It’s likely you have felt “empty” at some point in your life – or perhaps you’ve heard someone else describe themselves in that way. But while this might be a relatively common feeling, it’s often not spoken about as a symptom of mental health issues.

Typically, “feelings of emptiness” are only considered as a symptom of borderline personality disorder – a mental health condition characterised by challenges with emotions, relationships to others, and feelings of chronic emptiness.

But, after coming across many people who reported “feeling empty” when accessing mental health services in Scotland, our research team wanted to know more about the feeling, which was rarely mentioned in research. We began asking the people we interviewed whether they had ever felt this way.

This began a four-year project which involved listening to the perspectives of more than 400 people.

Read the full story from the Independent below:

Source: ‘Ultimately there is a hollowness inside which never goes away’