purpose

Day 739

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What do the following TV serials have in common?

I love Lucy.
Sesame Street.
Seinfeld
Different Strokes
Mad about you
Friends
Will and Grace
Sex and the City

All very popular. All featuring happy, funny, quirky characters. All based in New York City.
It seems NYC is not such a happy place after all.

– At least one in five adult New Yorkers is likely to experience a mental health disorder in any given year.
– 8% of NYC public high school students report attempting suicide.
– Consequences of substance misuse are among the leading causes of premature death in every neighbourhood in New York City
– Each year, 1,800 deaths and upwards of 70,000 emergency room visits among adults aged 18 to 64 can be attributed to alcohol use.
– 73,000 New York City public high school students report feeling sad or hopeless each month
– Approximately 8% of adult New Yorkers experience symptoms of depression each year
– Major depressive disorder is the single greatest source of disability in NYC
– At any given time over half a million adult New Yorkers are estimated to have depression, yet less than 40% report receiving care for it.
– There are $14 billion in estimated annual productivity losses in New York City tied to depression and substance misuse.
– Unintentional drug overdose deaths outnumber both homicide and motor vehicle fatalities.
– The stigma of mental illness has been found to have serious negative effects on hope and an individual’s sense of self-esteem. Stigma also increases the severity of psychiatric symptoms and decreases treatment adherence.

The First lady of NYC, Ms Chirlane McCray recognised this as matter of public health in crisis and launched a bold initiative last year in order to tackle it. It cost nearly a billion dollars. It is called Thrive NYC (http://www1.nyc.gov/assets/home/downloads/pdf/press-releases/2015/thriveNYC_white_paper.pdf). It relies heavily on peer counsellors, who are not mental health professionals but are already entrenched in underserved communities. One of its main objectives is to address the stigma associated with mental illness. The plan is aggressively ambitious, attempting to make life easier for New Yorkers in every community and of every age.

I hear the Mayoral office in London is making plans of a similar nature. Can’t wait to hear more. It’s about time!

Source:

 

Day 737

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“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.
‘So do I,’ said Gandolf, ’and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.’

Tolkein wrote this roughly 80 years ago but it is ageless.

‘It must be really hard talking about Saagar in public meetings. Is it?’
The answer is ‘Yes. It is. Very hard.’
But I have decided to do it with the strong intention of creating awareness, breaking the stigma and making sure that through the lessons learnt from the poor management of his illness, other lives can be saved. I have decided to put this intention out to the universe with the promise that I will do everything I can. It is my belief that the universe is responding and will respond to support this true intention.

I can’t get how he died out of my heart and head,  even tough it happened in 1 second. I sometimes forget to honour who Saagar was and how he lived. He lived for 20 years, 5 monthS and ten days! One of the comments his Head Master made about him was, ‘he spoke to me the same way he spoke to a student 3 years younger than him.’ He treated everyone with respect and light heartedness. He found every opportunity to laugh and make others laugh. He brought out the best in people. I need to learn from him to enjoy my life and relationships, to enrich my life and that of others through every interaction. I must decide to do that too.

Day 735

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Today, I woke up determined to have a ‘normal’ day.
Fed the cats. Helped Si make a breakfast smoothie. Got ready. Gulped the thick fruity drink down and headed for the train station. On the way, I received a text from a junior doctor who thanked me for sharing this blog with her as she thought it was full of very valuable insights. From her own experiences, she knew how reluctant society was to talk about mental illness. She is seriously considering specialising in Psychiatry.

At work I had a capable young trainee working with me. Aside from anaesthesia we talked about the gentrification of Brixton that had gone too far and how doing admin is far more tiring than looking after patients. Then I caught up with some admin.

