Caring for someone with a mental illness is an emotional, often isolating experience. Unpaid carers—whether they are family members, friends, or loved ones—carry immense responsibility, yet their voices can feel unheard, especially within the healthcare system.
One of my poem’s “On Being Heard” taken from my book The Poetry Book of Mental Health Caring, captures this struggle with raw honesty.
Continue readingWelcome back to another blog post by Carer activist, poet and author Matthew McKenzie. As you can guess by most of my post off this site, I raise awareness of those providing unpaid care to someone.
Even though I have written a few books containing poems about the caring role. There will be times I will just come out with the odd poem due to spark of creativitiy. Here is my latest poem to raise awareness of caring for someone living with long term illness. I hope you like it, but if you dont then I hope it provides plenty of discussion.
I am always interested in what people think of my new poem. I am sure to place these poems in another book at a later date. Feel free to comment either in the video or my YouTube channel.
Welcome back.
Here is a new blog post from carer activist Matthew McKenzie. I write about the challenges, roles and journeys of those caring for someone. Usually the experience of caring for someone with mental health challenges or someone living with cancer.
However, I find that writing is not enough when trying to connect with others. I find poetry a great way of sharing experiences, creativity and understanding.
There can be challenges of using creativity to explain the experiences of caring. It all becomes worth while in the performance, even if things do not go as expected.
Each person finds the poem will mean something different to them. Just as no carer’s journey is the same, this can be included as to how poems can mean something different.
In order to promote the power of poetry, I have made a short video of my ideas, which you can see below.
In life, whatever we experience will eventually pass and things move so fast that we are left wondering what it was all about. If we can leave something behind, express our experiences, share our thoughts of our existance then we can for a brief moment connect with others.
Thanks for reading.
Carers week 2023 approaches. When you start your journey providing unpaid care it can be a long journey. You might start out caring for someone with cancer, mental illness or physical health difficulties. No matter how you see it, you will starting out on a journey.
As an author and poet, I have written extensively on the journey I have travelled. I hae also written about the path where many other unpaid carers will have to walk.
It helps when former or veteran carers help guide others down that road. We need to be aware that not all carer journeys are the same, but it helps if we identify and value each other.
Below is a poem taken from my book “The Poetry book of mental health caring”. You can check out that book at the end of this blog post. I do actually have some podcasts of the poems off my website.
This poem “The Long Road” talks about how a former carer looks back down the road they have travelled. They see new people beginning their caring journey. The stop and tell those carers about that journey. This is a peer carer task, but it is so important vulnerable groups look out for each other.
Watch the poem below.
Preview My carer poetry book on the link below
The Poetry book of mental health caring
Thank you for reading, good luck with your caring journey
Welcome readers and those who care for someone. As you might already know, not only am I an author raising awareness of carers, but I am also a poet. I find poetry an excellent way to raise awareness of social causes. A good poem can reach the hearts and minds of those trying to understand caring.
I am sure many out there are aware that carers can often remain hidden. The world of unpaid care is often carried out behind closed doors. This might not be a problem, but when the role of caring becomes stressful then we need raise awareness of the plight of unpaid carers.
I feel even when someone becomes uninvolved in caring for someone close to them, they are still in the background somewhere inquiring about the person health and wellbeing. I feel a lot of carers can be a link in that chain.
So in my 3rd book on using poetry to raise awareness of those caring for someone with mental illness, I wrote a poem called “The Hidden Link”.
Feel free to listen to the poem below. I would love to get people’s views on what they think about the poem.
You can also get my poetry book from the Amazon link below.
Hello fellow unpaid carers. Here are some more poems from my book “The Poetry book of mental health caring”.
Every so often I tend to make videos of my poetry off my YouTube Channel.
The Long Wait – Poem by Matthew McKenzie
The Poem below describes my experiences in a hospital when trying to help my mother who was suffering mental and physical health problems at the time.
The unwanted role – by Matthew McKenzie
This poem below focuses on someone becoming an unpaid carer for the first time. The poem explains from their view that they are slightly aware of the difficulties they will face, but will have to face these challenges alone.
How do I say this? – by Matthew McKenzie
The Poem below explores the struggles a carer has in understanding mental illness. He is aware of the stigma when he is trying to communicate with his daughter, but he is dealt a blow regarding his own caring duties and also to fight to sustain a relationship with his daughter.
The Triangle – by Matthew McKenzie
The poem below explains a mental health policy aimed at NHS organisations to make sure carers are included in services. The Triangle of Care has a long history and is highly sought after by mental health NHS trusts to strengthen carer strategies.
To explore more carer/mental health poems from Matthew McKenzie, you can check out the book below on Amazon.
Welcome fellow carer viewers. I thought to add another of my carer poems to my website.
This is poem number 24 – The Unwanted Role.
This poem is from my latest book “The Poetry of mental health caring”, which you can find on Amazon.
I want you to reflect on the poem with the following questions.
• Why do you think the son is worried about caring?
• Do you think the carer will abandon his father? State your reasons why.
• Why is it important that someone should not feel guilty if they cannot care anymore?
• Why do you think it is important someone should continue to provide unpaid care?
Check out the book in the link below.
Here are two more poems from my upcoming book “The Poetry book of mental health caring”.
The first poem focuses on wellbeing for carers who are caring for someone suffering mental illness. To be fair it does not actually have to be mental illness, but the main point is the person is thrown into becoming a carer.
The next poem is more psychological. The poem called “The Mirror” asks the carer to reflection on their identity, especially when the carer is judgemental about themselves. I certainly was very judgemental about trying to provide unpaid care and at times I still am critical.
Welcome to another blog post by carer rep, author and poet Matthew McKenzie. I have just released another poem called “Being Part of it”. As an unpaid carer I was involved in many co-production and involvement meetings, especially to help shape Health & Social care services.
Having unpaid carers and service users become involved in shaping services will help provide services that have such stakeholders in mind. There has often been criticism of where professionals design services and those services do not work out well because the patients or families and carers were not involved in such design.
At those involvement meetings, I often thought how could I express my experiences to other unpaid carers and with this poem, I now have the method to share my experiences.
To view my poem please watch the video below.
Welcome to my latest poem off my poetry project for 2022. My focus is on unpaid carers who look after someone suffering mental illness. Many unpaid mental health carers up and down the country sometimes get frustrated when it comes to being heard. I myself have experienced this, although do not get me wrong. There are times when those in the mental health services can actually support and listen to families, friends and carers.
It is not always the problem of not being listen to or not being heard. Many carers can be confused about what their carer’s rights are. If mental health services are under strain then there will be situations when mental health professionals will not have time for carers and will not often remind carers of their rights.
Sometimes carers are aware that there is nothing the professional can do, but they would still like to be heard on the situation, there might even be a slight chance that something mentioned from the carer can give some hope.
Feel free to check out my poem off my YouTube channel below.
A Caring Mind 