Our Community Correspondent Angela McCrimmon added her voice to the launch of Scotland’s Mental Health Partnership’s manifesto launch this week.
Angela was featured on BBC news, sharing how important finding her voice has been in understanding and managing her own mental health. She was supporting the launch of the “Promote, Prevent, Provide” manifesto, which calls for sweeping changes to mental health services ahead of the Scottish elections.
Angela said:
“Before I’d kept quiet because when you do try and speak up you get put down, so I was determined I was going to start speaking up, and I’ve kept my promise,” Angela said.
“Everyone has mental health and it’s important to be able to pay attention to it before there’s a problem.
“If people around me had a better understanding it would have meant the fact I was struggling could have been identified sooner. When you look back, there were a lot of red flags.”
She added: “For me, if they had prevented the crisis rather than waited for it, it would have avoided so much agony for everyone. For years I needed someone to catch me so I wouldn’t get to crisis. Where I would have otherwise have needed one service, I needed six instead.
“The longer it goes on for you, the more you can lose the belief in yourself and don’t believe recovery is possible.
“The key point, though, was that I didn’t have to be ill all the time, and that I’m not the illness.”
Mind Waves worked with the Scottish Mental Health Partnership to produce a British Sign Language version of the manifesto.
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