{"id":232361,"date":"2022-07-26T02:36:46","date_gmt":"2022-07-26T00:36:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/cape-mental-health-members-share-experiences-ignorance-and-stigmas\/"},"modified":"2022-07-26T02:36:46","modified_gmt":"2022-07-26T00:36:46","slug":"were-not-alone-cape-mental-health-members-share-their-experiences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/were-not-alone-cape-mental-health-members-share-their-experiences\/","title":{"rendered":"We\u2019re not alone: Cape Mental Health members share their experiences"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"article_body\">\n<p><a class=\"bigger-image\" href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/images\/photographers\/Ashraf%20Hendricks\/capementalhealth.jpeg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/were-not-alone-cape-mental-health-members-share-their-experiences.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">About 70 members and people who use the services of Cape Mental Health gathered at the Observatory Community Recreation Centre last week to express themselves and share their experiences with psychosocial disabilities. Photo: Ashraf Hendricks<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p class=\"intro\">Staff and members of Cape Mental Health gathered to raise awareness of psychosocial disabilities.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"intro\">Only one in ten people with a mental illness have access to mental health care, according to a recent report.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"intro\">\u201cWe don\u2019t discriminate. We don\u2019t judge. We don\u2019t stigmatise because we\u2019ve normalised it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Members and staff of Cape Mental Health gathered last week to share stories, poetry, art and dance to combat stigma and create awareness around mental health. With the theme \u201cIn my own words\u201d, the event was held at the Observatory Community Recreation Centre. July is Psychosocial Disability Awareness Month.<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt class=\"leave\" height=\"1\" id=\"gu_counter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/were-not-alone-cape-mental-health-members-share-their-experiences.gif\" width=\"1\"><\/p>\n<p>Cape Mental Health and the South African Federation for Mental Health are campaigning for psychosocial disabilities, led by people who experience them. The campaign encourages self-expression, understanding, inclusion and support.<\/p>\n<p>According to a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sadag.org\/index.php?option=com_content&amp;view=article&amp;id=3197:world-mental-health-day-10-october-2021&amp;catid=149&amp;Itemid=132\">2021 report<\/a> by the South African Depression and Anxiety Group, one in three South Africans have or will have mental health issues in their lifetime, yet only one in ten people with a mental illness have access to mental health care. These are \u201cpre-Covid\u201d figures.<\/p>\n<p>At the event, a peer supporter, who only wanted to be known as Howard, shared a poem about his experience with schizoaffective disorder, a combination of schizophrenia and bipolar. He described his mood swings, delusions, loss of control and paranoia: <em>\u201cSuddenly, without any reason I start to cry \/ All I can do is endlessly wonder why \/ The most trivial of things seem to break my heart \/ Piece by piece I feel myself being torn apart<\/em> [Extract from the poem]\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt felt like being in this dark hole,\u201d he said. \u201cPeople need to know that things like this can happen to anybody\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>With the help of the Fountain House, a psychosocial rehabilitation programme under Cape Mental Health, Howard managed to gain control and insight into his condition.<\/p>\n<p>Clement was struggling with depression when he joined the Fountain House programme in April. He shared his story about how a brain haemorrhage and the death of his father left him deeply depressed for two years. \u201cI was very isolated \u2026 I felt ashamed of myself,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>When he joined the programme he immediately felt welcome.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m out of my depression and off my anti-depressant tablets,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Clement said group events like these made him feel less alone. \u201cThere are people out there struggling \u2026 but they\u2019re trying to live with their diagnosis \u2026 So I have more hope for the future\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Barbara Meyer, communications officer for Cape Mental Health, said that one of the major issues for those with psychosocial disabilities is finding work. Meyer said that workers with mental issues face prejudice and stigma from employers regardless of work ability. Many employers are \u201cignorant\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOnce a person discloses that you have a mental illness \u2026 your name will go to the bottom of the list,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>People with mental disorders are also often mistreated socially, they get taken advantage of when it comes to legal issues, and their opinions are \u201cless valued\u201d, said Meyer. \u201cThey\u2019re not respected,\u201d she said and \u201ctheir psychosocial disorder is used against them\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re about creating opportunities for people to become empowered, to grow,\u201d said Ren\u00e9 Minnies, manager of the Psychosocial Rehabilitation programme.<\/p>\n<p>Minnies said art and writing workshops were held leading up to the day\u2019s event. \u201cWe wanted to showcase the journeys, the struggles that people have, the isolation, the stigma,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>Minnies said that psychosocial disabilities are widely misunderstood. She said that managing a mental illness is much like living with diabetes. \u201cWe don\u2019t discriminate. We don\u2019t judge. We don\u2019t stigmatise because we\u2019ve normalised it\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"article_copyright\">\n<p>\u00a9 2022 GroundUp. This article is licensed under a <a href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nd\/4.0\/\" rel=\"license\">Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and GroundUp, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.<\/p>\n<p>We put an invisible pixel in the article so that we can count traffic to republishers. All analytics tools are solely on our servers. We do not give our logs to any third party. Logs are deleted after two weeks. We do not use any IP address identifying information except to count regional traffic. We are solely interested in counting hits, <b>not tracking<\/b> users. If you republish, please do not delete the invisible pixel.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/were-not-alone-cape-mental-health-members-share-their-experiences.jpg\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/\">Source: GroundUp<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>About 70 members and people who use the services of Cape Mental Health gathered at the Observatory Community Recreation Centre last week to express themselves and share their experiences with psychosocial disabilities. Photo: Ashraf Hendricks Staff and members of Cape Mental Health gathered to raise awareness of psychosocial disabilities. Only one in ten people with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":232362,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9928],"tags":[28001],"class_list":{"0":"post-232361","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-groundup","8":"tag-groundup","9":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/were-not-alone-cape-mental-health-members-share-their-experiences.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232361\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}