Welcome to QueerMentalHealth.org! We are a community-based support and resource site for queer people with mental health issues. We welcome anybody including (but by no means limited to) people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, two-spirited, intersexed, queer, questioning, and allies as well.
Writers Wanted!
We are always looking for new writers! If you want a safe space to write about your mental health issues, you have come to the right place. You are welcome to join the Queer Mental Health Writers' Team. You may be credited or anonymous, with names or details modified to protect your privacy, and the privacy of others mentioned in your work. Check out the details at http://www.queermentalhealth.org/write/
Depression and anxiety are very common among gay men, and some of the most common reasons why some gay men feel depressed include the homophobia surrounding them of the feeling of guilt. I have many gay friends that use to feel guilty about being gay, because they believe they have not only disappointed and saddened their family, but also their friends. However, this isn’t a general rule. When it comes to depression, it is classified in chronic depression and severe depression. Fortunately, both of them can be treated.
I would like to welcome the newest member of our writing team, Sydney. In her first post with us, she expresses her experiences with depression with humor. Thanks for sharing with us, Sydney!
After a long hiatus, my depression came back. I made this comic to deal with it.
I always say ‘I’ve been in recovery for…’ and then either go on to say ‘Just about two months’ if I’m talking about my eating disorder or ‘Just about seven years’ if I’m talking about alcoholism. I’m not sure why. I guess because I have come to believe that recovery is only recovery if I’ve been ‘clean’ for a length of time. I’m not sure why; I do not hold others to that standard. I’m pretty much alone in that category.
When I panic, it feels like my heart is stopping, or that my guts have been turned inside out, or that some sort of massive steam shovel or something has pulled out all my insides and rearranged them and dumped them into random places in my body. Sometimes I feel like the walls are falling in on me, and I can feel the space I am in (or at least my perception of it) going dark. Sometimes I start self-harming by punching myself or slapping myself or punching walls or hard objects or hitting my head against them. Sometimes I become dissociative and do not remember the incident. Sometimes none of these things happen and it manifests quite differently.
I am now in the throws of working towards my recovery. Like many others in recovery, you may find yourself making drastic life style changes. Whether that be working out, quitting smoking, picking days to socialize, and participating in therapies or support groups. Many of you may also find that it is bloody exhausting. For [...]
New to a wholehearted identification with the LGBTQ community, new to thinking of myself—knowing myself—as gay, my skin was as thin as paper when it came to perceived attacks on my identity. I felt as vulnerable and exposed as in the months after people learned I had a mental illness, so many years ago. I felt naked, like by coming out I had stripped away some vital protection that came with people thinking of me as straight, or even bisexual—capable, at least, of feeling sexual attraction to men—and that now I walked around people with an intimate part of me laid bare. To be gay, bi, pan, asexual, or queer in some other way is so much more than sex, but that’s what I felt like everyone in my family and close circle of friends were thinking about when they talked to me. I felt so incredibly revealed.
At the height of my cocaine addiction, I was doing a gram a day by myself. This was 2005. I was living in San Francisco, unemployed, impoverished, running out of options. For five years I had run through the party circuit, going from glamorous dabbling to hard-core use in squats. I had shifted friends as my use accelerated, always going farther, staying up later, adding days of the weeks and cracked out hours to the night.
May 24th is Schizophrenia Awareness Day. In honour of it, we’ve gone purple for the day! Here’s a song, written and performed by Coda Francis, about his experience with schizophrenia.
I hear sirens in my head,
As I’m wide awake, laying on my bed.
The air is thick with the smell of fear and hate.
Clean the carpet from the hypothetical blood stains.
I would like to welcome the newest member of our writing team, Emily Aviva Kapor. In her first post with us, she talks about how to be an ally to autistic people. Thanks for sharing with us, Emily!
I am autistic. The way I experience the world is different than the way most other people do. I haven’t written much about this publicly yet, and I am continuing to learn to be comfortable with being an autistic adult and moving through the world with this part of my identity. Here, though, is something I wrote two weeks ago for the so-called “Autism Awareness Day” and posted to Facebook; I thought I’d edit it slightly and share it more widely here in honor of the much better idea of Autism Acceptance Month.
I can’t imagine living past my 20′s. I don’t know why. Maybe its the eating disorder, the depression, the increased chance of being the victim of violent crime due to being black and queer.
