Even the flowers cry

I need to guard against negative feelings. It is easy for me to react to this week being labelled Mental Health Awareness Week. I understand that the intention is for people to think positively about mental illness, its treatment, and the recovery into mental health. I do hope that at least some people might take the week as a stimulus to learn more, to tolerate more, to try to do more, perhaps for family (whanau) and friends. I fear, however, that few will notice, and that those that do will be like the medical colleague who asked me "What are you guys doing for this week?" He did not take kindly to me saying that I'm aware already, and this week is for others, perhaps like him, to become more aware.

Sue from Portland (Oregon) responded to my words written on the day I reached 2,500 blips. She expressed surprise that New Zealand may be "conservative" on Mental Health. People are understandably uncomfortable with things that are unknown to them, especially if those things (and people) are a bit strange. And I know that the people and behaviours and illness states that after all these years I find familiar and understandable, can provoke very different responses in most people. Which is why I was so pleased that a patient was unfearful of possible stigma. I doubt NZ is any more (or less) conservative, stigmatised, whatever, than any other country, and we are better than most.

My immediate boss suggested and then persuaded our leadership team to share a lunch time break today in the nearby Auckland Domain. For Mental Health Awareness Week. As we walked there, it started to rain and everyone sat inside the Domain Kiosk cafe having a coffee. I had brought my sandwiches to eat under the trees. The rain was a damper on that idea. With encouragement of my fellows I unwrapped my sandwiches, only to have my shoulder tapped and a nonverbal instruction that I could not eat my food inside.

Coincidentally, the rain stopped. I finished my coffee, bid my colleagues farewell, and went outside to commune with nature by walking in the park. Ironically, that is the theme for this week's awareness; being "in nature" has been shown to be good for one's mental health. Not that I expected it, no one came to join me. On my walk I saw these flowers (I do not know one flower from another; this is a pink one), and took a photo.

By the time I got home to help S prepare for her Poetry Group meeting here this evening, I was rankling about a number of things. Perhaps my biggest bugbear at the moment is the awareness that despite there being a moderate, if at times a little inconsistent, evidence base for treatment approaches, what drives most guidelines is expert opinion. And where do these experts come from? From research institutions. They do see a lot of people in the studies they undertake, and they are multisite, even multinational, studies. The problem is that once the inclusion and exclusion criteria are applied little more than 5% of a standard outpatient service's patients would be able to participate in these studies. Consequently any findings, positive or negative need interpretation; by the experts.

Even the flowers cry