“THERE WAS A little girl who had a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead. When she was good, she was very, very good. But when she was bad, she was horrid.”

This nursery rhyme paints an excellent picture of how mental health behaves. A 2024 survey found one-in-four Irish adults will experience a mental health disorder in their lifetime. The medical definition of such an event is characterised as “a clinically significant disturbance in an individual’s cognition, emotional regulation or behaviour.”

In layman’s terms, your headspace glitches, making it very difficult or impossible to function.

I am living proof of that very statistic.

Mentally difficult times have been referred to as the black dog of depression. Niall ‘Bressie’ Breslin, musician and Voice of Ireland coach, personified his as “Jeffrey.” I don’t have a moniker for my unwelcome friend. I just say I’m in the horrors or I’m having a broken day. A good bad spell for me can linger for 24 hours and on days like this, I do only what is absolutely necessary and have major cuddle time with my dog.

Throughout my teens, a constant flux of what I called “melancholic moments” persisted. Over the years they became more debilitating, particularly during the winter months. Time passed and post-natal depression visited twice. During my fourth pregnancy, I discovered what antenatal ill health felt like. A window of brief respite in my early 40s was most welcome, but sure enough, that closed too.

Placing the blame for........

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