Affordable means Free!

   It has been a long time since I last sat down with the intention in mind to write a blog post and as a result I am writing this feeling mildly guilty and rather embarrassed. After-all, when I first started out in November I was hoping to post an update every week!

   Despite this, I am still running a marathon in April (April 12^th to be exact), and I have still been following (with not a small amount of deviation) a 20 week training plan to (hopefully) prepare my body for running 26.9 miles.

   And all of this so that I might possibly raise some money for the amazing and incredible charity that is the Trauma Recovery Centre.

   I am aware that it is quite some time since my first blog post describing the TRC and as such I feel it might be useful if I used this post to go through what it is about TRC that made me want to support them so I’ve described the four key reasons here.

 1. The service these guys offer is FREE. Meaning that in order to keep the centre running they rely completely on money given through the generosity of strangers (a.k.a you).

 2. Because the service is free the people being reached are the ones that, to some extent, need it the most. Socioeconomic status (SES) is well evidenced as being one of the major influences on the impacts of mental health (this can be seen by the many academic papers that are found following a simple search of “socioeconomic status mental health” in google scholar). Not necessarily because low SES causes mental illness, but because those in low SES settings cannot afford treatment. It is not lack of treatment that is causing issues with mental health in the UK, it is lack of affordable treatment. And for many, affordable means free.

 3. The services the TRC provide is good. TRC therapists have trauma specific, reputable and respected qualifications. Therapy with the TRC is person focused, it continues for as long as the individual needs it for. Unlike the NHS which can only supply a number of weeks of counselling then leaves people on their own, simply due to the sheer mass of people it is trying to accommodate. The TRC also have graduate activity groups. These are group sessions once a week for previous clients to come along and relax in an environment they feel comfortable and supported in. There comes a time in therapy where the individual no longer needs to be receiving weekly sessions in order to heal fully, and in fact for them to continue to rely and depend on weekly counselling sessions would be unhealthy. But in the same way that when clients are released from hospital they still need support and the comfort of readily available medical advice before they’re completely healed again, individuals recovering from mental illness need support too. Activity groups provide this.

4. And finally, the TRC is running at a maximum and there is a long waiting list. There is a shocking lack of care for mental health in the UK, a problem which if ignored will simply get worse. The only way to help this is if centres have the facilities to take in more people, and this again needs money.

There are many many more reasons that I could give for wanting to give my time and support to the TRC but these are the ones I felt were most important. I hope that you would agree with me that the work done by this organisation is really worth putting money into. The work they do targets an area in our society that is scandalously uncared for. Something which needs to change and will only change if we as a people start changing it ourselves.

If you’d like to sponsor me then here’s the link to my mydonate page, the page is linked to the TRC so as soon as you pay money online it goes straight to TRC.

https://mydonate.bt.com/fundraisers/runningintorecovery

And here’s the link to the TRC website for anyone interested.

http://www.trc-uk.org/

Post is Pending!

Hey all,

It's been a long long time since I last updated this blog and for that I am so sorry, the current term in university has been hectic to say the least!

I would like to reassure you that I am currently working on a new blog post, I have it written and everything! I'm just in the process of getting it checked through to make sure everything I've said is correct. If all goes as it probably will, then I hope to have it up by Wednesday. It will definitely be up by the end of the week.

Thank you for your patience!

The course of true love never did run smooth

The current term has not only seen the start of an avalanche of coursework and 9-5 days on campus, but also the gradual increase in length of my Saturday runs. I write this having just finished a 14 mile run up and down the 1.5 mile long, steep, hill that I live on. My legs are aching, my arms are crying, my feet burn; and it strikes me that if indeed the course of true love is rather bumpy in nature, then I seem to have unwittingly signed myself up for the most volatile and dangerous love with running there has ever been.

   I say volatile because, there are days when I would like nothing better than to burn my running clothes, tie knots in the laces of my running shoes, and lock myself in my house with a large cup of tea. Whereas other days I simply cannot understand why the entirety of Exeter isn’t out running – can they not understand the endless health benefits? Or the simple wonder of running through brambles to avoid cars as they drive speedily toward you?! But thankfully, most days my mood lies somewhere between the two.

   And in truth on most days, I forget why I’m bothering to run every day. In the cold and the rain and the dark. But on the days I do remember, often the worst days when I feel like giving up, I realise that not everyone has the luxury of finding running the hardest part of their life. And it is worth every mile of pain if it means help for them.

Please sponsor me - https://mydonate.bt.com/fundraisers/runningintorecovery

Christmas: The only time of year when happiness is compulsory.

 Hello all and Merry Christmas!

