Reposting resources in the event the forum is down when people need it. Please take note, in case of further outages. Keep fighting y'all.
Original Depression-GAF Thread
Mental Health |OT| Depression & Co.
This thread is for gaffers and lurkers coping with mental health issues, broadly defined. This thread is for supporting them and discussing these issues. Please have compassion and patience with others and yourselves in this thread.
If you are thinking of hurting yourself, please get help right away! Go to the hospital emergency department - if you are thinking of ending your own life, it is a medical emergency. If you need help figuring out where to go, a suicide hotline can help.
US National Suicide Hotlines: 1-800-SUICIDE (784-2433) or 1-800-273-TALK (8255)
Hotlines by state
Canada Crisis lines by province
UK Samaritans Charity 08457 90 90 90*
Northern Ireland Lifeline: 0808 808 8000
Australia LifeLine 13 11 14
New Zealand Crisis Contacts
Crisis centers by country.
The Trevor Project 866 488 7386
"providing crisis intervention and suicide prevention services to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning youth"
Veterans Crisis Line 1-800-273-8255 PRESS 1
I still see my hands coming off the railing, he said. As he crossed the chord in flight, Baldwin recalls, I instantly realized that everything in my life that Id thought was unfixable was totally fixableexcept for having just jumped.
Places to find help
US
NAMI
UK
SANE
EU
EUFAMI
The Intro to the original Mental Health thread spans 4 posts. It was written over the course of something like 10 days by two primary authors (Prax and I) with the help of around a dozen people. I wont be recreating or updating that here. I suggest you go check it out for all sorts of helpful information about mental health!
In place of a new mega-OP, MH-GAF superstar, Piano, kindly sent me the links to these three posts, which offer his usual fantastic blend of general information and personal experience
Psychological and Psychiatric Treatment
Therapy: Understanding, Insight and Treatment
Inpatient Treatment
Those are all very much worth your time and attention.
If you have questions, personal experience to share, need to vent - have at it!
My one perpetual hope is that well hear more stories of progress and recovery. This can be a sad, relentlessly pessimistic place, as you might imagine. On the one hand, thats OK! The least helpful advice for the mentally ill is to just be more cheery. Its as helpful for a discussion thread as it is for an individual. That is to say, it isn't.
On the other hand, I can say from personal experience that talking about mental illness can eventually wear you down. I try to stay up on what people are saying in the thread but there are definitely days when Im working extra hard to feel OK and I just know I cant take it. Then, every once in a while, someone has something happy to report, a tiny bit of progress, a positive development, kind words for another poster, something funny, anything that lights up just a little bit among all that darkness.
But (and this combines and steals from at least 10 of my favorite things, one slightly more than others ), its easy to look at this thread, your own life, our collective life here on earth as being like the night sky, and think that the darkness has a whole lot more territory than the light.
And it does. It absolutely does.
As you recover from mental illness, you realize youre looking at it wrong, the sky thing.
Once there was only dark. You ask me, the lights winning.
You shine a little light, just by being here and existing. If you ever have a little more to offer - by reaching out, by sharing your victories, by sending a PM to offer help or to talk - please do so.
Drop me a PM any time, friends, old and new! Welcome to the community.
-Bagels
Top image: NASA: "Bright 'Evening Star' Seen from Mars is Earth"