For #WMHD2017 (World Mental Health Day)

On World Mental Health Day, a suggested commonality for all the grievously hurt

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2017 (19 to 26 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

10 October

On World Mental Health Day (#WMHD2017), yet again, a suggested commonality for all who have been grievously hurt

Amongst those who used to drink, the jocular phrase What's your poison ? had currency - and maybe still has ? (It does not matter whether the term now is getting wasted, lashed, or trashed (or shit-faced or rat-arsed), the explicit recognition is of doing something damaging to cope.)

Whatever may be claimed, we all have that need to cope - even if coping with what life really means consists in avoiding the question, and instead screwing everyone else in business deals so that one can believe in one's worth (in dollars, at any rate...).


In the world of so-called mental-health so-called diagnoses, it can seem as though the differences are thrust in one's face, with some provided for - if provided for at all - in tertiary services, whereas some others are asked to engage with drug and alcohol services, and others still* contend to be seen by secondary services, and not just at the level of their GP (primary mental health).

Yet how illusory is all of this pretend taxonomy, and how much more do we have in common ? :

People have their own language. Why can't we allow people to speak about their difficulties in their own terms?

— John (@SiSaysPSYCHOSIS) October 9, 2017

We can, and we should :

It's only some desire to group people and say that they share something that leads to doing anything different. https://t.co/9638VlAN2O

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 9, 2017

Yet those labelled with bi-polar or schizo-affective disorders should see a commonality with others in this :

Chronic emotional woundedness https://t.co/doE8YrdZfm

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 10, 2017

Chronic Emotional Woundedness* - can we all, labelled with this or that, identify with such words, and see ourselves linked by our experience ?


End-notes :

* If not wanting to run away and never see again the alleged mental-health services that detained and 'treated' them against their will and traumatized them.

** Yes, it does spell ChEW - maybe feeling that we have been chewed up and spat out is a core part of our commonality... ?


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

The advertisement encouraged those with mental-health issues to apply...

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2016 (20 to 27 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

18 February

Working for a Local Mind Association : The advertisement encouraged those with mental-health issues to apply...

Speaking out about our own mental health is courageous & fights stigma @profjamiehh
https://t.co/MP0hlISCXG

— 🌼Jane Street🌼 (@JaneStreetPPAD) February 18, 2017

It was a crazy, over-the-top, three-part interview for a two-day per week job-share with someone doing equivalent hours : a panel interview with three people, joined by three service-users for a role-play (where then then manager, who headed the panel, pretended to be an advocacy client on a psychiatric unit - and said to me (wearing a suit for the day), in this effort for realism as I role-played a mental-health advocate, that Everyone wearing a suit is a cunt), and then a presentation to the service-users...

I happened to comment to my manager on an anti-stigma item, in The Times, about about schizo-affective disorder (maybe she showed it to me).

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) February 18, 2017

I had already been working for at least four years as a full-time advocate - suddenly, which I objected to, the talk was of risk assessments https://t.co/7WIQnLCLTl

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) February 18, 2017

These initiatives in The City - Thank you for having the bravery to be up front with your colleagues about your mental-health difficulty :

I do, earnestly, wish for a different outcome for them, where outing oneself still seems a good thing, later on, but I know human nature, so I fear for those who have already told others (too much)...


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

We close every Thursday afternoon [Emma ~ 1975, Scene Three]

More views of – or before – Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

8 May

With them...

A 150-word story for Mark Brown

[and all that he and so many do for mental-health difficulty]

Whatever it was that they did have, what was almost more important – with them, for their story – had been 'non-events'. Then, spirits of impossibility and inopportunity had been accorded oversight : 


Their not kissing (when, hurriedly, they first might have kissed)... before that (through fright – at what might be ?), choosing not to be there at all (when first they could have met)... even before that, The Fates intervening (to prevent what should have been a less-knowing meeting – just as 'awkward' for being so ?)...


Painting oneself into a corner ? Hardly a lyrical, poetic image (redolent more of Stan and Ollie ?) of them and theirs – yet is it one that speaks of, and into, the implausibility, the notion of the unimaginable, made solid by words, by the voice ?


Made too fleshly solid (for their co-produced impracticability, unreality ?) for the first real event, though booked, to evade the intractability of being a last non-event.


© Belston Night Works 2015



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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)