Note from Tine: We’ve been working on this for a while now and I’m very excited to announce that there’ll be a new contributor to Beautyholics Anonymous. Introducing … *drumroll please* … Tim! No, he’s not going to be talking about beauty (the fella does my head in when it comes to product reviews. “I like it. Full stop”.) Anyway, for new readers to BA, Tim’s my husband and for the first time ever, he’ll be doing a monthly series on BA on mental health awareness. As a medical professional in mental health, he’s a better candidate to share his knowledge with you about it than I am. Mental health awareness is very important to me and it isn’t just because I married the fella but also something I went through years ago. And before you think he “cured” me, no he didn’t. Thankfully, I’m much, much better place now but I really do wish there was better mental health awareness back then.

As mental health can be a very sensitive subject, I ask that you approach the topic and comments with an open mind and kindness to those who are affected.

Tine has always been an advocate for increasing public awareness of mental health, and with her recent donation and write-up about Beyond Blue, we had a casual conversation about what it might look like if I could provide my perspective on mental illness. For those of you who do not know Mr Beautyholics (if I can use that term), I have been working in public mental health for most of my postgraduate medical training. I do occasionally get referred to as a ‘shrink’ but thankfully that is rare. I entered this field because there is so much that we still have yet to comprehend and conceptualise in the mind and its disorders, and I also like the challenge given it is still a field of medicine that people struggle to have a unifying view of.

Tine and I were brainstorming on what would be a good point of discussion to involve readers of her blog, and this idea kept recurring of doing a myth-busting series on mental illness and health. I think contemporary views of mental health especially in media has been slowly shifting, with more acceptance of peoples’ life struggles with disorders such as depression and anxiety.

However, I also think that there are still many in the public who will conjure images of psychopaths or violent individuals when the topic is broached. I suppose that is not surprising as we are constantly bombarded with breaking news events of mass shootings and catastrophic events where it might be more bearable to think that these perpetrators were ‘out of their minds’ to commit such horrific acts. Usually the truth is much more baffling and controversial, but my hope is to generate discussions and to help you readers gain more perspective in these areas.

One of the other main reasons of doing this write-up was to also discuss matters relating to mental health, and some of the general principles of improving your mental health. I will cover topics such as sleep hygiene (it’s not about how clean you are in bed), mindfulness and some principles of sensory modulation. As Tine brings you sound beauty advice, I hope to bring you sound mental health advice.

I am hoping to contribute to this segment once a month, and my hope is that all of you lovely readers of Tine’s can participate as much as they would like in the articles in the comments section. I will try to work through the more prevalent conditions such as depression, OCD, anxiety disorders before we delve into some interesting fields such as personality disorders, psychopathy, and psychosis.

Please note that these articles are by no means a ‘consult’ or prescriptive in nature, and if you feel that you may require some specialist help and support, your local GP will be the first port of call to help you access schemes such as shared mental health plan for linkages with a psychologist or to refer you onto the local public mental health service.

Till next month, wishing all you readers good mental health (shoot, is that already trademarked by Frasier? Oh well. 😛 )