Sarah's story

For Mental Health Awareness Week we're sharing stress stories.

Sarah talks to us about stress mounting up to breaking point. She was working as a carer, under high pressure for very low pay and started to hear voices.

Both Sarah and her husband had a lack of awareness of both mental ill health and what to do in this situation. After being sent home from the GP with sleeping tablets she was later rushed to Buckinghamshire hospital to be seen by the early intervention service.

She found that talking to others with a shared experience helped her: "I also attend recovery college. Which I found so useful, it's been such a lifeline to me. It's a place where people with mental health difficulties can go and take courses, arts and crafts courses, things like that. And it helps you to get interacting with people again."

By tackling stress, we can go a long way to tackle mental health problems such as anxiety and depression, and, in some instances, self-harm and suicide. We want to look at how we can tackle stress and help improve our mental health.

Let's start with you and me and talk openly about stress. We all know that talking about our feelings can help us to stay in good mental health and deal with times when we feel troubled