from Kirstyn
I’ve been thinking a lot, recently, about the acceptable face of mental illness. This began last year when Sinead O’Connor’s mental ill health was splashed all over the news. It was the beginning, ironically, of Mental Health Awareness Week, when the news broke that O’Connor had gone missing after posting a troubling message on Facebook that led many to think she was in danger of taking her own life.
This turn of events was particularly worrying, due to the fact that in November 2015, she wrote, also on Facebook, that she had taken an overdose at an unnamed hotel in Ireland. Thankfully, she was found by police.
These were some of the comments I noted on Twitter at the time, after searching for more news about it:
'Appears that anti British IRA arse-kisser Sinead O'Connor is dead. We can always fucking hope she is. Fenian Cunt ! And her music was shite.'
You don't need to read between the lines to come to the conclusion that O'Connor seems to have been in a sad place for a while. Posts on Facebook, before she went missing, appeared to urge her oldest son (Jake) to take custody of her third son (Shane): 'Jake, kindly go to the court on Tuesday and take custody your brother from Tusla.'
O'Connor acknowledged the fact that she wasn't in a good place, with a post aimed at Shane from a few days before: 'Baby, I've been trying to get you out of care but Tusla are being monsters. I have to back off because they are hurting me so badly. I get unwell again if I go near them.' More recently, in August of this year, she posted another saddening video from a hotel room where she revealed she was experiencing suicidal thoughts. ‘I’ve walked this earth alone for two years now as punishment for being mentally fucking ill and getting angry that no one would fucking take care of me,’ she says in the video. ‘I know that I’m just one of millions and millions of people in the world that suffer like I do that don’t necessarily have the resources that I have.’ Anyone who has even experienced mental health issues, or witnessed a loved one, friend or work colleague hit a low, should recognise O'Connor's public appeals as cries for help, not 'attention seeking'. The nerve, however, of some people to mock someone baring their truth, however upsetting, online. The reaction is one of braying mob delighted as the Christian is fed to the lion; the slack-jawed crowd at a public execution; armchair fuckwads, eyes glazed to the sight of a woman at her wits' end.
Last year, tabloids and gossip sites (as well as publications who ought to know better), as is their wont, turned her situation into a celebrity scandal: The Daily Mail branded her Facebook posts 'epic', while TMZ hyperbolised and ALL-CAPSed their way through their report. This year, TMZ (them again) were so pleased with their ‘exclusive’ account of her situation, but thankfully nobody has been as messed-up as The Telegraph, who, last year, live-blogged the event (no, really), like a bored millennial binge-watching Breaking Bad.
The tendency to claim 'attention-seeker' is not a new trait when it comes to people being candid about their mental health. But then it leads to this, the LA Times claiming 'In recent years, the Irish singer has perhaps become best known for airing her personal struggles publicly and making outlandish pronouncements about other celebrities on social media and elsewhere.' Let’s forget about her 16 albums and nearly 30-year career and reduce her to a parody. Because that’s not harmful at all. Oh, wait. 'She is an attention seeking sociopath with absolutely no regards for her families [sic] embarrassment of having to deal with her public outburst.'
'Surprise surprise she's found safe. If she really wanted to kill herself she'd do it properly. Just attention seeking.'
It’s not like O’Connor has stayed quiet about what it’s like to live with a mental illness. Her thoughts on the subject and are sobering and true; in 2014 she told Sky News: 'When you admit that you are anything that could be mistakenly, or otherwise, perceived as 'mentally ill' you know that you are going to get treated like dirt so you don't go tell anybody and that's why people die.'
We’re supposed to believe that there’s a new culture of care and that people are more open to talk about mental health. But one in four of us will experience a mental illness in our lives. But the culture of silence in the workplace means 15.2m days of sickness are because of stress, anxiety or depression. But the female suicide rate in the UK is at its highest since 2011. What do we learn from this? Nothing we didn’t already know, except the reinforced realisation that the public’s capacity for ugliness is heartbreaking.
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