FND and Mental Health

Hello, sat down? Ready for this week’s blog? Not sure if I am if I am honest.

This week is mental health week, and I wanted to talk about FND and the issues around mental health. So here goes.

I lot of people talk about FND, and the fact it used to be called conversion disorder which is classed as a mental condition, now with many years of research within neurology this is not the case anymore and while mental health can be a cause or even effect FND, it is no longer known by this name, but as Functional Neurological Disorder.  I do understand that while FND is still classed as a mental health in the ICD11 it is going to be categorised as a both mental health and neurological condition.

While many have suffered some form of mental health issues with in their life, mostly this being social anxiety, there have in the past been connections between FND and other traumatic life events, stress and mental health conditions, today I wanted to talk about the issues which start to happen because of FND.

I don’t think that I have suffered from a mental health issues before in my life, but after a very long chat with some of my therapy team over the last few weeks, it has been highlighted to me that in fact I may have some issues that need addressing.

Now this for me was a massive shock for me, why? I am not sure. I have been out from work for nearly 5 months now, and week by week, things seem to have got worse and worse, in regards to my mental health. I talk to others on a daily basis when they are feeling down, anxious and just generally in a rubbish mood, and for some reason I know what the right things to say to them are. When it comes to me, I try to shy away from this stigma that I am also suffering.

I have really bad social anxiety at the moment, along with the feeling of being depressed from time to time, now I know that most of this is because I have been isolated from a lot of people for the last 5 months and this is because of my mobility issues which have been caused by my FND. Some days I feel so down that I am fed up of everything, I just want to get back to the way I was before May of this year.

Im personally very lucky and have more than enough people to talk to about this, but do I? No, why you ask? This is because I don’t want to show people that side of me, it makes me feel vulnerable and going back to a previous blog post, the stigma behind that men shouldn’t show their emotions.  

Now like many I am good at giving out good advice, but can I take it myself, no I think not. I am trying to deal with this, in a way that only I can. When I have figured out what that is I will let you know.

One of the ways I am trying to battle this with others, is to run online group chats with others who many not have the confidence to get out and talk to others and may find it easier to do this from the comfort of their own home, so later on today I will be hosting this group chat, around 2pm I will post the link, I am also doing one around 7:30pm tonight and maybe tomorrow night, depending on how many people would like to use this. Now the afternoon one will be posted on my Twitter account @MatthewFND and the other will be posted on FND Action’s Facebook page. So please if you want to have a chat and not be judged by anyone then jump on and say hello. It is all text, no video so don’t have to worry about what you look like, as no one will be able to see you.

Remember this week is mental health awareness week, and I encourage all of you to take a step back and have a think about how your mental health is right now.

#iamfnd

#letstalkfnd

#letstalkmentalhealth

Stay Safe

Matthew