How I healed after being in hospital for mental health

Madeleine describes how she recovered from being in the hospital for mental health and what helped her do this. 

- Madeleine Chamberlain

I have been in the hospital twice for mental health during manic episodes. Both times it has taken time to heal afterwards to get back to feeling fully myself. Time to heal from being in an episode, and time to heal from being in a hospital under section. I thought I would share what helped me get back to feeling properly in touch with myself and able to talk about what happened when I was unwell.  

Checking in with myself:

I think one of the most important steps I needed to make sure I was doing was listening to myself and how I was feeling. No matter how hard it was to face those emotions, it was essential to move forward. Using meditation apps really helped this. Using visualisation techniques enabled me to properly realise how I was feeling day to day. Using these check-ins to be able to chat with friends about how I was doing helped enormously. Journaling and writing poetry became frequently used tools to explore my thoughts. Being in a hospital can be frightening and confusing, and so unpacking that takes time and patience.  

Talking about my experiences:

Talking about what happened as I became more comfortable massively reduced my feelings of embarrassment and shame. I found that responses from people I shared with were generally positive and understanding. It helped me feel more ‘normal’ and accepted. When I was fresh out of the hospital, I didn’t feel like I could share what being in the hospital was like with anyone. I was too fragile to talk about what happened. Time was a great healer, 3 years on from my last episode I am now very happy to talk about it freely with people I trust.  

Coping with the absence of euphoria:

Despite how detrimental a manic episode can be for everyone involved, coming out of an episode can be hard. Feeling that high can leave me missing that kind of euphoria afterwards. Even though I knew that euphoria came with paranoia and uncontrollable racing thoughts, to name a few, it still left me craving that extremely high emotion. I learnt I needed to become comfortable with a normal range of emotions and to be satisfied with them. Reminding myself of the dark side of mania kept me focused on staying away from that euphoria I craved.  

Learning to let go: 

Part of learning that you have a mental health condition can involve grieving who you used to be pre-diagnosis or symptoms. I found it hard to come to terms with having to make changes to reduce stress. When I was younger I put a lot of pressure on myself academically, and so I had to try to rewire my thinking to put my wellbeing first to avoid burnout and episodes fuelled by stress. It was easy to try to dive back into academics after coming out of the hospital to have something to focus on to distract myself. However, I learnt that it is important to ease back into normalcy rather than rushing to be completely better. Hospital is a very different environment and it can be quite overwhelming going back into the world.  

The biggest healer has really just been time. Putting that distance from me and my episodes helps me be able to look at them with fresh, non-judgemental eyes. It detaches the fading memory of the extreme emotions from the events that happened. I hope I won’t experience an episode again, but if I do, I hope the resilience I have built up will help me heal.

Whether you are looking for support for your own mental health at university or supporting a friend, help is available.

I'm Madeleine (one of the Sub Editors of the blog). I love combining my interest in writing with my passion for reducing the stigma around mental health, and the blog is the perfect place to do this. 

Relief

Madeleine describes the feeling of recovering from poor mental health and the relief it brings.

- Madeleine Chamberlain

Relief pours through my veins 

I feel myself becoming me again 

A thousand colours blended into one 

Fitting together like an imperfect jigsaw  

I think sometimes it takes a blend of grey  

To reach the calm of the night sky  

I feel the shame wash away  

As I rinse my fears with glimmers of hope 

You’re not crazy for feeling the extremes 

Just human

We know that experiencing mental health difficulties at university can feel overwhelming. Explore the support that is available at your university and further.

I'm Madeleine, one of the Sub-Editors of the blog. I thought I would contribute this poem to the blog for National Poetry Month as poetry has helped me sort through many difficult emotions and thoughts. I'm a recent graduate from The University of York with a passion for writing and mental health awareness. 

I was still me

Madeleine describes how it feels to go through a mental health crisis, highlighting the need to treat people in crisis as themselves, with the dignity and respect they deserve.

- Madeleine Chamberlain

I was still me

I was just so engulfed in a world of my own creation

A world where I was alone against the enemies of my own mind

An alternative reality so clear yet so confusing

A hypothetical contradiction

That was my reality

I said regrettable things

Made decisions that only made sense to my train of thought

Any onlooker would have been perplexed

A world of me lost in my own mind

But I still felt it

The fact that it was not true does not negate

The belief

The impact

The trauma

I was still me

I was just buried under the rubble of the volcano

Whether you are looking for support for your own mental health at university or supporting a friend, help is available.

