And the good news keeps on coming. I suppose I should really thank that well known misprint Jeremy Hunt, the secretary of state for health. I’ve finally got a letter to say I am on a waiting list for treatment about my severe clinical depression! I’m so happy, I might follow Katie Hopkins’ helpful advice on the subject and “get over it”.
Or maybe I should thank Nick Clegg who has promised to increase spending on mental health treatment should the Lib Dems be in government again. That’ll be the same Nick Clegg who has been part of a government that has presided on huge cuts in mental health. And of course, we all know what Clegg is like with promises.
Actually, I don’t want to thank anyone except the NHS which David Cameron is dragging to its knees and lower.
I’ve been waiting four months to hear anything at all, mind you, so to hear anything from them counts as a result, even a letter that says I am now on a waiting list. And not only am I on a waiting list, I am on a waiting list from one of the government’s private providers, which is to say a private company that the taxpayer pays in order to provide additional treatment because the NHS is insufficiently funded. It is safe to assume that the private healthcare company is not providing this treatment out of the kindness of their hearts and that they will have shareholders rubbing their hands together by this handy windfall courtesy of the taxpayer. It can’t be right, can it?
I asked why I couldn’t be seen by an NHS provider and was told that the NHS waiting lists were so long they had to pay outside (private) providers otherwise some people would never be seen. I asked what if I only had “normal” levels of depression rather than severe: what would happen then? The answer was, and I paraphrase, “not a lot”. “Take a few tablets and hope they work, come back and see me in six months, if you’re still here,” they didn’t add, but might as well have done.
For some of us, the drugs alone are not enough. They enable us to function, often well enough so no one notices (or that they don’t associate our limitations and odd behavioural moments with an illness), but they don’t deal with the core of the problems, whatever they are. And because us mad people don’t usually understand why we are depressed, the chemicals are an essential halfway house.
You would think, wouldn’t you, that politicians would realise the seriousness of of the affects of mental illness on the economy. It is reckoned that it costs the country over £100 billion a year. Not million, billion. And yet we have a government, not elected by anyone, imposing policies no one voted for, allegedly committed to making the country better and then slashing mental health care spending. And all this time they have almost tripled the national debt. Yes, since 2010 they have tripled the national debt.
My severe stuff is under control at the moment. I know when a bout of the black dog is coming and he’s in the back garden at the moment. He’s never far away, as every depressive will tell you, but he’s in my sight for the time being, as long as I concentrate and keep my eye on the ball. I can do that for as long as I am not, well, depressed. There’s no other way of putting it.
What matters far more than the financial cost of mental illness is the human cost of mental illness, but you have to talk about the financial bit to attract the attention of right wing parties like the Tories and the Lib Dems. The human cost is immeasurable. Mental illness attacks anyone, regardless of class or sex, but it attacks most those, the vast majority of the public, who rely on the NHS to be there for them when they need it. Not everyone can wave the credit card at some private therapist and still afford to eat.
I have been on a timeless waiting list to get on a waiting list. I fear that if Dave is anywhere near Downing Street come next month, that wait really will be timeless.
We can do better than this.
