But if I don't I get very ill. Life, on the whole, is fairly normal.
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I am a freelance writer, having worked since school in newspapers. I have friends who know about my diagnosis, and some colleagues who presumably don't although these days if you Google my name, you find the articles I have written about my mental health. But being schizophrenic has complicated my romantic life. For a start, there is the casual prejudice of terms such as 'psycho' and 'mental' being bandied around when cracking dating jokes with friends. I'm not completely humourless about it, but it does confirm there still are, and probably always will be, ingrained prejudices about those, such as me, with mental health issues.
I have also had more direct problems. Since my diagnosis, I've had two long-term relationships, one for three years, and one after that for nine months. Both thought that as I seemed so normal I couldn't possibly need to take medication, and perhaps the doctors were wrong. They persuaded me to stop taking my tablets and, of course, I quickly became unwell. The second time, I ended up in hospital.
I had moved to London from Staffordshire, where I grew up, aged 18 to attend Middlesex University, where I studied fashion design. At the time I was an intern at a Fleet Street newspaper. I believed the songs on the radio were specifically about me, and that my friends were plotting to set me up to look as if I'd committed robberies. I kept most of these worries to myself, and really only suffered a true breakdown two years later when I was between jobs and had more time to obsess over whether the police were coming to break down my doors.
‘So, you know I have bipolar?’ – the perils of dating with a mental health problem
I became completely withdrawn, never leaving my flat. I confided in my parents about my fears and they took me to see a GP, who then referred me to a psychiatrist. At the time I believed my thoughts were perfectly rational, and it was only after I started taking medication that I saw differently.
But that is the thing about mental illness. Sometimes it's hard to believe it is real yourself, let alone expect others to understand. So you can imagine my interest when I came across NoLonger Lonely. I'd used dating sites such as match. There is a broad spectrum of severity of illness. The site has been a slow build since but we've had at least 30 marriages now.
Sue Baker, of Time to Change, a UK organisation that aims to tackle mental health stigma, believes websites such as his are a good idea.
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In such a relationship, where the couple share experience, it allows people to really know how to support each other during a crisis. With this in mind, I signed up. As with all dating websites, you create a personal profile that other users can see, detailing interests and hobbies alongside a couple of paragraphs describing yourself and what you are looking for in a potential partner.
You can also include photos. The only difference to all the other sites is that there is a tick-box menu to indicate your mental health diagnosis. Within a few minutes, Mike gets in touch. He has bipolar disorder, which is a type of mental illness characterised by periods of extreme restlessness or mania, followed by depression.
How not to tell someone you are mentally ill
As with many people who suffer from mania in some form, the first symptom for me is a complete inability to sleep combined with a desperate compulsion to talk all of the time. You should also, as a couple, draw up a contingency plan in case of emergency. What resources do you need? This could be anything from bubble bath, music, books or puzzles to calm you down, to something more serious — do you have spare medication, for example? It feels deeply horrible and personal. Talking to a newly single friend recently, she told me that several relationships that seemed to be going well had mysteriously withered away as soon as she mentioned her severe clinical anxiety.
Some told her that was the case — that they were unable or unwilling to deal with it — and others mysteriously disappeared as soon as she mentioned it.
It, understandably, bummed her out. There is a silver lining, though: But knowing that someone has chosen to stick with you on the bad days as well as the good can significantly reduce anxiety. Avoiding telling someone until it was catastrophically too late Hey! It was not fine.
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Mental illness and online dating | Time To Change
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