Madeleine is a recent graduate from the University of York and one of the sub-editors of the blog. Having experienced episodes of psychosis due to bipolar disorder, I am passionate about sharing my story to reassure others in similar situations that they are not alone and that there is always a way forward.

Managing stress after being diagnosed with a mental illness

Madeleine shares her thoughts and experiences of dealing with stress at university in the context of being diagnosed with bipolar.

- Madeleine Chamberlain

The theme for this month is stress, something I’m sure every student has had an experience with. Stress is something that is unavoidable in life, but it can be managed with the right tools and approaches. As someone who has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, stress can be a huge precursor to having an episode. Stress can be a scary word in my mind, something which has haunted and frightened me, especially when I have had a recent episode. Stress can build and bubble up in a variety of ways and often I don’t realise I’m stressed until I reach a tipping point.

I think the key for me is taking away the fuel of fear from the equation. Once I remove the fuel, the slow but significant burn of stress can be kept to a manageable level. Fear is understandable when you have experienced an extremely scary episode, it’s like the fear of having a flare-up of a physical illness. You know it can happen because it’s happened before. But the important thing is to ensure this fear of stress taking over doesn’t stop you from living your life the way you want to. Just like physical illnesses, sometimes you have to make adjustments, but that in no way means you can’t follow your dreams and aspirations.

I experienced an episode of mania when completing my dissertation in my final year of university, which made it very difficult to complete my studies. Mania is different for everyone with bipolar, but for me, it involved delusions, paranoia, and psychosis. This was no doubt a very stressful period, with a global pandemic just announced, university deadlines rearing their ugly heads and stressful situations in my personal life. I found that there wasn’t one easy fix to all the stress that was building up, as I was too engulfed in an episode of mania to really get out of it alone. That’s why the key to avoiding this kind of situation for me, as well as many other people, is getting early help. This proved difficult in the pandemic, with long waiting lists and the problem of having to go home from university away from my registered GP. Noticing early warning signs is so helpful. It can avoid a complete stress bubble over, helping me take care of myself as well as signposting those around me to how they can help too.

As someone who has experienced extreme stress and who felt completely lost in an episode of bipolar during their final year of university, I want to highlight to anyone struggling that there is always a way out. A combination of talking to my university to extend my studies, medication and support from my family and friends meant that I could recover in my own time. I could then return to my studies refreshed and ready to take on any challenges that came my way. Often my fears of having stress take over can obstruct my ability to lean into happiness, but I have learnt that not everything is a symptom. It is possible to live with a mental illness, manage stress and experience emotions freely. Knowing I have bipolar just gives me more information on how I can look after myself better, and it does not make me any less capable or worthy. It simply makes me more self-aware and able to cope better with stress having had to learn strategies that work for me and my mental illness. 

Find out more about bipolar disorder and how to support someone.

I'm Madeleine, a recent graduate from the University of York. Having been diagnosed with bipolar, I'm passionate about keeping the conversation about mental health going in order to lessen the stigma of mental illness. I believe that everyone should be made to feel comfortable to share their story if they want to, allowing the potential for others to feel inspired and comforted that they are not alone. In my free time, I enjoy playing the guitar, writing poems and praying that I’ll get a ticket to Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour.

Peter & Psychosis: My Story

Peter shares his experience with psychosis during his time at university.

- Peter Goddard

This blog post is hugely important to me, and I hope it can help others. This subject matter is going to be a difficult one to convey. First and foremost, the stigma around psychosis is large, especially in the current media. So, all I ask dear reader is to keep in mind the context of my breakdown and to keep an open mind. Psychosis is also an underrepresented mental illness; however, strides are being taken to halt this.  I am writing about an experience that shook my whole world, which resulted in me landing in the mental illness abyss for the last three years. 

I wish to convey some details from what I remember about my breakdown. You are under no obligation to continue reading, some of the details I am about to reiterate are quite upsetting and I wish to cause no harm to anyone who might be easily triggered by past trauma. This is my trauma laid bare for everyone to read and hopefully take some lessons from.      

I can't smell any smoke in the flat but this special voice in my head is telling me there is a fire in my university accommodation. The voice told me to get up from bed and escape through the window. I got up and started shaking and pulling the window latch trying to make my escape from the impending inferno. There was no fire. It was all in my mind. I could see the writing on the walls. It was my flatmate trying to communicate with me, or so I thought.  The voices focused on death in retrospect. Mine, my peers, and a smattering of others.

