To mark day 3 of invisible illness awareness week, I thought I would talk about mental health.

Something which I do not think is hard to believe is that around half of people with CFS/ME develop depression in the months or years after their illness starts. Whilst CFS/ME is not a psychiatric illness, it appears to be a physical illness that leads to depression.

The facts and figures around Mental Health in the UK are alarming.

• 1 in 4 people will experience some kind of mental health problem in the course of a year
• Mixed anxiety and depression is the most common mental disorder in Britain
• Women are more likely to have been treated for a mental health problem than men
• About 10% of children have a mental health problem at any one time
• Depression affects 1 in 5 older people
• Suicides rates show that British men are three times as likely to die by suicide than British women
• Self-harm statistics for the UK show one of the highest rates in Europe: 400 per 100,000 population
• Only 1 in 10 prisoners has no mental disorder

With mental health problems being so wide spread accounting for around 23% of the disease burden in England; it is so surprising that there is still such massive stigma around mental illness, with friends and family often thinking suffers can just shrug it off.

I recently came across this video made by the world health organisation and I thought it was really informative and defiantly worth a watch. It goes through how to support those with a mental illness in particular depression and how to help them get help, but also ways in which the carer can help themselves as well 🙂