F**king Mental: Being Mad gives you Diabetes

Welcome to 'Fucking Mental' a spin off series of the Walk a Mile in My Shoes podcast where I fly solo to talk about some of the shortcomings in the mental health system in the UK today. In this episode I talk about my recent diagnosis of type 2 diabetes, and how a lifetime of prescribed psychiatric meds have contributed to me developing it. No, correlation isn't causation, I know, and it's important to say many folk with long term mental illness won't develop it. That said, people with long term mental health problems die anything between 10 and 20 years earlier than the wider population . Often because of unmanaged physical illnesses like cardiac and respiratory diseases, or, in my case, diabetes - which unchecked can lead to all kinds of nasties including loss of sight, amputation of limbs due to poor circulation, stroke, and heart attacks. I've been amazed at the incredibly responsive service I've had to my life-threatening physical illness, which makes the lack of support I've received from NHS mental health services appear all the more woeful. I have thrown myself into the advice given by Karen and Corinne, my diabetes nurses, and the book they recommended ' Life without Diabetes' by professor Roy Taylor , to lose 15kg by undertaking an 800 calorie a day diet. I've lost a stone so far, and I feel rather energised and motivated - although much of that can be attributed to me coming off quetiapine. The main message I want to get across though, is it's essential that mental health clinicians talk openly and honestly with their patients about the side effects of the drugs they're taking - so they can make informed choices as to whether they're potentially willing to compromise their physical health in the long term. Walk a Mile Chris

You can listen to F**king Mental: Being Mad gives you Diabetes online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

F**king Mental: Being Mad gives you Diabetes is an episode from Walk a Mile in My Shoes by Chris Young.

This episode is 00:21:25 long.

This episode was published on Aug 10, 2021.

Yes. Use the heart button on the episode page to add it to your favorite episodes list.

Yes. This page shows related episodes from Walk a Mile in My Shoes when more episodes are available from the podcast feed.