From mental illness to mental health nurse
I’ve decided to turn my mental health blog into a book — Mental Illness to Mental Health Nurse. I’ll introduce you to some of my patients who have taught me much about love, loss and relationships, to those who’ve made me cry and those who’ve had me laughing uncontrollably.
I’ll share both personal and professional insights into mental illness and recovery, together with helpful tips from my mental health toolbox.
In today’s fast-paced world, the importance of mental health has never been more apparent. The British Medical Association (BMA) report that, since Covid, more people than ever are accessing mental health services. However, mental health services are not being resourced at a fast enough rate to respond to the level of demand. As a result, patients are suffering. Increasingly people have nowhere else to turn in the immediate future and are therefore seeking alternatives like self-help together with lived and professional experiences of mental illness to help them cope.
I’m writing Mental Illness to Mental Health Nurse to
- share my personal and professional experiences with others who might have a mental illness (diagnosed or undiagnosed) or care about someone who does
- explain some of the most common mental health disorders such as anxiety, panic attacks, depression
- provide simple self-help tips gained from my personal and professional experiences of mental illness and mental health
- inspire and assure others that you can overcome adversity, recover from mental illness, and can still live a meaningful life even though you have mental health disorder
- provide both personal and professional insights for those working in the fields of psychiatry and nursing
I’ll also reveal secrets about my days on the wards and in various other mental health settings, explaining good and bad mental health nursing practice, and how I think it can be improved.
A brief overview
Nancy Corrigan’s young life became a nightmare—memories of her father regularly beating her mother paralysed her with fear and dread. Later, childhood sexual abuse tainted her days and haunted her nights. As she escaped one trauma she hurtled headlong into another and she too became the victim of domestic violence. Self-loathing and shame gnawed at her insides and it wasn’t long before mental illness came pounding on her door. It was a nightmare she didn’t believe she’d ever wake up from.
But through sheer determination, and with the help of long-term counselling, she overcame her anxiety, panic attacks, depression and psychotic episodes. Furthermore, she was able to maintain a lucrative part-time career in Human Resources, which fitted in with her sons’ school hours. However, some years down the line, redundancy loomed and almost sent Nancy careering backwards into the abyss. Nevertheless, despite the odds stacked against her, she viewed this as an opportunity to re-evaluate her life. She came to believe that her personal and familial experiences might help others and decided to become a mental health nurse.
Her book is both a personal and professional journey through mental illness, weaving in and out of her own personal struggles and those of her patients. She reveals secrets about her days in various mental health settings. She also shares some fascinating, inspiring, but often distressing, and disturbing insights into mental health nursing. Read raw and honest writing about the things many people don’t know or don’t want to know.
Mental Illness to Mental Health Nurse will contain some of my mental health blog posts together with lots of additional material straight from my personal and nursing diaries, collected over fifteen years.
