The History of Mental Health in the UK
- 1998 - In July of this year I found myself in a position after having spent some significant time in hospital of trying to engage my brain in something that would hold my interest. We'd not long been connected up to Dial Up internet and at the time we could only afford to use it at the weekends because back then you paid by the minute (a bit like your landline). I'd made a few online friends at the time and one person was based in Australia. He had set up a basic website on a platform called "Geocities" and after having a look was amazed at what you could do. Over the coming months he taught me how to set up my own and manage it. Initially it was very basic, but I spent every weekend working it and found it a great way to support my recovery.
- 1999 - A year later, due to better internet connections and reductions in costs, I was able to spend time during the week updating and working on my site. At the time a lot of it was about me and my experiences in the mental health system, and there was only so much I could do with it. It became increasingly frustrating that most of the mental health sites then were managed in the USA/Canada and therefore a lot of the content wasn't relevant to the UK, so I thought about the idea of changing the focus of the site.
- 2000 - An opportune moment came at the beginning of 2000 when an online friend was giving up his mental health website and asked if I'd like to take on the name that he'd given his site; "Mental Health in the UK".
tbc.................