G Ashton

My first experience of anything relating to Mental Illness was when my partner at the time, the father of my children developed what I now know was psychosis, specifically schizophrenia. It was a word  which I didn’t understand, so I set out to educate myself. I researched mental illness using some of the terminology which had been used to me when talking to doctors who were looking after him, in order to get a better understanding. This was a long task as there was no internet back then so I used the local libraries.

In regards to my own lived experience, I noticed differences in my mental health whilst all of this was going on and I was told by a social worker that I may benefit from speaking to a doctor because of mood changes and my view of the world. In order to protect my children and not have them taken away from me, I spoke to him and he gave me some pills and made an appointment for me to see a psychiatrist. He said he felt that I was suffering from depression.

I didn’t know that this was mental illness, I had no concept about what this was, as far as I was concerned it was all because of what was going on in my life. We didn’t have the language back then.

Because of my situation, me and the children ended up in a women's refuge where I continued looking into mental illness and decided to study it so I enrolled on an access course of social studies and social science which gave me some knowledge to get into University where I studied to become a Social Worker specialising in Adult Mental Health. All of which was to help others but really, it was also about me trying to further understand the situation that I found myself in those years previously. I worked as a Mental Health Social Worker in the NHS for 20+ years and saw so many people who didn’t understand or know about mental health across all cultures, races and backgrounds. There are still so many who do not know or understand about Mental Health.