Sign up for email updates
Diamonds in the Darkness
Images of Hope for your Mental Health
By Dr Sarah Mayo
Diamonds are formed under immense pressure, in the darkness, over long periods of time. They don’t look like much when they first come out of the ground, particularly to the untrained eye. They need cutting, honing and polishing before they become beautiful, reflect the light and bring joy.
The dark, pressured times in our lives can be similar – they hurt and are times we want to run away from but, with distance, they can be honed and polished to redeem them and turn them into something positive.
In my medical work, I often use images or pictures to help explore, discuss or explain a situation with a patient. Particularly within the world of mental health, I have found myself coming back to the same images again and again, and finding that they helped people.
Understanding a situation, taking an elusive feeling and putting it into a picture rooted in everyday life, one which could be explored, seemed to reach places that just talking about those feelings didn’t do.
I’m not a therapist, and don’t pretend to be, but I have found the images I hope to share with you helpful in my own life and in the lives of my patients, family and friends. Maybe they will be helpful to you.
To dovetail with my forthcoming book Diamonds in the Darkness I hope this site will become a resource to help build a common language of images we can all use to talk about mental health.
I want to share my story, providing space for you to share your images too. This is a work in progress, but hang on in there! Together, we can find our own diamonds in the darkness to help each other.
Dr Sarah Mayo (MA Hons Oxon, MB BS, MRCGP) lives in Leicestershire with her husband, daughter, cat and new puppy. Yes, she has a black dog (real as well as metaphorical)!
She trained in medicine at Trinity College, Oxford and St George’s Hospital Medical School, London, followed by training posts around the county of Surrey.
She has since worked as either a salaried or locum GP in the London, Oxford, Portsmouth, North Hertfordshire and, now, Leicestershire / Warwickshire areas.
When she has spare time, she enjoys gardening, singing and playing various instruments, crafting, the occasional attempt at painting and relaxing in front of a good film or reading a book.
