The Flack Effect

A year has passed since the untimely death of one of the most popular, beautiful and loved TV presenters of this generation. 365 days where we had an opportunity to change how we treat others, an opportunity for the media to change how they report celebrity culture and an opportunity for mental health care in the UK to improve.

Im saddened to say, we've seen little or no change in these 3 key areas and in some cases, its gotten worse.

The media still report trash, they still focus on the mistakes people make, they still publish absolute lies about people and nobody holds them accountable. Under the guise of a free press, they can write WHAT they want about WHO they want and they can do it WHEN they want... without any real reason WHY!

Mental health care in the UK has definitely gotten worse in various ways. The number of available appointments has reduced due to the pandemic, the number of patients on waiting lists has increased, thus waiting times - the most important aspect - have substantially increased. Patients are waiting up to TWO years for suitable treatment... two years!!!

Being one of those who waited a long time, I still wouldn't say I have a suitable treatment plan and I don't really have much of an idea of 'what comes next?'.

Thats 2 years, 24 months, 730 days where our friends, families and loved ones are contemplating - or attempting - suicide, self harming, starving themselves or purging. That absolutely petrifies me, not just as a person with mental illness but as a human.

The final of those points is arguably the most important. I wrote in a post before that we need to change how we treat people, that we need to address mental health genuinely rather than for likes or comments on social media.

I saw a huge number of people post about Caroline Flack when she died, all of whom shared a poignant and beautiful message - "In a world where you can be anything, be kind". To anyone suffering in silence, these words have meaning, they reverberate within us, they sit some where deep inside us and we just think YES!!!

What has followed those beautiful words has made me sad, upset, even angry in some ways... everyone has gone back to normal. People who shout about being advocates for mental health have gone back to talking behind peoples backs, degrading them on social media, belittling them in the workplace. Nothing has changed.

It just makes me sad, sad that nothing has improved, in a life where we've got 70-80 years if we're lucky, nothing has changed in one of those years. The only people who truly felt the message of Caroline Flack's death were the others like her - the ones who live in pain every day, the ones who sit at home, alone, in the dark, waiting, thinking...

If you're one of those people... help IS there, not always professionally but in a peer support capacity, its there. Whether I know you, whether we've never met, my door is open.

For those of you who don't struggle every day, who post on social media about mental health and are sitting reading this, take a moment, just a moment and think to yourself honestly, "do i help or do i make things worse?".

Its never too late to change how you treat people.

In a world where you can be anything... be kind!