This week I read a very brave article by Bryony Gordon in the Sunday Telegraph. She has written a new book, a very open and honest account of her experiences with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, starting when she was only a young teenager.
Bryony is many things. She is a wife to Harry, mum to Edie, a daughter, a sister, a journalist, she is funny and brave and refreshingly honest. There arn’t that many people around who can cope being just that honest, but Bryony can. And I take my hat off to her.
Writing her new book, has opened up channels of conversation again across the country. Whether it is among doctors and health professionals, nodding their heads wisely, agreeing that we don’t have enough resources to help young people with mental health issues. Maybe it is between Politicians who are eager to shift the blame from one side to another. But I hope it can be used to get the teenagers and children to talk.
Mental health issues are universal, across the board. Creed, culture, colour, race, location, money – none of that has any sway over who is more afflicted with mental health issues. Everyone and anyone can be affected, but, and their is a but – we do not have the resources to help everyone that needs it; when they need it, and in the high enough doses that they need it.
Bryony notes in the article, that it was her own mum who left a cutting from a paper out for her to read. That started the conversation. But when they went to see the doctor he told them to come back in three weeks, or if it got worse. Three weeks was too long to wait for help. There was a brilliantly written memory of Bryony and her mum, sitting in the car and them both knowing that three weeks was too far away to be of help. Right now was the scary part. Bryony’s mum marched right back into the doctors and said it had got worse already, and they needed help now!
But Bryony has brought this back out into to the open again. And it is good to talk. It is scary to share, and so publicly as Bryony has done, but hopefully with either the book, or the article, it will get those that really need to, talking about it.
Susannah Branson 