I have always wanted to work in mental health, before I even knew what that meant. I wanted to work with people who were vulnerable and help them through whatever hard time they are going through. This was always my dream, I would be the helper and rescuer but what I didn’t plan on was also being the person who needs help. I also never could have imagined that experience of mental health difficulties would be listed as essential criteria on a job spec for working within the service.
So here I am, I applied for the position, I spoke of my lived experience with mental health and now I work for the HSE on improving mental health services and I am encouraged to use my insight to guide my work. This all worked really well when I was a ‘mental health service user’ in the past tense and my understanding was that I was hired because I was ‘recovered’. And this was true at the time.
When I first started in this position I was mentally in a good place, and had been for a number of years. It was a thing that had happened in my past, I got treatment and I got better. But then, a few months in to my job I started to notice that I felt different, things were not as easy as they could be and life got harder. I ignored it for a little while, pretended I didn’t know what it was and hoped it would pass. It didn’t and after many sleepless nights and too many tears I couldn’t ignore that it was happening again.
I took an annual leave day and I visited my doctor. I am fortunate enough to know what works for me when I am not well and so I made the decision to go back on medication. This is when I became a double agent (they call me double-o depression), or at least that was how I felt. I was working in mental health, using my lived experience as a tool in my work but secretly taking an annual leave day to go to my doctor. I saw it as a massive failure, and I felt like my job depended on me being a person who had used the service and not a person actively using it. The phrase ‘the lunatics are running the asylum’ springs to mind.
Despite my internal conflict, I was doing well at work and I felt like I was making real change but I went in every day and talked about service users as if it was and us and them. I would listen to people’s stories of what they were going through and I would get upset. Colleagues assumed it was empathy and it was partly but it was also because what they were going through was hitting very close to home.
And then there was the day it really hit me. I was at a talk in Le Cheile with a doctor who was speaking about mental health and medication. I was there in a professional capacity but as I listened I realised that I needed this more personally than I had been able to admit. I felt like a fraud. I didn’t walk back to the office with my co-workers that day. I told them I didn’t feel well and I walked alone, as I held back tears (not very well) that I was being so dishonest.
The hard part came next. I had to change. I had to do something different and I had to talk about it. This part was not easy. I spent many nights worrying about how I would do it, what I would say and to whom. I rehearsed these conversations over and over and every time I felt a bit sick. But I knew it was important to speak about this because if I didn’t I was perpetuating the stigma around mental health. The stigma that me and my colleagues work to break down. By hiding this I was telling myself and telling others that it’s not ok to feel like this. But it is ok, it has to be ok because its reality.
In the end, none of my magical well-rehearsed conversations happened. It happened very naturally although it still took a deep breath and a push on my behalf. I was chatting with a co-worker one Friday afternoon and we were discussing mental health (occupational hazard) and I said you know I’ve really not been feeling myself lately and I actually needed to go back on medication. She was really supportive, we talked about it warts and all and I felt so much lighter that weekend. I felt like I had climbed Everest.
Next up was the boss. I was preparing to have supervision and as I reflected on how my work had been the previous month there was one glaring challenge that I couldn’t really ignore. I told my boss how I had been feeling, what I had been doing by way of treatment and how scared I was to tell people in work. I assured her that it wouldn’t affect my work but that this was my real lived experience, that it wasn’t so much in the past and that I wanted to be honest about my journey of recovery or else what was the point.
It was one of the most vulnerable situations I’ve ever been in but thankfully she didn’t hand me my p45. She listened, gave support and I like to think she was thankful that I had told her. I realised then that this is also part of why I was hired. Because I know what it feels like to suffer from mental health problems and the fact that I’m experiencing this again does not make me less of a colleague or less able to do my job. It makes me honest and human and in a strange way it motivates me to know that I am working to improve a service that I also need.
Help information
If you need help please talk to friends, family, a GP, therapist or one of the free confidential helpline services. For a full list of national mental health services see yourmentalhealth.ie.
- Samaritans on their free confidential 24/7 helpline on 116-123, by emailing jo@samaritans.ie
- Pieta House National Suicide Helpline 1800 247 247 or email mary@pieta.ie – (suicide prevention, self-harm, bereavement) or text HELP to 51444 (standard message rates apply)
- Aware 1800 80 48 48 (depression, anxiety)
If living in Ireland you can find accredited therapists in your area here:
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