Welcome everyone especially unpaid carers. I am preparing a lot of things for Carers Week 2022. It looks to be an exciting set of activities for carers and those that work with them across the UK.
I am also been busy working on my new book for this year. It is a poetry book on the experiences of providing care to those suffering mental illness. This is from the perspective of an unpaid carer.
Here is one of my latest videos on the Poem “The Journey” and also a reflection of that poem.
The poem is from a book I am working on is called “The Poetry book of mental health caring” as you can see from the cover below
The Poetry book of Mental Health Caring
I am hoping to release the book on Amazon this year, perhaps around the Autumn, but it is not just a book containing poems. The book will ask readers to reflect regarding the nature of the poem. One of the NHS trust’s I talked to felt it could be useful for training, even though a lot of focus is on unpaid carers to reflect on the nature of the poem and how it could help them.
Anyway, I am hoping to blog more of my poems soon.
Welcome to my latest blog post. It has been a while since I have uploaded a poem. I have written close to 65 poems on the carer experience since the start of this year. Slowly a fair number of poems will be uploaded to my YouTube Playlist. The poems will play by themselves.
This poem is quite dark, but tells an often all too familiar story where the carer is trying to care for someone who has relapsed into mental illness. There are no beds or resources for the person who is very sick and thus the carer is confused on what to do. She will stick it out and try and cope as she watches her ‘loved one’ descend into madness.
Confusion by Matthew McKenzie
I sit and wait wondering what is next Too scared to look at whats before me The phone sits on the table, i am not sure who to call I just dont know…I have tried before
The sounds…so distressing, so much is on me but time is going so slow as my mind torments me I look at him as his eyes look straight past My heart sinks as my mind is harassed
Minute by minute..hour by hour Not a word heard or a form of contact I sit and wait wondering whats next confusion takes me and I cannot find the solution.
This poem is number 9 of the new book I am working on regarding the experience of care expressed as poetry.
I am looking at that clock again Tick tock, tick tock The sound is driving me crazy Tick tock, tick tock
His in the ward again, being detained It has been weeks now, and I am going insane All these thoughts rushing through my brain Wondering when if things will ever be the same
I think I will sit down and watch the TV Maybe if I put something on, the time will pass easy My brain hurts and my stomach is queasy Oh when will they ring, so someone can inform me
While the TV is on, its only been 20 minutes Nothings good worth watching and I am hitting my limits The sound of that clock, its making me fidgit Maybe I ll head out and see him on one of my visits
Oh I don’t know. Why am I doing this I rang them ages ago, something is amiss I grit my teeth, have a frown Something needs to turn around No one is calling My heart is falling My patience is gone and I am about to start bawling
Welcome fellow unpaid carers and families. With my involvement in local accute hospital NHS trusts. I have news of a great event that will be of interest. Lewisham & Greenwich NHS Trust are to launch their Improvement Showcase event for 2022. It will be open to all and be run virtually over Zoom. There will be national speakers presenting and also opportunity to hear about the great local improvements happening around health inequalities, patient co design and more.
Hello everyone. As you can probably tell from my website. I focus on the experience of providing unpaid care, especially regarding those suffering mental ill health. I am in my poetry phase and am to get a large number of poems off my YouTube channel.
My latest poem, which is rather short looks into how mental illness can be catching, perhaps not as bad as what the poor patient is going through, but unpaid carers are not signing and jumping for joy.
You can view my latest poem by playing the video below.
Did you know that I run a monthly online carers newsletter? Although most of my focus is on mental health carers, the newsletter focuses on all unpaid carers. The rest of the carer news focuses on Mental health updates, ethnic mental health news and items relating to NHS and national organisations responsible for health & social care.
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For January update we have the following news items
Welcome back to another blog by former unpaid mental health carer Matthew Mckenzie. I am working on my carer awareness poetry for 2022. Poetry can be great for creativity, expression and even for campaigning.
I have done around 60 poems for the book I am going to release later on this year, the poetry book will contain around 150 poems.
For this particular poem, it is about a recent download of a carers assessment and my attempt at filling it in. At first I am nervous about filling in such forms because it asks such personal and thought provoking questions. After a while, I find the form gets easier to fill in, but I query is it worth filling the form.
This poem called “The Carer’s Assessment” can be views from the video below.
There will be times carer’s can’t be bothered to fill them in because they don’t get anything out from it and its engagement to carers can just be a tick-box exercise.
It’s still advisable to fill in carers assessments since it is a good way to be recorded and identified as a carer.
Welcome to my latest blog about my new book. My name is Matthew Mckenzie a former mental health carer who cared for his mother who suffered from a form of schizophrenia.
I have decided to highlight chapter one of my book “Experiencing mental health caregiving”
The first chapter explores what unpaid mental health carers feel about their identity. Each chapter of my book asks several intriging questions about mental health caring, which of course focuses on unpaid carers e.g. families and friends caring for someone close suffering mental ill health.
Carer Identity
The first question I asked carers on chapter one, which is “Carer Identity” was “What does it mean to be a mental health carer?”
You can see the video of this below below
The reason I asked such a question is that those who suddenly find themselves providing care might find some of the answers useful. Perhaps even NHS professionals or social workers might find the answers important.
I will pick out a few responses that I found highlighted the importance of carer identity.
One carer responded as
“I think that it’s difficult. Often nobody other than the carer can see the disability with the person that you’re caring for. And so, they go unnoticed. Plus with mental health, it fluctuates and dramatically as well.“
Another carer felt
“For me to be a carer of a mental health patient has turned my world upside down completely. This is different when you caring for somebody outside your family, but when it is someone in your family then it is an application of emotional attachment.“
Another carer summed up “My own identity disappeared in the beginning of my caring journey. It also means getting acknowledgement from healthcare professionals that I am an important person in my loved one’s care“
What I thought was interesting is how difficult it was starting out caring for someone suffering mental illness, notice the responses all mentioned how tough it was when they first started out caring. Although certainly take note, I have only shown some of the responses here as others in the book might be different. One thing to note is some carers might find the role gets easier depending on their knowledge of the illness or the support they may get from services, community or other members of their family. This might not be the case for all unpaid carers.
For chapter one I asked around 8 other questions regarding carer identity and if you are interested about mental health carers, you can buy my book on the video link description.
Happy new year to visitors of my mental health carer blog site. As mentioned in my earlier blog posts, I am working on promoting awareness of caring for someone suffering mental ill health.
I created a number of carer poems, quite a few are on this site, but are subject to being edited as I am often fine tuning poems.
I am also adding a couple of my poems on to my YouTube platform and will blog them every so often.
The poem I want to introduce here is titled “On Alert” as it highlights the struggle unpaid carers go through in prompting medication. A lot of carers hate doing such a task, but when the experience the person’s mental health crisis, they want to try avoid the situation again and take resort to being on alert.
Watch my 2 minute poem “On Alert” off my video link below.
A Caring Mind 