Animated and Excitable

I've recently set up a protected twitter account to keep my personal chatter, photos and videos separate from my public tweets as @RoseAnnieFlo on Mad Twitter. This post is an edited version of the twitter thread in which I explained the reasons why. Nothing particularly big or bad has happened recently to prompt the change. I have been feeling increasingly stressed by twitter-related tension for months now and I just burned out and reached a theatrical-sobbing-at-small-things stage over the last week. But I feel a bit better already for making the decision to shift my personal tweeting over to a more private account. Mad Twitter (as mental health twitter is affectionately known) has overall been a fab experience for me. I joined in 2015/16 feeling isolated and confused by my experiences as a patient of a community mental health team where polarised ideas about mental health were not just debates out in cyber space, but had been a regular source of real-life conflict and ...

I have at least half a dozen or so unfinished posts in my drafts folder that I've been afraid to publish for fear that some of the more sensitive and personal content around health and mental health may be mined by academic researchers looking to 'give voice' to my experiences without my consent. It feels such a very unfair situation; there are so many issues around mental health that I'm desperate to talk about, and on which I want to hear from people in similar circumstances to mine. I'd like to be able to start a conversation in the here and now as I would if I were talking to friends in the pub, but with people who, often for health-related reasons, aren't able to meet up in 'real' life to discuss all these issues face-to-face. But I'm hesitant because I really don't want to have my words seized upon and analysed, twisted and interpreted and set down in a permanent scientific record by someone who doesn't know me, has never met me, not...

Hello from Animated and Excitable Towers! Well, that was a long Christmas break! I regret that I am shamefully behind with my plans to rage-blog all that is wrong in the world of mental health research. I've not forgotten; I've only become more enraged with the passing of time and the publication of even more shite research!  I hope to have the next #ResearchersAreRubbish installment up before the weekend is out. In the meantime, this is just a quick post to document the most delicious thread of the week on Mad Twitter. Everyone is writing imaginary missives to their GP, in the style of a psychiatrist's review letter, and it all started when Bibi (@GoodNewsFromBad) was dismayed by what she found in her psych notes... That's a new one. Psychiatrist notes say 'has no hair'. Do people often get statements saying 'has hair'??? — Bibi (@GoodNewsFromBad) April 3, 2019 Here's my letter to my GP about one of the first and most memorable psychiatris...