"Psychosis I never thought it would happen to me"

Just over a year ago my world turned upside down, I was admitted firstly to the Crisis team with severe Psychosis, luckily the NHS team got me the help I needed and over the next few months transferred me to the care of the Early Intervention team. I was given two dedicated support people Ola and Claire who from day one were amazing and with weekly meetings began to work with me on many aspects of my life to determine what had caused the episode and what I could do in the future to stop it happening again, week after week we went over everything that had happened and with their help tried to make sense of it all. Opening up and going over everything again was hard but week by week I felt I was beginning to understand with their help what had potentially happened.

Within 6 months I felt well enough in myself to come off gradually the medication I was on and Ola assisted me to make this happen. They also worked on techniques to make sure myself and my wife could spot any signs that could lead to any further episodes and gradually I felt began to feel like myself again.

The best advice and the one that stuck in my mind was that in life we fill a bucket up with all our problems and things going on, some rocks in it are big and others are small but over time the rocks fill up the bucket to the point that the water overflows, this is what happened to me and lead to the severe psychosis.

One by one the team helped me to remove or deal with those small and big stones and to make sure in the future that I know how to remove the stones instead of just putting them on top of each other.

People say that the NHS is broken, but I disagree, the service and support I have received has been second to none at a very scary time of my life. The professionalism of all the Doctors and Staff has been outstanding and I honestly think without their support I wouldn't be back to the old me. Yes I have had to make some lifestyle changes but think these are for the better and moving forward my health has already vastly improved and I am hoping it will only get better.

As I write this I was signed off by the team a few weeks ago and genuinely feel I have lost friends not support workers and wanted to write this story to thank everyone for their support and help.

Being honest I was the one at work who would say that mental health is a load of rubbish, but going through it myself I know thats so not true.

If you are reading this and need to reach out for help and advice you will not be in better hands than this team, trust in them like I did and they can help you through the scary times.

Thank you once again everyone(!) you are all a credit to the NHS and especially the early intervention team, what you do really does make a difference.