This Mental Health Awareness Week 2024, the theme is Mental Health Movement. In this article, MQ staff member Juliette Burton (pictured above) explains why her lived experience of mental health has led her to her movement: running to raise funds for mental health research and for what is so important to her.
Research is key
The movement begins with hope. My mental illnesses led me to desperate times. But research gives me hope, so I want to contribute and raise money for research. I hope to do that with my own movement.
I have been called crazy many times. Some might fear mental illness because it is the tip of the spear of what it means to be human. People are afraid of what they don’t understand. Researchers are helping us understand it, so we won’t have to be afraid anymore. Much of my life I have fought to survive. I want us all to prosper. Research is key.
Research has given me a greater understanding of why I struggle more than others: I am hypermobile and am being diagnosed with neurodivergence, both of which research shows have clear links to the likelihood of developing mental health conditions. Environmental factors, genetic factors, and childhood experiences make me more likely to experience mental distress. Before this research, when I was a child, I didn’t know any of this. I just felt like I was “wrong” or “different” and that the world wasn’t made for me.
“Sadly, another thing I’ve learned from research is that people with serious mental illness, like me, are more likely to die 10 to 20 years earlier.”
The only way the world will open up for people like me is if the world changes. And research is the only way for that to happen.
Lived experience
I have experienced mental health issues since I was 7 or 8 years old. This developed into debilitating mental health conditions diagnosed in my teens and 20s, including eating disorders such as anorexia, bulimia, binge eating disorder, as well as anxiety disorder, depression, body disorders. dysmorphic disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, dissociative identity disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, complex post-traumatic stress disorder and I have also experienced psychotic hallucinations.
I was committed under the mental health act when I was 17 because I was a month away from dying of anorexia. A year later I became suicidal due to binge eating disorder. I have been hospitalized 5 times for mental illness.
Today, the labels that used to define me are not my mental health conditions.
I am a comedian and use humor to break down barriers and increase understanding. If we laugh together, we feel less alone, and I never want anyone to feel as alone as the stigma surrounding mental health conditions has made me feel.
I am also a writer. Writing helps me communicate with others and with myself. It helps me constantly learn, explore and create, it gives strength to my voice and my experiences. And I’ve learned that both writing and performing comedy helps others too.
Mental health is a movement
Movement helps my mental health. It is one tool in the mental wellbeing management toolkit that I can use to give myself a better chance of managing my mental health. Being active calms my mind. The mind and body are interconnected, therefore mental health is physical health. It is a two-way system. My body informs my mind and my mind informs my body. And many times it is my mind that rules the most. Very often it is mind over physical matter.
Being active, whether it’s dancing, walking, running or anything else, helps me connect with me. I often find being in my body overwhelming. Spending time strengthening it, challenging it, working with it helps me break it down and rebuild both my muscles and my thoughts and feelings. Just like when I go on stage, something changes. An energy changes. Although it is a practice. Just like laughter, the more I do it, the more empowered I feel.
Movement strengthens me, as does performing a comedy. For much of my life I have felt powerless, I now know that when you empower me, you inspire others to empower themselves.
Empowering movements
Earlier this year, I ran the London Landmarks Half Marathon, my first half marathon, to raise money for MQ Mental Health Research. The photo above was taken after I finished the race, raising over £400 for the charity.
I wanted to apply for mental health research because I long for a mentally healthier future for everyone. I don’t want others to follow the same path as me. I don’t want others to have to struggle like I have and still do. Research gives us the key to real change, awareness is not enough.
Research gives us the information we need to change treatments, interventions, preventions and policies to create a healthier society where someone like me can thrive and not be excluded. Strengthening others strengthens ourselves. And since we all have mental health, strengthening those who struggle more than others will mean we are strengthening ourselves.
“Addressing the needs of those who have different needs does not take anything away from anyone, but rather adds to our experience. Elevating others does not tear us down.“
Why should people like me be left behind? Millions of people around the world are affected by mental illness. We all have mental health just like we all have physical health. Some of us develop mental illnesses just as others develop physical illnesses. Some of us, like me, have conditions that we learn to live with for the rest of our lives.
A few years ago I had a nervous breakdown. I don’t like that word but it’s the best word I can find. Without crisis we would not have progress. During that time, being active seemed impossible, physically impossible. But being active and moving doesn’t necessarily mean physically. We can start a movement creatively, philosophically and politically. My friends started the movement within me, helping me, listening to me, being with me. Finally, movement and the joy of moving, the joy of living, were revealed again.
Moving differently
When I’m in a depressive moment, when clinical depression is changing the way I think, feel, and behave, part of the depressive cycle I go through includes a period of time where I have to work hard to imagine small, incremental improvements. . Believe that these achievements, no matter how small, are possible. And that’s not even about making small incremental improvements, I just need to be able to take that weight off my shoulders. I need to train my imagination to believe something like “tomorrow I will be able to go for a walk.” That’s my goal, which is then based on one day being able to go for a walk and maybe do it again a few days later when I’m more confident.
Movement can mean many things. We have these deeper muscles that move our lungs and diaphragm, that none of us see. They move to help us breathe. Imagination is part of the movement. You can’t move unless you’ve imagined it first. Like you can’t do anything as a human without imagining it first. Without conceptualizing it, how do we think it is possible? And again, mental health is not a belief system. This practice of movement does require that extension of what we imagine.
Breathing is movement, moving air in and out of the body is a form of movement. And that’s where all the mental wellness exercises and practices that we have, where all physical activity begins, is breathing. Whether you’re a runner, weightlifter, or occasional walker, you can’t do any of this without the movement of your breath.
Many people may not have long periods of time to sit still outdoors, meditate, breathe, or enjoy nature. Many people may feel like they don’t have time to do it. But even the simple act of being in an office and turning in a swivel chair, or taking off our shoes and wiggling our toes on the floor, or being attentive to the movement of our fingers as we type on the keyboard, all of this is still movement. . And with that keyboard, ideas move between our fingers and reach the world. It’s a pretty incredible move that I can be grateful for as I write this now.
Freedom from stigma
I don’t feel ashamed because mental health problems are part of being human. Mental illnesses have existed as long as society has existed. It is in the great works of literature, it is in religious texts, it is in our art, it is in our history. The shame is not mine, the shame comes from stigma and misunderstanding. And with shame comes isolation, and isolation is deadly.
Only through research can we find out exactly why for some people, like me, life is so much more difficult and what can be done to help us. Is it our genetics, our environment, the society we live in that need to change to help us?
“My mental illnesses are not monsters that I am fighting, but rather survival techniques that my mind developed to manage the overwhelming thoughts and feelings that arise from living in our challenging world.“
My recovery journey continues. I still face challenges every day with my mental health. Only through research will people like me, who suffer from mental illness, have the opportunity to live long, incredible lives.
