Category Archives: carer stories

Promo of Discriminated by Matthew McKenzie

Welcome back fellow carers. Carer Story number 8 is nearly finished. As promised, I am continuing to write carer fictional stories. These stories are based on those caring for someone suffering mental illness.

All audio and video stories are from the book I am working on “Providing Care & Other short stories”. I aim to write 20 short carer stories and add them to an audio book. The quality of the audio stories are increasing each time.

Story number 8 is unfortunately very difficult to listen to. Not because of any quality issues, but due to the nature of the story. As a carer campaigner, I often raise awareness of mental health carers. This time I am focusing on ethnic mental health carers. The story discriminated looks at the challenges a young black woman called Jennifer will face when caring for her brother Darren.

The story also follows Darren’s traumatic journey through the mental health system and the fragmented role of the NHS and the Police.

At the time of the release of this story, you might have heard the police refusing to take mental health calls.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65741824

Once you have watched this story, you will probably understand why. With mental illness increasing at rapid levels, health and social care are struggling to catch up. It is now the family, friends who are caring that will have to step in.

The question remains on if unpaid mental health carers have the resources to cope.

Story number 8 – Discriminated to be release soon.

Listen to the promo below.

A story of hope by Matthew McKenzie

Welcome back fellow carers to my blog site raising awarness of unpaid caring by carer activist Matthew McKenzie. I have now released my 7th carer story off my YouTube channel. You can watch the story for free at the end of the blog page. The new carer story now uses advanced AI voices, although I am still experimenting with some new techniques.

This new story is called “A story of Hope”, a longer story than my previous carer stories. This story focuses on raising awareness of same sex partnerships and the impact of mental health. It is unfortunately common for LGBTQ+ to go through higher rates of mental illness. Stigma often hits those groups and to make matters difficult we need to account for mental health stigma.

The story examines a woman’s race to say her partner. Many things are against her and she is unsure of herself. She was never a strong woman, but that all changed when Susan entered her life. As we all know, life is not perfect and certainly not predictable.

Now Eve has to fight for her love, she now has to understand what it means to be a carer. If you love someone then you want to care for them. However is Eve’s love enough? She now finds herself in new territory and making the wrong decision can be costly.

The story raises many themes including the anxiety of being a carer, feeling lost in the system and trying to rebuild relationships. Eve tackles many difficult experiences and discussions. What she finds out about mental health services makes her journey challenging as a carer.

Still, providing unpaid care will give meaning as to why we fight so hard for those who need us.

You can watch the story for free below.

Latest carer story – Just when I needed you

Welcome back fellow carers. This blog is by Matthew McKenzie, carer activist, author and poet. I write and campaign to raise awareness of unpaid carers. A lot of my focus goes on those caring for someone with mental illness.

I also have a focus on cancer carers, but more on that in a moment.

I have just released my 6th audio story about the importance of carer peer support. The story is called “Just when I needed you”. You can actually watch the story for free at the end of this blog.

The audio story revolves around the struggle to show empathy and the challenge someone faces with their faith. When people care for each other then the community carers, but this is not always the care as the carers in this story have their own struggles.

It takes a couple to walk that journey of someone damaged by the community. They are there for that person when he feels the world has abandoned him. The couple find a bond with their close friend as Barbara who is providing unpaid care can sympathize because she also experienced mental illness.

The audio story provides a story of hope, but raises challenging questions for those caring for someone. Things are not always so clear cut and it can be very difficult to be involved in someone’s care. This is especially problematic if someone is suffering depression.

Watch the video below and enjoy the carer awareness.

My next audio story will soon be released titled “A story of Hope”

A Story of Hope from the audiobook Providing Care

Welcome back to my carer blog site. I have been resting for a week or so. Well to be honest, I caught a nasty cold. So was not able to do much, but now that I have nearly recovered, I am back to writing again. I am still working on my carer fictional stories. Each story will be part of an audiobook called “Providing Care & Other Short Stories”.

There will be a set of 20 short stories looking into the experiences of carers who fight to provide care for someone suffering mental illness. Each of the stories will have a specific theme. I have turned 3 of the stories into video format already and plan to turn more into videos.

Here is one of the videos below.

Some of the stories will be in an audio format.

I have nearly finished my 7th story called “A Story of Hope”. This story might seem dark in some of the things it raises, but as the title suggests there is still some hope.

The story begins with a young woman visiting a mental health hospital trying to find out why someone ended up in there. It is a shock and a mystery as she is thrown into a desperate situation.

The young woman tries her hardest to fight for the person she loves, but has the damage already been done? She has never faced such a situation before and she does not known who to trust. She is still struggling with the past, but is the past going to catch up with her?

Of course I do not want to spoil the story, but the story does raise important themes on what it is like to care for mental illness.

I hope to finish this story soon and work on the 8th short story called “Discriminated”.

Carer Story number 2 – Digging out of a Hole by Matthew McKenzie

Welcome back to another blog by carer, poet and carer activist Matthew McKenzie. I am working on an audiobook of fiction carer stories. These stories focus on the experience of mental health carers.

When I am talking about mental health carers, I am referring to friends or mainly someone in the family caring for a relative.

The stories are from the audiobook “Providing Carer & Other Short Stories”, the audiobook will contain 20 short stories focusing on the struggles unpaid carers face, young carer challenges, discrimination ethnic carers may face and overall raising that awareness.

I have now released the 2nd short story called “Digging out of a hole“, which can be watched off my YouTube channel below. The story is how a young man struggles to face up to the role of being a mental health carer.

Providing Care – Carer Audio story by Matthew McKenzie

Welcome to another blog post by carer Matthew Mckenzie who raises awareness of mental health carers as an Author, activist and poet. I have been quite busy working on several books, although for this particular blog I am focusing on how my audiobook is developing. This audiobook is called “Providing Care & other short stories”.

You can actually watch my first carer story at the end of the blog.

The audiobook will contain 20 short stories focusing on the experience and challenges of those caring for someone suffering mental illness. Each story will raise common themes mental health carers face, e.g. the anxiety of suddenly falling into the caring role, dealing with carer or mental health stigma, clashes with confidentiality, discrimination and misunderstandings, Young carers, minority and ethnic carers and more. There will be plenty other themes I will be raising regarding unpaid carers.

The first story providing care focuses on a young woman who suddenly falls into providing care, even if she thinks she is not a carer. I do not go and outright tell readers and listeners what is going on, I want them to discover the themes themselves and let me know what they have found out.

A lot of audio stories will be changed into video stories, depends how much time I have on my plate. I am still busy writing the stories and working on a story about a woman in a same sex partnership, unfortunately LGBTQ partnerships can still be driven into mental illness. A lot of the stories I write are quite dark, but those stories do need to be told.

Let us focus on the story Providing Care.

The story tells of a young women named Shelia caught unaware when her husband Tom begins to act strangely. Shelia becomes concerned, confused and wondering what to do next. She is thrown into a situation she has not been trained for as her world turns upside down.

It is not long before Shelia tries to save what is left of her relationship by doing all that she can, but can this be enough?

The story “Providing Care” highlights the sudden realisation of falling into unpaid care, there is little preparation if any at all. You can actually watch the draft of this the story for free by clicking the link below…..Enjoy!!