Nottingham Mental Health Awareness Weeks: "There's a lot that people don't know"

Rachel is a service user and Involvement Volunteer with us at Nottinghamshire Healthcare. She wanted to talk to us about Haven House, which she thinks is a fantastic support to people experiencing a mental health crisis.

Haven House, which is run in partnership with Turning Point, provides 24-hour support for up to seven days to people from Nottingham and south Nottinghamshire.

I came to the crisis house because I was having difficulties with a neighbour, and I needed a quiet place to get some respite. I have bipolar, and I was becoming very stressed and having high moods.

The best thing about Haven House is the calm atmosphere and the camaraderie. A lot of support comes from the other people who are using the service. We’re like a family, and we look after one another. We cook together and help each other out. We’ve recently had a burger night, and we’ve had cream tea together. You get a lot of support from the other clients.

Of course there’s also the support from the staff. The crisis team visit every day, and you have one-to-ones with the staff, who are very experienced.

The recovery workers understand your problems and give sound advice. They just get you, and understand what your problems are. They also support with practical things – one of the support workers has just helped me to write a shopping list to help with healthy eating.

I’ve also started knitting again. I’ve knitted a scarf and I once knitted a jumper for my son’s doll – I like him to have different types of toys!

Raising awareness of mental health issues is really important. I’m not from Nottingham originally and I think Nottingham has done really well with its Mental Health Awareness Weeks.

Even though we have the awareness weeks, a lot of mental health issues are still not understood by the public. A lot of people understand depression, but they don’t understand bipolar – the highs which come with it – or other mental health conditions.

My bipolar is triggered when I become too happy, so I can’t go abroad now. It’s really annoying! There are a lot of things that people don’t understand - there are lots of difficulties to mental health issues and they can be complex.

There’s also still a lot of stigma, especially in the newspapers when someone with mental health issues commits a crime. But in reality, we’re more likely to be the victims of crime than the perpetrators.