an is.  And he is still my much loved friend).  But!- it’s very very lovely that people consider the play to have raised awareness of mental illness.  I hope it did in some way. I never really know what to say about it because its existence at all is highly surreal! But I was very happy and proud to be involved.

So, well done to the lovely Louise Ramsden, who adapted the play, and Fiona Kelcher, the equally lovely  producer!  (And squeak! Jimmy McGovern is one of the judges!  Quake!)  I have no idea if we’ll win anything but it’s still rather nice to be nominated for something (last prize I ever got a plastic parrot that had been wronged by nature).

Also on the shortlist:

EastEnders (BBC One)
One of EastEnders’ most loved characters, Stacey Branning comes to terms with the prospect that she may have bipolar disorder, the same condition that her mother has had for many years.

Eastenders fans, what do you make of this portrayal?  A spiteful text was sent to Robert about it about the episode in which she was diagnosed. Watch it! I hadn’t watched it in years, but the texter clearly thought such a portrayal would, er, somehow unmask my own monstrosity and his lunacy at being with someone like me.  (You can read Robert’s not-entirely-serious ramblings at The Trap Box and decide who is the real lunatic. The answer is, as usual, neither).

What from I’ve seen, it’s been handled rather well.  The discussion with the psychiatrist raised both a wry smile and inspired a somewhat uncomfortable shifting in the chair from me.  TV drama tends to go a little overboard when trying to convey bipolar disorder.  The characters are usually jumping up and down and waving their arms frantically, or leaden with depressive paralysis.  But Stacey was agitated- that skin crawling, can’t sit still, can’t hold a coherent thought agitation that’s very familiar to me.  And her terror, having seen her mother go through it, and her denial, was quite an important point to get across.  Now she’s descending into psychosis.

I was a little bit pissed that the histrionic, “promiscuous” (I hate that word, I hate what it implies, I don’t believe in it, but it’s what Eastenders were scripting her as) character was the one who became mentally ill, and thought it might have been more effective if someone less stereotypically “mental” became so, but I guess it did illustrate the descent, the gradient, the tremors.

Anyway, what are your thoughts?

I’d like MHM to introduce a web category for outstanding websites and blogs about mental health.  I imagine it would be a somewhat impossible task to be representative, but a cursory look over —————–> shows that there’s more than enough to warrant such a thing.  (And on a side note, how pissed off does the woman on the banner look?  GERROF MY WEBSITE!)

And to say I have bloggers’ block right now is an understatement.  I might join the ranks of the uber-Web2.0 Facepeople and do a video post next time, providing I can somehow brush my hair over my face and talk from beneath the curtains like the Wizard of Oz.  I may be struggling with writing, but christ, I can talk. (Though cannot promise to be coherent or interesting since I have slept not-much of late and I am a tiny bit high and have been admittedly somewhat unstable lately.  I am managing though, just not very good at concentrating for long, or short, periods of time! So, er, probably not a video but I can try).

(P.S:  I got an indefinite award from DLA, which I’m guessing is due to the, well, obvious.  It’s been three years since my diagnosis and here I still am. Anyway, no sooner had I found out the happy news of not having to do the renewal form in two years, I discover that they’re thinking of scrapping the fecking thing! You gits!)

(P.P.S:  The Mentally Interesting community still lives at Ning! Go frolic! Or as best you can do on antipsychotics! Go forth and stumble!)