At night, the voices became very prevalent. One night amongst others the voices made me get out of bed, stand by my door and shout "I love you" to the person living across the hall. I must prove my manhood by doing it and ultimately save her life. I thought that she was dying and if I said "I love you" then she would stop killing herself. I hallucinated a gruesome image of her cutting herself very seriously. I did it. I said the words. Much to the confusion of my fellow flatmates, I am sure. This unsuspecting girl, my flatmate, I had fancied for a while at this point.     

I had just finished a phone call from my mother all the while thinking that she was dying in hospital and that this was the last conversation we were ever likely to have with her. I said my heartfelt goodbyes much to the confusion of my mother. I immediately gathered some things together and caught the last bus out of Aber. This was the strangest and saddest I have ever felt in my entire life. I thought that my mum had died. I must clarify that my mum is very safe and very well indeed. 

However, the voices then convinced me on that day that she had died of cancer. I of course took it upon myself to leave University and go home. My head was filled with the most unbelievable sadness, I was physically shaking and did not even realise that I stole a Twix from Tesco Express in Aberystwyth. I was completely unavailable at this moment in time. I took the bus home. When I got back, my dad greeted me on the phone with the words, "are you okay." I was far from okay. I was amid a breakdown. 

I was taken back to Aber and referred to a mental health clinic. I needed a hospital bed apparently, however, I was not paying much attention to that. The voices in my head wanted me to kill the girl I fancied. I refused knowing full well this was bad. I needed a hospital bed. I needed help. I was sectioned under the mental health act. While in hospital in this strange place I tried to escape several times. The voices convinced me that I needed to get out of there, that my life was in danger.

My delusional mind thought I was famous worldwide and assassins were coming to kill me. What I will say now is that mental health nurses who work in these types of environments every day are heroes to me. Early intervention with psychosis is paramount. The patience and resilience they show in the face of sometimes extremely ill people is commendable. They save lives. After that the medication I finally accepted started to help and now over three years down the line I am very much a changed man. The voices used to lacerate my mind constantly and I still hear them from time to time however now they do not have the same impact as before.  

Whether you are looking for support for your own mental health at university or supporting a friend, help is available.

My name is Peter and I graduated from Aberyswyth University in 2020, and I am sharing this story because I feel like we need to break the stigma surrounding Psychosis.    

Writing to Recovery

Elliot writes about how poetry and creative writing can help ease stress and anxiety and offers some tips for anyone wishing to start their own creative writing journey

-Elliot

Parents Evening for Art was always the same: Elliot tries hard but cannot seem to communicate this in her final piece. In fact, the relief was almost audible when I said I would not be taking Art G.C.S.E. I would never have described myself as arty, let alone creative.

So when my therapist suggested writing therapy, I was sceptical. How would keeping a diary help? I started, if only to say ‘I told you so’ when it did not work. And yet, as I wrote, I found myself addressing emotions and events in my life I had ignored or denied for years. I could finally keep track of my mood and review my progress as the months wore on. It also has helped to read my last diary entry just before a therapy session to focus on what has been on my mind that week.

Then I discovered poetry. A new world opened up to me. The brilliant thing about poetry is you do not have to be William Blake for it to help you. It is a snapshot of your thoughts at a particular time. Free verse, haiku, gazhal – it is up to you how you express yourself best. Above all, it is therapeutic to write it out. In addition, you will discover a new community of mental health poets. Ready to inspire and comfort you in equal measure. Anyone is welcome in this community.

As a student, we are used to writing for an academic end. Essays, lab reports, assignments. Rarely, however, do we write for the sake of writing. When we do write with no academic goal or deadline, we can unearth what our subconscious is really thinking. Spare time when you are a student is highly valued, but writing to help with recovery need not take up a lot of time. There are small exercises you can try, which might make a big difference to your mental wellbeing. 

Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Write out a list of emotions you feel. You could even generate a word cloud using an online tool here.
• If you suffer from psychosis, try writing out what the voices are saying
• Write a letter to someone who has caused you distress in your life explaining how they have made you feel (although you do not have to send it!)
• Keep a diary, maybe start by writing one sentence a day of how you feel
• Write a short story based on your experiences
• Compose a poem in whatever form you like – feel free to express yourself!

When my mental health is poor, I feel like my mind is filled with dark clouds. Writing is the rain. It is an active process of reducing the size of the clouds, and getting rid of some of them entirely. No matter whether you are the next Shakespeare or you are not creative at all, I hope you will join me in writing to recovery.