Blurt Foundation: Stamping Out The Stigma, One Word At A Time

My First Awareness of Clinical Depression Looking back I know I was depressed before the age of 18/19… but that was when I first became really aware that I was clinically depressed. A few years before this I remember talking to a friend and they showed me a postcard and asked me what it was. [...]

I am Ellie. I am a student. I am a sister. A daughter. A friend. I have depression. I am not depression. I am a whole person that is not bound up in my illness. This can be hard to distinguish. When you don’t want to go out, when you miss a lecture, all because [...]

When I was younger (think 13/14) I was diagnosed with severe depression. I was manipulated by my boyfriend at the time, thought that everyone in my life hated me and after my friends at my local church turned on me because they didn’t agree with my actions I tried to take my own life. After [...]

My idea of perfect is most probably not your idea of perfect and so perfectionalism is tangible. The first song I can remember from my childhood, is ‘It’s got to be perfect, by Fairground Attraction’. An apt soundtrack to my life and I speak from experience when I say, striving for perfectionalism is a sure-fire [...]

You know when it feels as though the universe is conspiring to get you to do something? Well, that’s how I feel about meditation. It feels as though I can’t talk to anyone, watch any programmes, read any books or do *anything* without meditation popping by to say hello. Meditation is one of those things [...]

Depression, take a good look at these shoes. Why? Because they are going to kick your backside so hard you’ll never want to come back. They may just be a pair of running shoes, but there is something special about them. They are the shoes I’ll be wearing as I train for the Jane Tomlinson [...]

When I was fist diagnosed with depression my GP asked whether I had ever not been depressed, to which I glibly replied: ‘Oh yes, it’s not always been like this.’ ‘Good,’ he said, ‘then we know what we’re aiming for, we know we need to get you back to feeling how you were feeling before.’ [...]

Since being diagnosed with depression two years ago, my MA (master’s degree) photographic practice adopted a self-psychoanalytical approach in an attempt to try and understand more about my depression and how it affects my mental state. The concept of using self-psychoanalysis to build up a case study of my depression, owed its methodological technique to [...]

It doesn’t happen often. But next time anybody asks me how to deal with depression, I’ll tell them to read other people’s writing about their experience of it. I get a lot out of reminding myself that my thoughts and behaviours – as nasty and frightening as they can be – aren’t unique. And that [...]

As I explained in my last blog, I have faced discrimination from employers after I revealed I have clinical depression. This has been a massive problem for me, and has made me ill. I looked to my nearest and dearest to get the love and support that I needed. Actually, before I go any further [...]