Bryony Gordon, a journalist and author who has battled mental health issues including OCD, alcoholism, binge eating disorder, and drug addiction, is speaking out about the challenges faced by women when it comes to healthcare inequalities. Despite being open and honest about her own struggles, she continues to face discrimination. Bryony explains that mental illnesses thrive by making people feel isolated and alone. She believes that our brains sometimes respond proportionately to the situations we find ourselves in, and that extreme mental health responses could be the brain’s way of alerting us that something isn’t right in our lives.
Bryony’s latest book, Mad Woman, discusses her experiences of weight-based biases and the impact that they have on women’s mental health. She is frustrated that every time she goes to the doctor’s, they suggest that she should lose weight. Even when she was experiencing a heart problem, she was told that it was just her hormones. She believes that society needs to stop treating people with mental health issues like they are freaks and start acknowledging that we are all susceptible to difficulties.
Binge eating disorder is another issue that Bryony speaks openly about. She experienced “chorizo blackouts”, during which she would obsessively consume packets of Spanish sausage until she blacked out. Eating vast amounts of food was the only way she knew how to calm herself, but the shame associated with her binge eating disorder made it difficult to manage. Bryony firmly believes that binge eating disorder is not a weight issue, but a soul issue.
Despite her struggles with mental health, Bryony has found a way to reframe the shame associated with it through exercise. She founded Mental Health Mates, a group that encourages people with mental health issues to walk and talk. And in April, she will tackle an epic challenge: she will run the Brighton Marathon, the London Marathon, and the distance in between to raise money for her charity. She believes that exercise is so wonderful for the way it makes you feel and not just for the way it makes you look. Through her own journey, Bryony has learned that mental health is not a moral failing, and she hopes that by speaking out, others will feel less alone in their struggles
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