‘Grassroots’ in Brighton sent an e-mail thanking me for contributing to their World Suicide Prevention Day celebrations : https://youtu.be/aclR9grDt1Q

One of Saagar’s school friends sent me a ‘friend request’ on face book! Yay!!! 🙂

Went to the gym after work. There was a beautiful, slim, tall blonde lady training at the same time as me. I overheard her saying that she did not like to look at herself in the mirror. I couldn’t think of one reason why that might be the case.  Wonder what her story was! After finishing the session had a heart to heart with my trainer who shared his difficult time looking after his father in a hospice for 3 months before he passed away.  We both had tears in our eyes and we gave each other a warm healing hug before saying bye. While having a shower I realised that if I stood absolutely still under the warm shower, it felt like being inside a warm duvet.

On the way home, I slept with my mouth open on the train. Luckily didn’t miss my station or swallow a fly. Got a phone call from R’s Mum. She has not had a good week. R’s inquest is coming up next month and she really wants to talk to me about it. So, we set a date for next week.

Got home and lit a candle for Saagar. Sat down with a cup of tea and heard a knock on the door. There was a lady from Greenpeace. After talking to her for 5 minutes at the door I invited her in. For the next half an hour we had a great conversation. I didn’t mind missing the ‘Archers’. We spoke about many topics close to my heart – air quality on London, lack of proper usage of solar energy in India, people forming strong bonds with technology while loosing their deep connection with nature, writing, campaigning and so on. I am now a proud member of Greenpeace!

Now I am about to cook dinner for Si as he is working late…again.

So, I suppose I did have a ‘normal’ day.

Day 726

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Sarah Fitchett is a neonatal nurse and a lecturer. She is also a mother bereaved through suicide. Like me, she is affiliated with PAPYRUS Prevention of Young Suicide Charity by way of fundraising and awareness raising. This is an e-mail from her:

“I delivered an awareness session to GPs in Birmingham last week and they were desperate for more training.  They were literally asking me,
“What should I say?”
“What if the answer is yes?”
“What am I looking for?
“There are no services available to signpost young people to – CAMHS is so stretched”
“How will I know?”
“How do I cope with losing a patient to suicide?”
I really hope they will come on ASIST.  Such a lot of work is needed. One of our young volunteers, a mental health nurse from Bristol self-funded a place on ASIST because she had no idea how to help someone at risk of suicide, neither did any of her colleagues. Her training hadn’t covered it and there was no training available to her.  A WM police officer self-funded a place on ASIST and used her annual leave to attend because so very much of her role is attending people in crisis.”

This is an article she’s written about the absence of suicide prevention training on the nurse’s curriculum and the stigma associated with suicide within the medical community: http://theconversation.com/even-nurses-arent-immune-to-the-stigma-of-suicide-66008

11th October 2014 was a saturday. I had tickets for the Omid Djalili show for us. Saagar loved stand-up comedy and I thought it might help him. He sat on my right. I watched his responses. He appeared to be under a cloud. He did laugh but his laughter was subdued. At break time I bought him a drink and for some strange reason it felt like a significant happening, like an unforgettable scene in an iconic film. It was the last time I bought him a drink. It was the last time we went for a show together.

Let us do everything we can to save young lives.

omid-djalili-300x199

Thank you Omid for bringing him some happiness. Even if it was short-lived.

But then, everything is temporary, short lived! 

Day 724

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hef

First law of Thermodynamics : Energy can neither be created nor destroyed.

Within my basic understanding of physics, I think of it as: when breaks are applied to a moving car, the kinetic energy from the movement is converted to thermal energy causing the break-pads to heat up. Similarly the turning blades of a wind turbine transform wind (kinetic) energy into electrical energy.

May be each one of us is a field of energy. May be that is why the interaction between two people changes when a third person brings their energy into the equation. May be that is why we like someone for no reason at all and dislike someone for no reason at all. May be our energy can neither be destroyed nor created. So even after someone’s physical form disappears, their energetic form continues to exist. May be it just changes its expression. May be it flows through the people they knew.

Being with Saagar’s friends is comforting for me as I feel his energy in them. It’s the same for them, being with me.

I see our compassion grow. I see us being creative. I see us going out of our way to deepen our understanding of the human condition. I see us wanting to make the world a better place. I see us taking small steps. I see us all constantly loving Saagar and carrying his beautiful energy within us.