My Story

With just less than two weeks to go before the London marathon, I feel compelled to say a bit more about why I am running for the UK national mental health charity, Mind. I find this hard to write, though, because as much as I want to raise awareness of mental health and reduce the stigma, I feel paralysed by it.

I often feel very caught inside my own head. Thinking and rethinking. Criticising and denigrating. Analysing and overwhelming myself. I don't know how much of this is mental health versus who I am as a person, but I do know that when I am mentally healthy, I spend much less energy on what is going on inside my head.

Depression and anxiety have been a part of who I am since I can remember. Fourteen years ago, I was hospitalised for three days after taking an overdose of prescription medication. This was not the first time that I had contemplated suicide, but it was the first time I had acted on those thoughts. This was my low and, to date, my lowest. In some ways, though, it was a high because it helped get me on the right medication and into the right treatment. People are not wrong when they say that sometimes it takes hitting rockbottom for you to take control of your life.

The difficulty with depression and anxiety, however, is that they are never cured. They lurk in the corners waiting for times of stress and instability. Having had to manage with depression for a long time, I anticipated that I might suffer from postnatal depression and tried to prepare myself. What I didn't expect was something called postnatal anxiety because I had never heard of it. Frankly, it is terrifying. I had compulsive and intrusive thoughts that were constant and exhausting. I had thoughts about germs and the catastrophic consequences of not washing my hands constantly. I had thoughts about what I needed to do and worries about not remembering everything. I remember walking home from dropping my son at nursery and needing to count backwards by sevens out loud just to quiet the intrusive thoughts in my head. It was exhausting. I even had thoughts about hurting my babies. Or about harm coming to them. They were intrusive thoughts that would just pop into my head unsuspected. I would be walking through a doorway and have an image of my baby's head smashing against the doorframe.  As a child protection social worker,  I can't even explain how terrifying these were.

Luckily, it was hormonal, and it passed. It helped tremendously to discover that two of my friends in America had also suffered from this. I spoke to the midwife about it and she was incredibly supportive. I knew I would never do anything to hurt my baby, but when you can't stop those thoughts from entering your head, you really start to question your sanity.

Last year, when my second baby was just three months old, my uncle John took his own life after battling his own demons of depression and anxiety. Because of the way his body was found, there was a postmortem examination. This delayed when we could have his funeral so by the time his body was released, it was almost a month after his death. At the same time, we had closed on a new house which we had made an offer on when our baby was born. So the week of John's funeral was also the week we moved into our new house. Baby, move, death of a loved one. Any of these major life events would be sufficient to trigger an episode, but all three at the same time? I had a few days when all I wanted to do was crawl into bed and forget about the rest of the world, but I didn't do it. I wasn't particularly productive, but I didn't let myself sink. And I think that is evidence enough of how far I have come.

One year later, I am embarking on a new mental challenge: running a marathon. I had no idea before starting my training just how much of a mental challenge it would be. It has been an emotional roller coaster. But running is how I currently choose to manage my mental health, so I feel it is very poignant that this is how I choose to raise awareness for it.

Thank you for reading my story. If you would like to help support the work of Mind, please visit my fundraising site at www.virginmoneygiving.com/KirstenCronan