97 Days to Go

After three weeks off and a typically over-indulgent Christmas period, the hard work has begun, as I’m now two weeks in to my London Marathon training. Last week was slow, but I managed to do 30 miles this week, including a hill sprint session and an icy 11 miler along the river yesterday morning.

I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the lack of damage caused by yuletide festivities, so all in all I’m off to a promising start.

I’ve also started my fundraising drive for MQ, so if you would like to sponsor me please follow this link.  If you do, you will help fund critical research into a wide range of mental health conditions, including anxiety, depression, ADHD, autism and PTSD.

Many of MQ’s research projects relate to young people, including its latest study on the link between bullying and mental health.  Despite the fact that, on average, three children in every class have a diagnosable mental health condition, 7 out of 10 young people do not get sufficient help.

In terms of my own issues, the most interesting statistic is that 75% of those with a mental health condition start developing it from an early age.  It is thought that bipolar (if that is what I have)  can have genetic, biological and environmental factors, so it may be that I have always had it, was always going to have it, or some biological pre-disposition may have been triggered by one or a number of life events.  It certainly became more of an issue after I had my first child, but I’ve always had the feeling that there was something not right with me.

With hindsight, it is tempting to attribute certain feelings or actions to mental illness (in fact, I tend to use bipolar as an excuse for every time that I’ve acted like a dick), but I guess there is no way of knowing for sure.  I definitely should have received medical help before I did, but how early?  Could the breakdown have been predicted, or even prevented, and if so when? The latter seems unlikely, taking into account another MQ statistic – that on average it takes 10 years for an accurate bipolar diagnosis, so I’ve still got a long way to go.

By donating to MQ you can help answer some of these, and many many other important questions on mental health issues, so here’s the link again.