A friend passed away recently.

She was an astonishingly cheerful and nice person. She kept in contact, she followed her dreams and didn’t have an ounce of guile in her.  I moved away and only a little while after I did, she met a guy, married him, started a business, and had a beautiful baby boy.

About a month ago her Facebook wall started to fill up with tributes.  She had committed suicide.  Post natal depression had hit her like a hammer.  She was the very last person I expected to lose like that. The very last.

When I started getting sent posts about eating disorders on what was, at the time, my blog. Two friends, one very close, contacted me to say that they spent time in a residential facility for people with eating disorders. I wouldn’t have known. Wouldn’t have even suspected.

1 in 4 people suffers from mental illness each year and when I scroll down the list of my Facebook friends I know that many of you needed support in the past and didn’t get it.  I wanted to say sorry.  I know that, statistically at least, some of you must need help now, and I don’t know which ones and I’m sorry about that to.  I don’t know what to do about it.