from Kirstyn
I was recently asked to speak at Magfest about Marbles, why I started the magazine, and what I wanted to achieve with it. When I stopped feeling like I was going to be sick every time I thought about speaking in front of magazine luminaries, I had a good think and realised there was one particular reason I started it – a conversation I had earlier in the year. It really got things going and sparked in me an ethos I hope I can always have with me. Because everything is hectic and frantic and other words ending with ‘-ic’ right now, my blog today is my Magfest speech, explaining why I started Marbles and why I think it’s important.
I’m Kirstyn, I’m the editor and founder of Marbles magazine. We launched back in May and our next issue is out in October. And I have Borderline Personality Disorder.
Saying that out loud always feels like a dangerous or almost political statement, because I suppose it is. BPD gets a super bad rep, because it’s not understood correctly and, subsequently, it gets portrayed poorly in the media and in the general public. Of course, misunderstanding of mental health issues isn’t limited to BPD. So that’s why I wanted to start Marbles to hear from people living with mental ill health and to let them tell their own stories in their own words, cutting through all the untruths and bullshit that can often surround mental health. I also think a mental health magazine is important these days in particular. There’s this odd thing that’s going on in the mental health community, where there’s almost a backlash starting when it comes to talking about mental health. I’ve seen a lot of articles recently with headlines like ‘Why I’m no longer talking about my mental health’. And there’s sort of a reason for this. People think the conversation around mental health is beginning to stagnate and that the solution to the stigma that surrounds mental health – that we need to talk about it – has reached saturation point. This is the problem - when something is considered zeitgeisty, people start becoming bored with it, and when people become bored with something, interest begins to wane and - suddenly - progress that was being made, in writing, in the media, in the general public’s understanding of mental health, stalls. I was speaking with the Mental Health Foundation earlier in the year and they said something that really lit a fire under me and made me determined to get Marbles out into the wild - they said that mental health charities and mental health writers, and festivals, and activists, and advocates, are being forced to start these quiet little revolutions, all over the country. Not because it’s fun, or because we don’t have anything else to do, but because there’s nothing else to do. The government cut mental health spending by £4.5million this year, despite Teresa May promising to “tackle the stigma” and increase spending by £1billion a year by 2021. People seeking help are being failed. This doesn’t “tackle the stigma”, this doesn’t make people more likely to ask for help, more likely to talk out about their problems. This creates a scared and worried sector of society who aren’t being taken seriously. "Bravery and well-meaningness are great, but they need their little revolutions to become something bigger."
I can’t do anything about this. I’m not claiming to be able to. Nobody can do anything about this except the people in charge. But this is where these tiny revolutions come to the fore. As an activist, or an advocate, or somebody who just wants to help, your role is just that: to keep talking about it. I was listening to a TED Talk by Zeynep Tufekci where she said that activism these days is like climbing Mount Everest with the help of 60 sherpas. What we do is take the fast routes and we don’t replace the benefits of the slower work. What we need to remember is: these things take time. It’s only recently become the case that you can talk about mental health semi-freely, that there are newspaper supplements dedicated to it, or that workplaces are beginning to implement mental health policies. But this is disheartening when you look – through modern day eyes – at other movements, like the civil rights movement, women’s rights or LGBT rights. They are so enduring - and I’m not taking away from the problems that each of these movements still face – but they seem so enduring. Yet the mood in mental health right now is that it’s flavour of the week and that we need to shut up about it.
Can we really stop talking about mental health when one in four people in the UK experience mental health problems each year? Those are the facts. The fact is that people from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic groups are more likely to be diagnosed with mental health problems, but simultaneously more likely to disengage from mainstream mental health services? The fact is that LGBT people are twice as likely as heterosexual people to have suicidal thoughts or make suicide attempts? The fact is that nearly half of all transgender people have attempted suicide? How can this be considered flavour of the month? When it comes to a mental health movement, we need long-lasting communities to be built, we need people to work together to understand each other, to think together collectively, to figure out what political steps we need to take and to develop policies together. Bravery and well-meaningness are great, but they need their little revolutions to become something bigger. I came to Magfest last year with no belief that I could ever create something as great as what I was seeing here. I left super inspired and with an idea. What I realised was that there was a gap in the market, there were people – really great people: in the first issue there’s Laura Waddell and Heather McDaid and interviews with RM Hubbert and Ruby Tandoh - who all have stories to tell and are – I hope – grateful for somewhere to tell them. So with Marbles, we’re trying to be a part of one of these revolutions, to cut through the dangerous narratives that exist about mental health, to work with charities and organisations, and people, to make sure that we don’t stop talking about it, and that people don’t forget that we exist.
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