The Productive Pessimist

  Split image on a blue background. Left side shows a white woman with long red hair, wearing a pinstripe suit, sitting at a desk with her head in her hands. Right side shows a man slumped forward with his head in his hands, setting across a table from an older woman. Tony Blair's centre-left think tank wants people with conditions like ADHD, depression, and anxiety to be actively prevented from claiming welfare assistance for unemployment. These conditions, the think-tank believes, are "not work-limiting."   As someone with lived experience of severe depression with suicidal ideation, generalised anxiety disorder and social anxiety, who has never claimed any of these conditions mean I "can't work", and who generally takes the view that you "may as well go to work depressed and anxious - at least you get paid for it", I'd like to agree.  I've been into work the morning after a failed suicide attempt. I've had a full on psychotic episode...

  What the heck do you  even know about what I'm  going through?! A very good question - there are a lot of people who get their "understanding of mental health challenges" from pop psychology books, or a two-hour online course, no contact with the real world needed. That's not where my understanding comes from. I was diagnosed with schizophrenia following a serious (and violent) psychotic break in 2007.   I've been on high-dose antipsychotics (Lamotrigine and Quetiapine combo - which followed a Risperidone prescription, which turned out to be absolutely disastrous for me.) I've recently been able to transition to benzodiazepines, which I use alongside naturopathic condition management, which in my case includes real-food vitamin profiling and elemental therapy, with journalling as a mindfulness technique. At the moment, my symptoms are primarily slightly disordered thinking, occasional paranoid psychotic thoughts (mostly around helicopters...which...no idea...