Pass the parcel- my journey through the mental health service

For the last couple of days my internet has been playing silly buggers and only deciding to work when it chooses to and not when I need it to.  It has caused me no end of annoyance as at the moment the internet is my only form of social contact even though it is not even really contact.  I haven’t actually spoken to anyone face to face apart from my flatmate and the lady at the tanning salon and even then they have just been a brief exchange of words.  The only person I have had a face to face conversation  with has been my psychologist and that doesn’t count either.  I have spoken to the parents and my best friend on the phone but somehow I think that the mental health professionals will jump on it as me becoming socially isolated again.  I go through phases where I don’t want to see or talk to anyone and I guess that sends alarm bells ringing as it usually when I am doing badly and am the most risk in their eyes.  I am classed as a “long-term high risk individual” according to them and I don’t know how useful it was for them to tell me that.  Part of me wants to live up to that reputation although a huge part of me desperately wants to prove them wrong.

I am very stubborn when I want to be.  The other day my self harm support worker sent me a text about having a meeting this morning and asked if I would be willing to discuss how useful it is for me to be seeing her now that I have a psychologist for support.  I wish she had just waited for the meeting to bring it up.  I have known that a discharge from the service was coming as I had been doing very well and we technically haven’t done any “real” work in a while.  I still felt it was useful to have her support as she is not a professional involved in my care and as I have become very socially isolated it was nice just to have someone to talk to.  I didn’t react very well to the text and took it to be a bit of a “fuck off I don’t want to see you anymore text” it seemed she had already made up her mind that she didn’t want to be involved with me anymore.  I just sent back a text saying it didn’t matter about the meeting since she had already made up her mind and thanked her for the year of support.  The time of the meeting passed this morning without even a word from her so I guess I have been discharged.

Being passed around seems to be the story of my life with regards to mental health care and support.  Four years ago I went to my GP who threw drugs at me and passed me to the university counselling service.  I overdosed and was referred to the CMHT here who sent the referral letter to the wrong address so I was discharged by them, I then ended up in hospital at home under a team there who discharged me saying there was nothing wrong.  One year later I ended up being sent by the counselling service back to my GP as my needs were too complex for them.  I was sent back to the original CMHT and I was seen by a junior doctor who spoke to the consultant who put me in hospital and then discharged me to a registrar. I stayed with her for a few months until she got pissed off and discharged me, actually I discharged myself by storming out after she told me (with regards to a potential impending suicide attempt) “Go on just do it, you will fail and like most people will regret it in the morning, most people I see after overdoses do.”  This is despite the fact that I almost died the year before, narrowly escaping liver failure. I had a CPN for a while but she retired and I was again discharged from the CMHT.  I think I managed a year before I referred myself to a voluntary sector self harm project who again got me to go to my GP and get referred to the crisis team who sent me back to the CMHT where I have been ever since, with a consultant and a psychologist seeing me. Now the support worker has given up on me and I can’t help but think that no-one wants me.

That is just a description of my regular care being in crisis has been a completely different kettle of fish.  I have discharged from A and E to an empty flat still in crisis and at risk a few times, which sucks.  I have been to out of hours who threatened to section me, then decided not to.  I was dragged back not 15 minutes later for walking in front of a car on the way home.  I ran away and they got the police involved, when the police took me back they discharged me home with no follow up telling my friends I was “just attention-seeking”.  I lost some good friends that night.  My crisis plan involves telling the support worker, who sends me to my GP, who refers me to the hospital, who assess me and send me home.  The whole process is draining and I came to the conclusion there was no point in asking for help when in crisis.  I am now supposed to call my psychologist when I am in crisis so he can talk me out of doing anything but that is like a blackmail deal because if I don’t phone I get discharged.

Reading this back it sounds like I have been in crisis a lot but really that is not the case.  What does happen is that the stress of feeling suicidal and not getting support inevitably ends to another crisis which starts a dangerous cycle.  I came to the conclusion I was much better just dealing withy things on my own and not to ask for help at all.

It has all just been a huge game of pass the parcel, it is stressful and my faith in the mental health service has taken a real nose-dive as I realised that they are, in fact, pretty damn useless.  The only person who has been consistent for a while has been my GP and I am so glad for that although she knows me too well and can tell how I am doing before I even get into her office door which is a bit worrying.

I am just so disheartened and worn-out.  This has been the longest period of consistency I have had and to be honest it has only because I have been doing a lot better of late.  The period of change before was when as my consultant described me “when my life was very chaotic and when I was very ill.”  It begs the question why is it when I was really ill that no-one wanted to help?

This going around in circles is driving me nuts and sometimes I just feel like it would be best just to cut all contact with professionals but I know that I would last approximately 12 months and I’d end up back.  Even with the medication that was started a year ago when I was finally diagnosed as having bipolar disorder and was relieved to find out that I was not, in fact, “just attention-seeking.”