   I wasn’t sure what to write this week since I’ve done two mammoth posts recently on a pretty depressing topic and if there’s ever a time when that’s not needed then it’s Christmas. Christmas is actually listed as one of 43 stressful events that could add up to stress related illness according to the Holmes and Rahe stress scale, which I think is pretty ridiculous. After all it’s meant to be a season of joy and peace, and for me it definitely is, but neither of the words “joy” or “peace” mean ‘perfection’ and I think this is something we should remember as we approach Christmas.

   And so following that little reflection avec moi, I shall offer you a little training update… I had a cold. It was awful. I think I may have used up a small tree in tissues. And I didn’t run on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday. But aside from that it was pretty good J

Here’s the links

 My fundraising page - https://mydonate.bt.com/fundraisers/runningintorecovery

TRC website - http://www.trc-uk.org/

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!!

A Brief Study on Trauma 2

Hi All 

   This week I’m carrying on with looking at trauma, focusing more on the effects of it. If you don’t want to read the whole thing (because as always I’ve ended up with a mini essay - there’s just too much interesting things in my head I want to talk about) then that’s fine, I’d just like to ask that you do please skip to the last two paragraphs and read them as there is some really important stuff in there that I feel extremely passionate about. Thank you so much to everyone for reading and to the people who donate, makes me feel like all this running is worth it. And speaking of running, here’s my quick update.

   Training this week’s been pretty much the same as last week. The weathers warmed up a bit which is nice however the days have been pretty busy so it’s been hard to fit in runs. I ended up skipping some in the end just because there wasn’t enough time in the day. Hopefully it won’t have an effect overall but I think I’ll run extra hard in the week to come just in case. Since I’m back at home now in the countryside after the end of the uni term I’m looking forward to getting to run in clean air and beautiful views again. However it does mean I can’t run at my usual time of 7pm since the lanes get to pitch black by about half 5/6ish so that’ll be this weeks challenge although I have to say, it doesn’t really seem like much of a tragedy to me. Now, on with the blog post before I start rambling even more.

What are the effects of trauma?

   One of the better known effects of trauma is possible development of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The development of PTSD following trauma is not a given, it depends largely on the type of trauma and the severity of the persons response to the trauma, according to Courtois and Gold roughly 18-25% of individuals who have experienced a trauma event go on to develop PTSD. However, when the trauma experienced is particularly severe or reoccurring then this percentage increases significantly and, in the case of children rises to almost the reverse of the original percentage.

  Unfortunately PTSD is not the only mental illness that trauma is associated with, there are many other disorders associated to varying degrees with trauma. These include – Dissociation, Depression, Bipolar Disorder, Anxiety Disorders, Substance Abuse, Psychosis, Personality Disorders, and Physical Illness. It needs to be made clear here that suffering trauma does not mean that the individual is going to get all these mental illnesses, it just means they are more at risk of developing them if other factors are in the right (or wrong) place. However, just having to deal with one of these illnesses alone is hard enough and adding trauma on top to exacerbate or possibly even bring in another illness is just not needed, especially when help is available.

Why is this important?

   As shown above, the list of disorders related to trauma is extensive and basically covers all aspects of psychological ill health. In most aspects of mental ill health, having experienced past trauma will either exacerbate the illness or sometimes even be a direct cause of the illness. This means that treating trauma is of the utmost importance.

   Currently in the UK receiving mental health care is not easy. While the NHS does try to provide care for everyone, waiting lists are long – often months- and a lot can happen in a few months.  If individuals want help straight away then they have to be able to pay fees - £70 an hour type fees - and many people don’t have that kind of money. Furthermore support offered by general counselling is not enough, therapists need to be trained in handling trauma in order to avoid further damaging the patient and also to protect themselves from the effects of working so closely with victims of trauma.

This means that the ability of the TRC to provide FREE and TRAINED care for trauma victims is an immense help. However in order to do this they need a lot of money. It costs thousands of pounds a month just to keep the centre open and since they give the service free this means all their money comes from fundraising events like the one I’m training for right now. It’d be really appreciated if you could just give even a little bit. The work the TRC does really is life changing and it is needed; there’s such a high demand for affordable care and so little offered. Everywhere people are calling for psychological care. Researchers, Practitioners, Politicians, Counselling Associations, Doctors, Normal People…almost everybody is calling for more affordable mental healthcare in the UK and that is what the TRC gives! But unfortunately we live in a world that runs on money and in order for them to carry on they need money. Really really need money so PLEASE give.

