Joanna’s call for change Mental health fight is shared
IT seems like everybody from Will Young to Ruby Wax has talked about their battles with anxiety and depression.
Catherine Zeta-jones and Stephen Fry have almost made bipolar seem a bonus when viewed from the safe distance of sanity.
But there’s one mental health condition that has such negative press that nobody seems willing to claim the label.
Nobody famous is owning up to an official diagnosis of BPD or Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder, which is the equally unflattering label for the same unfashionable condition.
Is it any wonder then that county primary school teacher Joanna is wary of telling people she has mental illness linked to films such as Fatal Attraction and Single White Female in the public perception.
“Generally when you tell people you have BPD they either have no idea what you are talking about or they think you are some kind of murderer,” said Joanna who lives in Cheltenham.
Joanna has suffered from mental health problems since sixth form and has ongoing struggles with an eating disorder that developed as a teenager.
Although she still managed to go to university and train to become a primary school teacher, there’s nothing borderline about her mental health issues and she struggled to cope with the ups and downs of adult life with rollercoaster emotions.
One of the main symptoms of BPD is extremely sudden mood swings as sufferers yo-yo between intense highs and suicidal thoughts.
Jo’s emotions can switch from happiness to rage within minutes.
“Everything is
100 times more intense so little irritations make me furious,” she says honestly.
“But I never got angry with the children. One of the symptoms of BPD is the lack of self identity so you adopt different roles for different people. I adopted the role of a teacher.
“Because I find it difficult to express anger in a positive way, I did sometimes take things out on work colleagues.”
Jo and has to constantly question her emotions because people with BPD often have a love hate relationships with friends, lovers and family and can be very suspicious of others and their motives.
“I see everything in black and white,” she explained.
“If I’m meeting a friend and they call up to say they will be half hour late I start thinking that they don’t care about me and are abandoning me.”
Apart from the intense mood swings, sufferers can have an overwhelming fear of being alone, an impulse to selfharm or act recklessly, and psychotic symptoms such as hallucinations or delusions.
It is so overwhelming that ten per cent of people with BPD end their own life, and Jo was no exception.
In October 2016 she was admitted to a psychiatric hospital and sectioned for seven months in a bid to stop her harming herself.
“On my second night on the ward, I made a serious attempt on my life,” she explained. “I was found by a nursing assistant and successfully resuscitated by a team of the hospital staff before being rushed to A&E and being placed into a medically induced coma.
“My family were called to come and say their final goodbyes as I wasn’t expected to survive. Miraculously though, I made a full recovery - at least physically.
“However, when I was well enough to return to the psychiatric hospital, I was still determined to end my life and within a few days I was detained under the mental health act for my own safety.”
She says staff were at a loss about how to deal with her dangerous behaviour so she was eventually referred to a BPD treatment centre 100 miles away in Surrey that saved her life.
“That was nine months away from friends and family because no such support was offered locally,” she said.
“But since receiving specialist care, my symptoms have reduced hugely, my quality of life has improved and I am having to make use of local crisis services far less often.”
It was very intense and hard work but she says it has made a “massive difference” to her life and she now lives independently with her labradoodle Masie.
“She has been part of my recovery,” says Jo about her loyal pet.
“When I just want to lie there, she makes me get out of bed. I don’t know what I’d do without her.”
Joanna, who cannot work for the moment, has bravely decided to publicly own the mental health condition that led to her being sectioned so she can fight for more services for people in the same position.
She wants a community-based specialist personality disorders outpatient service which she says would be better for patients in the county and save the NHS money.
She said: “I believe that with a specialist service and specialist clinicians within the community, the need for emergency interventions for those with personality disorder would decrease and so too would unnecessary deaths.”
There’s no medication to cure BPD which can only really be treated through various therapies but Jo says her time in Surrey has taught her how to live with it. Jo has set up a petition calling for a specialist unit in Glouces-
tershire and it already has 952 signatures and is backed by Joy Hibbins of Suicide Crisis.
Dr Lawrence Fielder, clinical lead for Mental Health and Learning Disability Services at NHS Gloucestershire Clinical Commissioning Group, said: “The CCG and its partners are committed to ensuring that Gloucestershire residents with a personality disorder diagnosis can access appropriate services and support. Assessment and diagnostic services are provided by 2gether NHS Foundation Trust; treatment can include medical and psychological therapies alongside support in the community, according to patients’ individual requirements.
“For example, the Cavern in Gloucester is a cafe which offers non-clinical mental health support to people in the evenings when they often need help most, helping them feel less isolated, cope with anxiety and meet new people.
“It is run by trained staff and volunteers who offer a listening ear and lowlevel interventions.
“We are also working closely with Gloucestershire police, providing training which helps them tackle the stigma and misunderstandings associated with personality disorders.
“While we do not currently offer a specialist personality disorder service in Gloucestershire, we are working with partners to explore how such services can best be developed.”
The petition is at change.org/p/ gloucestershire-ccg-provide-a-specialist-personality-disorders-service-ingloucestershire