“Well, its absolutely essential for someone suffering from mental illness to have an optimism of attitude towards their illness. I have been hugely helped by the work of Sane and I was thrilled to be asked to help them raise awareness. Its not just the mentally ill who get the black dog, everybody can, which is why this campaign is so important.”
“The shadow of the black dog touches us all, but it is possible to master mental illness so that it no longer dominates your life. This campaign is to encourage people to learn to live alongside their black dog, [and] seek help.”
Sane is celebrating its 25th anniversary this month and, to mark the occasion, it will be continuing the fight to beat the taboos surrounding mental illness by producing larger-than-lifesize sculptures of dogs that its founder and chief executive, Marjorie Wallace, hopes will be sponsored by companies, schools and individuals and put in prominent positions up and down the country.
“We have artists, celebrities and people with mental illness designing coats to brighten the dogs, ready for auction in 2012. We hope the dogs will stimulate new awareness and give people a language to express their inner feelings of anxiety, depression and loneliness. It is easier to say you are having a black dog day or the black dog on my shoulder than it is to say you are depressed.”
He said that significant steps forward had been made in the past 25 years, especially in the identification of risk factors for those likely to be affected, “but not enough to get complacent”.
Black Dogs in the workplace encourage a culture of talking about mental health and can be a tool to spark conversation. This is so important considering the aggregate mental health costs to employers came to £34.9 billion, in 2016/17, an increase of 35% since 2006.
Work can be a big source of stress in a person’s life, so it’s important for employers to regularly ask staff how they are managing to give them the confidence and opportunity to speak up.
Many of us have experienced ‘Black Dog days’ and find it difficult to express our feelings of anxiety, depression, or loneliness. SANE’s Black Dog Campaign aims to reduce the stigma surrounding mental illness and encourage people to seek help early, rather than suffering in silence. The campaign places Black Dog sculptures in offices, schools and universities across the country to encourage people to talk more freely about depression and other mental health problems.
Creating an environment where staff feel empowered to speak up early can be one of the greatest preventative measures of mental health problems deteriorating. We know the longer people leave getting help for a mental health problem, the worse it can become.
The Black Dog has been used as a metaphor for depression from classical mythology through to medieval folklore and contemporary times, with well-known figures such as Sir Winston Churchill using the phrase to describe his darker moods.
When that happens, reaching out for help can be crucial. If you’re experiencing any of the following, it’s advisable to set up an appointment with a medical professional or therapist to discuss your treatment options:
After all, research has found that both daily exercise and exposure to sunlight can help reduce symptoms of depression.
It’s easy to panic when you begin to recognize the signs of a depressive episode, especially if you’ve had a particularly bad bout of depression in the past. It’s understandable that you wouldn’t want to go through that again and that the threat of losing pieces of yourself and the life you’ve built to depression might send you into a bit of a spiral.
As such, it’s important to note that the metaphor could really be any ry that speaks to an individual’s experience with depression, whether that be an angry cat, a circling vulture, or a carnivorous plant.
Whether you use a metaphor or not, there are things you can do to help keep depression at bay.