Having offered free and hopefully useful advice to my loyal reader that it’s probably not a good idea to develop mental illness, I feel the need to double-down by illustrating the point still further. Having been compelled to cut back on my meds by 50% – the one I am on is particularly adept at bringing on and worsening type two diabetes (I looked this up myself: the medical centre didn’t bother to explain), so I have seen my mental health all but abandoned by the medical profession in order to preserve what’s left of my physical well-being – I am now beginning to feel the effects. The early weeks didn’t bring on cold turkey and I wasn’t aware of any deterioration in my depression and anxiety. I am now and I feel different, increasingly devoid of energy, having to all but force myself to get up and go out and see people. It’s not like it did in the dark days of 2017, when the bullies and abusers of my then employer, the British Red Cross, took me to the brink of a full-on mental breakdown, but these aren’t the best of times.
One thing you don’t get is any kind of support from the medical profession. A GP – I would hesitate to call him my GP, since you get no choice as to which GP you get to message and I’ve never met ‘mine’ – told me to reduce my meds. I say ‘message’ because you rarely get the chance to speak to a GP via the telephone never mind actually see one, and that was it. However many weeks later, no one has messaged to ask, “How are you getting on?” And why is this? Because for mental health, the NHS is a no go zone.
Sometimes, the health centre does what is known in modern parlance as ‘signposting’. Somewhat unkindly, I regard signposting as fobbing off, discharging responsibility by doing something very minor rather than nothing at all. A couple of years ago, a locum who referred to mental health as being something in which he was “highly committed” showed just how deep that commitment was by sending me some website links, which offered advice like, “Take more exercise. This has proved to be beneficial to mental health.” Naively, I fear, I messaged back to say that because I was so depressed, I could barely drag myself out of my chair, never mind take even the most gentle exercise. And the response from the health centre? Zilch. I messaged the health centre to find that the locum had left a matter of days after he messaged me, clearly with no time to pass my comments on to anyone else.
But there’s another thing about mental health stuff that you might not think about. My issues have been going on since 1969 but I suspect my medical notes for the entire period since then are not in the health centre or anywhere else for that matter. And, on that rare occasion you actually get to speak to a GP, it could be that you end up having to precis 54 years of madness in a ten minute appointment. Some GPs I have seen might as well have been looking at their watches, tapping the desk and whistling a bored tune as I explained my problems, as if I was wasting their valuable time. This could be my paranoia at work, I don’t know, but this is how I feel at the doctor’s.
I’m sorry if this is disheartening, especially if you are, mentally speaking, feeling a bit shit, as us experts call it. It’s good to talk, even better to seek help, but it’s worth pointing out that unless you have a bulging bank account with the ability to purchase private help, there will come a time when you will be left to your own devices. Listen to someone who knows.
Luckily, depression and anxiety can be treated and you don’t have to have it forever. I would hazard a guess that minor mental illness and a full blown meltdown involving being sectioned can be sorted. For everyone in between, my advice is that I have no advice and you’re in it by yourself.
