"In a few short weeks, I went mad"

I am doing heaps of research at the moment so I keep finding amazing articles to share.  This one from the SMH is a few years old, but is a truely brilliant piece of writing about a personal experience of becoming unwell in the context of having a new baby.  Miki Perkins has written an incredibly honest and powerful piece about her own experience of postnatal anxiety and depression, but also manages to deliver a message of hope – that recovery is possible https://www.smh.com.au/national/perinatal-depression-in-just-a-few-short-weeks-i-went-mad-20151117-gl1daw.html

“My anxiety and flat mood had been building for weeks. Circling, mercurial thoughts. I couldn’t sleep. After broken nights I would rise at dawn with my two-year old. Find something suitable to wear to work and stretch it over my growing belly. Throw up my breakfast. Drop my child at creche, and launch myself towards the station, hoping the momentum would carry me. Work was something of a relief, a focus. But under it all, the humming dread. It was happening again.”