Last night I had a totally new experience. I was a guest on a radio show. I have done radio interviews before but they have never been in a radio studio with the headphones etc on so this was all a bit new and exciting! To listen to the show follow this link
SoulKraft Wellbeing Radio Show is a weekly show hosted by Lauren on Stirling City Radio. I was put in touch with Lauren via a mutual friend but we were also at the same school. Lauren’s radio show focuses on mental wellbeing and has a sub topic each week focusing in on part of mental wellbeing such as creativity. You can read more about Lauren, her blog and radio show here.
To say I was a bit nervous would be an under statement because I have never been the best with words when speaking about my own health. I can write it and I can speak about the surrounding topics such as asthma research, new asthma medications when giving presentations but the last few times when I have spoken about myself and how my asthma has impacted me I have ended up in tears in front of a whole load of people, so I was hoping I was not going to do that while on the radio. I have also never spoken about my view on mental and physical health. I have written about how a physical health condition has impacted my mental health but never really spoken about it and also not spoken about how I view health as a whole.
It was great to be able to speak to someone who has had such similar views on health but they come from a predominantly mental health condition where my initial diagnosis was a physical which has impacted on my mental health.
Reflecting back and listening to the show has been really cathartic and in a way given me a new lease on life and advocacy. It has made me realise that health is just health wether it is physical or mental. Part of me really feels that all this attention being given to mental health may just be stigmatising it even more now. There is a lot of press given to mental health because it is chronically underfunded but why is it. Mental health conditions just like physical health conditions sometimes cannot be prevented and sometimes can be prevented, all conditions can be treated with pharma input or using other approaches there is no real difference (I get that this is being very generalistic but when you get to the nitty gritty of all conditions they are complex and hard to manage.
I want to try and spend some time promoting the impact that living with a chronic (sorry Lauren) health condition can do to you holistically. I say holistically because that focuses on the whole person not just the one organ or organs that the condition effects.
Thank you again Lauren! If you want to listen to the radio show
ANONYMOUS-ASTHMA 