October 10 was World Mental Health Day, designed to raise awareness of the issues surrounding illnesses experienced by millions of people.

In recent years, the issue has found its way on to the national agenda, with more money pledged to help those affected.

Here, one Somerset person tells their story...

‘IF it happens, it happens.’

I was sitting in a hospital A&E department, my mother beside me, experiencing heartbreak I can’t begin to imagine, and a doctor had just asked me if I intended to kill myself.

I was 18 and I was struggling to cope.

Even now, I feel pathetic as I write that. I was 18, I was set to leave for university in the coming weeks and everyone was telling me how I had the world at my feet.

But I didn’t care.

In the year or so leading up to that night in the A&E department, my grandmother - who I adored - had passed away; I had taken my A Levels (which we were all constantly told could shape the rest of our lives), my brother had moved to a different country and I had moved away from the town where I had spent the first 17 years of my life.

My mind couldn’t cope.

I knew that then but was ashamed. Everyone else had dealt with these things and people around the world were dealing with far worse at that precise moment.

I knew that, but still I just couldn’t seem to get anything done.

My head felt heavy, like there were bricks in my skull which rocked, unsettling my balance whenever I tried to have a coherent thought.

Eventually, it felt like my mind just shut down.

I was out with friends, having what many would call a great night out, when it happened.

We were all having a few drinks, laughing, messing around.

A drink fell from a table and smashed on the floor of the pub. I can’t remember if I knocked it over, I think it was simply a nudge of the table.

I knelt under the table to clean up the broken glass and something snapped.

I slashed my wrist with a piece of the broken glass.

And my journey to A&E and beyond began...

‘My brother is coming home next week, I just need him back and it will be fine,’ I told the doctor.

But it wasn’t fine. Of course it wasn’t.

It wasn’t until months later I eventually saw a GP (after another blitz of self-harm and my poor embattled mother collecting her rocking, crying child from his room in the university halls) and was prescribed anti-depressants.

Did they help? I honestly don’t know. I still had relapses, stubbing cigarettes out on my arms was a favourite, or a series of flashing, swiping cuts with any nearby sharp implement when the mind again seemed to shut down.

But there was no other help on offer.

My GP was caring, empathetic, and said all the right things. Everyone did.

But there was nothing in place to address the cause of my mental illness, just another prescription.

In the end, my mother – who, ironically, dedicated her life to working in the NHS - paid for private counselling.

Again, it helped to a point, but life moves on and you have to go with it.

I never felt I had truly moved beyond whatever had happened to my little mind.

I still don’t, I suppose. I don’t hurt myself any more, so I suppose things have got better, but I still go through periods where I can sense that little mind is on the verge of shutting down.

I don’t write this for sympathy. I never did any of it for sympathy.

The truth is, I don’t really know why I did it.

Looking back, I suppose it was my little mind’s way of saying it needed help. It was hurting, it couldn’t cope and in the midst of all the optimism (‘you have the world at your feet’) it felt like I was standing in a crowd of happy people, my mind screaming that I didn’t care about any of it, about being around the next day, about exams, money, friends, family.

‘If it happens, it happens.’

Tuesday, October 10 was World Mental Health Day.

Speaking on that day, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt told Parliament: “We’ve got 30,000 more people working in mental health today than we had when [Labour] left office.”

Just two days later, Mr Hunt was forced to amend the Parliamentary record over his claims.

Somerset County Gazette: Jeremy Hunt is alleged to have asked News Corporation to guide the Government's positioning on phone hacking
Fact-checked: Jeremy Hunt

It transpires Mr Hunt’s figures included all professionally-qualified clinical NHS staff in England - not just those working in mental health.

The Fact Check organisation analysed the figures and revealed the anomaly, with the Department for Health saying: “This was an error and we will be correcting Hansard (the Parliamentary record) accordingly.”

The truth, says Fact Check, is that the increase in NHS staff working ‘in mental health’ was 692, an increase of 0.87 per cent over seven years.

I write about my experience not for sympathy, or to make a political point, because mental health has been ignored or side-lined for too long, by too many governments of all colours.

I write in the hope individuals - and families - who may now be going through such an ordeal, are not treated as a throwaway quote on World Mental Health Day, but instead remain at the forefront of the thinking of people like the Health Secretary.

I never got the care I needed, and my little mind is still on the edge, decades later.

It has impacted my life in countless ways, many of which I’m sure I am not even aware of.

But I am not alone. And I count myself among the lucky ones.

So please, don’t just think about mental health on one day each year, because those who can’t cope can struggle forever.