I always sort of thought mental illness wasn't a real thing. That it was something people made up when they were feeling a bit sad and wanted some attention, and if they just decided to be happy, they could be. Because that's how it's always worked in my own head.

Since then I've seen it first hand in someone I love, and know that it's a visceral, physical thing. I know what it looks like if your body gets flooded with hormones normally associated with crippling doubt and fear for absolutely no reason. I've seen it when your brain physically can't ignore all the things that normal people simply dismiss as a worrisome thought, so those thoughts get stuck playing through your head on loop and there's nothing you can do about it... it's far worse than any illness of the body.

But it's stigmatised, and it's hard to research and the field is still in its infancy. Almost all of the medicines have horrific side effects (one prescription I've seen included "sudden death" as a side effect). The medications themselves often causes other long term problems and their interactions aren't fully understood. It's hard to tell in a lot of cases whether it's even effective and it isn't understood how or why it works if it does.

The amount of research funding for this vs cancer research is miniscule, and yet it affects a lot more people and a lot of the money raised goes towards support and care rather than research.

And so I'd like to raise some money for Mental Health Research UK. They fund PhDs and other scientific research and activities which actually have a shot at fixing things longer term.

If you felt the same, I'm sure they'd appreciate some support,

Thanks for reading

Adam :)