As well as helping out skinny poor people in Africa Comic Relief also puts a smile on those in need of help in the UK. Your money this year will go towards homeless people, alcohol and drug abuse, prostitution, domestic violence and helping asylum seekers invade our country. (OK, it's Comic Relief - for once we will be a bit more sensitive, the illegal immigrants the charity intends to help are those escaping their countries from violence and rape issues)
Old people are also given a helping hand on their way to the gates of heaven but whilst they are dodging coffins a percentage of pensioners have to cope with mental illness. The condition doesn't just affect the elderly though, young people can also fall victim to this overlooked disability and this year Comic Relief aims to make us understand more about it.
Just because you may suffer from a mental illness it doesn't mean that you are destined to be a loony for life. In most cases people with the illness are able to work their way back to normality over a period of time, but in some exceptions long term mental conditions can seriously disrupt their life and affect love ones.
It's easier to get our head around this if we split the conditions into two, Neurotic is the most common form which can lead to panic attacks, depression and anxiety. Rarer is Psychotic, this is when the lunatic really come out of the woodwork. These nutters start hallucinating and start hearing, smelling and seeing stuff which isn't there.
In extreme cases a sufferer can have both symptoms.
The term 'mentally ill' can cause misleading in some cases as there is yet no agreed point which can clearly identify standard behavior and that of a mental state. The term is derogatory as it gives the perception that a mentally ill, sorry, somebody with 'a mental health problem' is different to others.
Mental health problems can be traced back to complicated factors which have a mixture of social, biological and psychological elements. Because of such complex around health issues such as these a percentage of professionals are reluctant to diagnose the symptom Causing the illness more negative responses from those who can't understand the disease.
Now, you may be reading all this and thinking it doesn't affect you in the slightest. Amazingly 1 in 4 of us have some kind of mental problem EVERY year, but are able to deal with it.
Crazy eh?
