This Mental Health Awareness Week, Joanna Streames, owner of Velvet, (pictured) speaks to Health & Protection about how a career in protection advice helped her support her daughter who has obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD).
As an adviser dealing with protection we have conversations with people daily about their mental health as part of the application process.
This has helped me to have empathy and understand many more situations than I would have been able to without those insights throughout my career.
In January, my daughter returned to her university after the Christmas break. She called me as soon as she arrived in her dorm in floods of tears.
She has OCD and just wasn’t coping with university alongside her condition.
We talked through the issues and how she was feeling. In the end there was nothing else to do but to bring her home to work on her mental health to give her safety and support.
It felt crushing and momentous but the difficult decision had to be made quickly.
There was nothing more important at that time than getting her help for her mental health – not even the degree she had always planned for.
The struggles are severe and are there every single day. OCD is awful and affects all areas of her life as well as impacting everyone in our family.
Watching a loved one go through this is unbearable at times.
I believe being a protection adviser gave me the edge with good awareness to know that Florence needed help fast. I was able to signpost her to get the quick access to assessment and support services needed.
We have used value added benefits in insurance policies because, being a protection mum, Florence had cover at the earliest opportunity when she turned 18 and this has enabled her to take advantage of those vital services needed.
Talking things through is so important and being in this industry constantly having conversations about conditions under the mental health umbrella has given me insights not everyone may have as a parent.
Mental health can seriously happen to anyone at any time. I feel very lucky that I have been able to act fast and get the help and support that Florence needs and have more understanding, because of my job.
It’s still ongoing, we know it’s a long road ahead, and that is usually the case with mental health, but we are moving in the right direction.