It's just a jump to the left

I recently watched a great episode of a TV series called Kitchen Cabinet on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.  This program interviews Australian politicians in a novel way – with food!  The interviewer is a well-respected political journalist, Annabel Crabb.

The episode that I watched involved Australian’s current Trade Minister, Andrew Robb and an ex-Federal Senator, Mary Jo Fisher.  Both suffer from mental health issues.  Here’s the link to the episode on ABC’s iView platform.

After watching that episode, I decided to learn more about both of these public figures.  Andrew Robb, Minister for Trade wrote a book called Black Dog Daze which is a brave and insightful account of his experience with depression, particularly as a public figure involved in complex government negotiations.  He talks about how it affected him and the (novel) ways in which he tries to manage the effects of his condition.  I particularly liked his trick of holding a pencil in his mouth while driving to work to force his features into a smile - he read somewhere that smiling releases the happy gene….!

The story was a little more dramatic for Mary Jo Fisher, the ex-Senator.  Due to her condition, she struggled with kleptomania and was eventually forced to resign her public office.  The Australian newspaper wrote a great article about what happened.  Ms Fisher is now managing her condition as best she can and picking up the pieces of her professional life. 

The thing that struck me about that article was the fact that it mirrors something that I have found myself – keeping busy helps.  She is thankful for her current job.  It has helped her to get out of bed in the morning.  It gives her purpose and direction as well as the strength to keep going.  I wrote about this in a previous post – how a job can mean stability, routine and purpose, which helps to provide a firm ground to stand on so that we can deal with mental health issues.

What I admire about Mary Jo, more importantly, is that she is using her very public experience to change people’s perception about depression.   She says "Even if they just want to come and see this all-singing and all-dancing nut case, and they realise that they're not fine or a family member is not fine, then that's a good thing. I'm beyond being embarrassed. Mental illness is not a death sentence, it's an issue that needs to be dealt with."

I used the recent 2014 Mental Health week in Australia to motivate my first post on the Intentional Observer.  My reason is to keep the spotlight on those who suffer from mental health.  I want the conversation to continue.  But more importantly, I want to demystify how someone who suffers from mental health issues so that we can be better understood.

I hope I can, anyway….