Mental health

“I began a hunger strike until I was left like a withered bag of bones. My body stopped menstruating, it grew covered in fine hair and I began to look like a wolf cub.”

“I finished primary school and at fourteen I tried to take my own life with pills, but the attempt failed and I lived on.”

“I have tattooed my body with pain. There is not a centimetre of my skin that is not covered by some scar.”

“If it was a struggle to get the referral to have her tonsils out, now imagine another battle with the health insurer just to be told what was wrong with her. She was given an appointment with a psychologist, who then referred her to a psychiatrist. He prescribed some pills and some therapy. He told her that if she followed the treatment properly she would get better. But she neither took the pills nor got better. She got worse.”

“What struck me most was a very young man of 23, as beautiful as a magazine model, entirely schizophrenic. They would take him out into the garden on sunny mornings, with his straitjacket on over his pyjamas. He looked so fragile, and yet he had tried to bite and kick anyone who came near him.”

“When I turned 13 I spent my first birthday without her. She took a taxi on her own and admitted herself to a psychiatric clinic. There she was diagnosed with an affective disorder, better known as depression.”

All of these passages are part of my book Melancólicas Anónimas, true stories about depression, hope and pain. These accounts were, and still are, a cry for help, spoken by brave women who sought and go on seeking help, and who want their message to be heard loud and clear. Please, instead of judging, let us begin to listen and to respect.

Sixteen years have passed since I tried to take my own life, and I have lived through countless things. A change of psychiatrist; medication reworked and its side effects; different therapies; people who could feel with me; people who could not at all; stigma; ignorance and misunderstanding about affective disorders.

World Mental Health Day is marked on 10 October. The World Health Organization has declared mental health a universal human right.

There is still a long way to go, and above all we must keep raising awareness of mental health problems on our planet.

I begin with myself.

Helena Rodríguez