Here lies the link to my mydonate page - https://mydonate.bt.com/fundraisers/runningintorecovery

Here’s the APA reference for the article I got the info from again- Courtois, C. A., & Gold, S. N. (2009). The need for inclusion of psychological trauma in the professional curriculum: A call to action. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 1(1), 3. doi:10.1037/a0015224

And the trc website - http://www.trc-uk.org/

A Brief Study on Trauma

Hey guys! Hope everyone’s had a good week.

   This week I thought it might be nice to have a little look at what trauma actually is. I was originally going to do it in one blog post but I started writing it yesterday and by the end had more of a mini essay than a blog post so today is just the first half hugely condensed. However first, I should probably give a brief training update as well so here it is quickly –

  This past week’s been fairly easy running wise with the exception of the introduction of a race pace run on my timetable which from now on will be every Wednesday. Race pace is 2 miles an hour faster than my normal running pace and I actually found it really, really hard to keep up even for just a 2 mile run. It’s not the actual pace I’ll run the marathon at since I never run further than 5 miles doing it thankfully (the thought of running 26 miles at race pace makes me want to curl up in a corner and start rocking). However I have just realised that the run I’m doing on Christmas day is a 2.5 mile race pace run…joy of joys.

Now, on with the actual interesting bit J

What is Trauma?

   I think it’s often easy to think of trauma as witnessing a murder or being in a car accident however the term covers a lot more than that. Most dictionary definitions I found describe a traumatic event as an event which is in some way distressing and damaging. In the DSM –IV, which is the manual used to diagnose mental illness, the criteria for an event being traumatising enough to lead to illness states that the person must experience or witness an event involving actual or threatened death or serious injury, or a threat to the persons physical integrity (basically, right to your body so slavery would be a violation of physical integrity) of self or others.

    The number of people that have experienced at least one traumatic event that meet these criteria is actually pretty high. In 2005 Frans, Rimmo, Aberg, and Fredrikson found that 80% of respondents to a telephone survey on the general population in Sweden had experienced at least one event that met the DSM-IV requirements for trauma. And in 2007 a study on a representative sample of the general population in the US found that 67.8% of children have experienced trauma. This means a lot of people at risk of developing some form of mental illness which I’ll talk more about next week.

What causes Trauma?

   Causes of trauma are classed as either an act of god (e.g a hurricane) or an act of human. Trauma caused by human origin is most damaging because the trauma is either, intentional and deliberate, or due to human neglect and disregard. This deliberate or uncaring cause of the trauma causes feelings of betrayal in the victim and leads to a much deeper psychological wound as it adds a personal level to the trauma experienced. It suggests to the victim that they are not worth being cared for, or that they in some way deserve the treatment they received. This can be further exacerbated by people in a position to help the victim who are insensitive to the victims situation as it adds a second layer of betrayal to the victim and can act to reinforce the beliefs laid down in the initial trauma situation – examples of this are when child abuse victims are not believed or when victims of rape are told they were asking for it.

Next week I’m going to look a little bit at the effects of undergoing trauma on individuals and the challenges faced when treating victims of trauma. There is so much more that I could write about this but for the sake of keeping posts short I’m not, however if anyone’s interested then I’ve included the reference to a really useful and interesting paper I found to help write this here - Courtois, C. A., & Gold, S. N. (2009). The need for inclusion of psychological trauma in the professional curriculum: A call to action. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 1(1), 3.

   Thanks for reading guys, if you think that keeping a centre that treats trauma FOR FREE is worth your money, or you’re impressed that I’ll be running my lungs out at race pace on Christmas day and want to cheer me up about it then please please please please donate.  You can donate online at https://mydonate.bt.com/fundraisers/runningintorecovery it’s really easy - even just 50p is welcome.

  And also, if you want to learn more about TRC then as always, here’s their website - http://www.trc-uk.org/

It's really happening!

So I’ve booked my place.  I’ll be doing the Exmoor Trail Marathon on Saturday 12^th April 2014. Excited? Yes…Slightly terrified? Possibly. It’s a nice little 26.9 mile course along the Exmoor coast path – which means it might be a bit bumpy – and it’s classified as extreme. I’m beginning to wonder what I’ve gotten myself into.

Training wise, the past weeks been pretty easy.  I’ve been running a few 3 milers and did one 4/5 mile, which for me is about the length of my normal easy runs so I’ve had no trouble. The main struggle really has been stopping myself from running too far – when I’m enjoying my run I have a tendency to just keep going until my legs give out or I run out of time. Which means that when I say I did a 4/5 mile run what I really mean is I did a 5 mile that was supposed to only be 4. But hey, I doubt it matters too much since in the end I’m going to be running a lot further than 5 miles – 21.9 miles further to be exact.

If you want to support me then why not donate? Here's a link to my mydonate page - https://mydonate.bt.com/fundraisers/runningintorecovery