A happy relationship, a good academic record, a great network of family and friends – these are the things that make most people you meet think “she’s got a good life”. In my final year of university, those were also the things that became the focus of an internal battle that I wasn’t expecting.
I suddenly started questioning things. What if my boyfriend leaves me? What if a family member I love passes away? What if I have a brain tumour I don’t know about? About six months later, I was diagnosed with general anxiety disorder (GAD) and depression. For some people, a mental health diagnosis can be a devastating blow, but for me it was something of a relief. What was happening to me had a name, and luckily it also had a treatment. Eventually, I came to realise that GAD also had something else: a community.
After my diagnosis, I’d spent a lot of time feeling misunderstood and alone. My thoughts isolated me from others, stopped me from enjoying social situations and became the enemy of my relationships. I’d had countless conversations with friends, family and partners that ended in frustration on both of our parts; their reassurances didn’t work, and I was fed up of hearing “have you tried relaxing?”
One day I met with a friend for coffee, and inevitably some of the unfounded anxieties I was having about my relationship came up. Instead of the usual response, “I’m sure that won’t happen, don’t worry about it”, I was met with an answer so refreshing it was like a verbal slap around the face: “I totally get what you mean; I think that all the time too.” Those few words brought more relief than all of the conversations I’d previously had about my anxiety put together.
I wanted that feeling again. I turned to Google (naturally) to look for a support group, but found very little that appealed, and mostly they weren’t local. So I decided to start one myself. The paradox of mental illness is that even though I felt alone, there were so many people around me going through the same thing, but I had to reach out and find them. I think Let’s Go Mental (LGM) was born at that very moment.
To make this support group happen, I had to find some other people who had experienced mental health issues and convince them to actually come. The quickest way to reach a lot of people in 2013? With a Facebook post. It’s been discussed enough by now that everyone uses the internet to present their “best” side, but I can tell you that earnestly presenting reality is a lot scarier.
I wrote to about 800 Facebook friends saying I’d experienced depression and anxiety, and was going to set up a support group for people who’d been through something similar and wanted to hang out. My first thought? How embarrassing it would be if the status didn’t get any likes. But the response was overwhelming and pretty inspiring.
I wanted LGM to be different than the depictions of support groups I’d seen on episodes of BBC crime dramas. No sitting around in a circle of chairs in a starkly lit room with a few bourbons and some weak tea. I wanted to recreate the ease of that conversation I’d had over coffee with a friend. Where is the best place to make British people feel at ease? The pub, of course. That’s how it happened, the premise of the group is really that simple. We go to the pub, we hang out and have a drink, and we talk about mental health.
It’s informal, it’s relaxed, and it’s geared towards building a group of friends who are just that – friends. Like any other group of friends we talk about House of Cards, Tinder and whether we should have taken that last uber. But when we do want to talk about mental health, we know we’re talking to someone who’ll hear us and say that magic, face-slapping phrase: “I know exactly what you mean.”
So what are you waiting for? Why not go out and make someone else’s day by starting a conversation about how they’re feeling. Support groups don’t have to be huge, they don’t have to be awkward, and they don’t have to be complicated to run or to organise. Talking about this stuff is hard, so let’s try and make it that little bit easier.