Mental Health

[Carl]

Personally I am not a fan of Facebook. I have an account just for the sake of it and the reality is I have a massive 8 Facebook contacts of which 5 are family and 3 are friends.

Just very occasionally, and I mean very occasionally, one of my contacts will post something that is very informative, other than something like their hard boiled egg for breakfast was runny. I think you get the gist.

Anyway, a friend of mine posted the following on her Facebook timeline yesterday. I believe this is probably being shared on social media platforms as a mental health awareness campaign, but thought it was worthy of posting it on the forum.

"Some people are quick to label you a bad friend with no clue how broken you are and instead of understanding they just call the friendship quits.

There are many people that have a night out planned, or arrange a coffee with friends and suddenly the 4 walls they inhabit seem the only safe haven because it's the only place they don't have to pretend they are ok, so they cancel.

Or when they are invited out they tell them how terribly sorry they are but there already booked up that weekend, when they are actually just really busy holding it together in their safe box.

And so the first problem starts, all by itself. People stop asking them and the isolation that at first wasn't true becomes their only truth.

Please don't give up on your friends. Ring them, go round, even when they don't want you to. Because they really do, they just don't know how to say it.

I'm going to make a bet, without being pessimistic, that out of my Facebook friends that less than 5 will take the time to put this on their wall to help raise awareness for those who have mental health difficulties. You just have to copy it from my wall and paste it to yours. Who will be my 5 I wonder ?"

I am sure people will have experienced a friend cancelling on them in the past, but I wonder how many would even have considered that the real reason their friend cancelled could possibly be due to mental health issues they were experiencing ?

[Brandyboy]

I agree about Facebook Carl. It's a pain in the neck sometimes and I only joined under duress from my kids and grandchildren and I wish I could pack it in, but now I'm the Admin team of several Facebook groups that are involved the keeping and care of pet birds ... so I can't leave.

My wife and I have both had our fair share of mental illnesses in our families, my wife more so than me.

If I can make one small point here referring to the last paragraph of your friends post on Facebook. Whilst not detracting from the problems of mental health, I do get a lot of posts on my timeline from people with the same mantra. ...And sometimes it feels like emotional blackmail, so I just like it and leave it at that.
'I'm going to make a bet, without being pessimistic, that out of my Facebook friends that less than 5 will take the time to put this on their wall' .....'You just have to copy it from my wall and paste it to yours. Who will be my 5 I wonder ?"

[Carl]

If I can make one small point here referring to the last paragraph of your friends post on Facebook. Whilst not detracting from the problems of mental health, I do get a lot of posts on my timeline from people with the same mantra. ...And sometimes it feels like emotional blackmail, so I just like it and leave it at that.
'I'm going to make a bet, without being pessimistic, that out of my Facebook friends that less than 5 will take the time to put this on their wall' .....'You just have to copy it from my wall and paste it to yours. Who will be my 5 I wonder ?"

I totally agree with your point James. I did share this yesterday on Facebook, and I have just checked and I did exclude that paragraph.

This unfortunately is one of the problems with the "cut and paste" and "share" culture that exists on the internet. People are sometimes to quick to share something, wanting to be a part of something, before not necessarily reading or absorbing fully what they distribute to others.