The subject of suicide on the local Next Door Neighbourhood site came up over Christmas, following a post from a suicidal man.

A local suicidal man living nearby felt so ill he spoke of ending his life on the local neighbourhood forum and came up against the typical negative responses.

Guess what? He was blocked and deleted from the site and told that this content was inappropriate for the site. As a mental health blogger and sufferer, although I wasn’t surprised to hear this, I’m furious that people with suicidal thoughts are ignored and treated like dirt.

This brings me to local authorities. Yes, the police again threatened to arrest the man with mental health problems, and he was suicidal! What’s wrong with Devon and Cornwall Police? They appear to either assault people or threaten them with arrest or, in some cases, do both!

So people living in Cornwall with a mental health condition can’t see a GP due to COVID restrictions or the CMHT. The local CMHT only see you for a short while and then refer you back to the GP.

By reaching out for help, you get the “Not in my backyard” response by threatening the police, and we all know how useful most of them are or delete and blocked from the site because it’s not what we want to hear.

To those clueless and ignorant, you never know it could be you or a close family member feeling this way, so think before you judge and act!

Last night a man called me from the mental health charity Rethink. He confirmed that since the pandemic, the number of people suffering from mental health has doubled during the pandemic.

The charity is currently hoping to raise £100,000 towards better treatments for sufferers such as one to one help, once the role of a CPN on the NHS and counselling.

Every time a mental health story is published, the papers think it clever to print helpline numbers. If this worked, we would have fewer or no reports on suicides or how the establishment criminalises mental health.

Let us know your thoughts about mental health and stigma on our new forum.